Scratches on the Face of Time

There are times when Meeru feels like a little spider sitting in a cobweb. The web is losing its weave to the gusts of time. The spider that sat in its magic spin will soon be dislodged and lost. The outskirt of her web is her motherland which is beginning to fray, soon to become a memory. The new land she inhabits feels like home. Twenty five years ago Meeru had led her family to America to begin a new life. Her husband had followed her, sparking criticism by the extended family who questioned her audacity and condemned the cowardice of a man who followed his wife. Meeru's husband soon returned to India, but she stayed on.

For two decades Meeru and her husband lived apart in two different countries, meeting once or twice a year. There was bitterness, there was sorrow, there was complication; yet they remained best friends to each other.

With her husband's passing, Meeru opens the door to old age alone, in an adopted country. It can be hard being a woman, harder being a mother of men, harder still to be a parent to both genders; but the hardest of all is growing old alone, when the distorted body and the disfigured face kill your natural physical charm, making you look hideous, frightful and repulsive.