Rowena

Someone told me this story. He's even written it, and will publish it as part of an anthology of his writings. Something about this story made me want to tell it. So, Ram Mama, apologies in advance for this borrowing.
***

I remember Rowena as a collage of images. Montage would be the more correct word, but collage seems more apt - my memories seem to be a jumbled set of stark pictures, each with its own identity, yet wedded to the other; they all jostle for space, yet they feed off each other; they are irregular, shapeless, but just right. Some images are larger than the others, some brighter, some sharper, some colour, others in black-and-white. I don't really remember when I first saw her or where. It must've been on a hot mid-morning (my memory suggests the month of May) in Adyar in nineteen-seventy-one or seventy-two. This much I can guess, because I know I was not married, living with my parents in Adyar, doing my Bachelors, and I have one memory of her linked to a Test Match that definitely happened in seventy-one.

Back then, when the people in the locality discussed her, they did it for one of two reasons. First, they didn't know who she was or what she was doing in Adyar in the seventies. She was a doctor, an MBBS, who worked out of an old house converted into a clinic three roads parallel to mine. The white text on green background on the board outside merely read "Dr. (Kum.) Rowena, Physician, MBBS" and had consulting hours written at the bottom. She hadn't grown up in Adyar, unlike many of us, she moved there and set up her clinic. She lived with her parents in the same house, I gathered. I never really found out what her father did, or where he worked, or why he moved to Adyar. I didn't even understand her name. There was no surname - at least not on the board. She could have been a Hindu, a Muslim or a Christian. Something in my head suggested she was a Christian. I think it was the 'w' in her name - a very Western alphabet. I wondered if she was Bengali. A corruption of Raveena, perhaps. Or from Orissa, which is in the same general direction as Bengal. Maybe she was from Sri Lanka, the Maldives, or Mauritius. A friend suggested (correctly, in hindsight) that she was from either Goa or Mangalore.

The second reason was that she was quite a stunner, looks-wise. She wasn't the fairest around - her skin was chocolate-like. I liked that. Her large, black eyes were very beautiful, but they gave one the sense that they would be even more pretty if she weren't that overworked. Her nose was a tad long and pointy, although that seemed to add to her. Her hair fell from head down to her waist. It was always neatly combed and pleated. She wore lovely clothes - colourful, neatly pressed kurtas and chudidars, with the most fetching of dupattas, deep-hued sarees, even tops and bell-bottoms. Above all of this was the way she carried herself. There was a certain dignity to the way she walked, talked, behaved; but that didn't diminish her vivaciousness. She was very aware of her attractiveness, but never let it influence the way she dealt with people. Even when she knew she was being leered at, she didn't let it bother her.

I never really spoke to her. I might have helped her out with bus numbers once. I remember smiling at her each time we crossed each other. I remember treasuring those smiles and recollecting them for months. At twenty, you don't need to know someone to be infatuated with them. I knew she was older, but she couldn't have been much older. She was unmarried - the "Kum" was ample evidence of that. This was enough for an obsession to mushroom. I vaguely remember making changes in my schedule to catch her at the local vegetable shop and the bus stop in front of her house. I also recall hatching a grand plan to distribute sweets to everyone in our locality to celebrate Deepavali just so that I could enter her house (She wasn't at home when we went, but I met her parents, who didn't care much beyond accepting the sweets with a smile). Beyond this, I didn't have the courage to do anything.

My only real tryst with her came through her work. I fell really sick around the time when India won that dramatic Test Series in seventy-one in England. I remember listening to the radio commentary, wrapped in a blanket, with my extended family crowded around the room trying to decipher what Chandrashekhar was doing with the ball. My fever raged on unabated even after the series ended. My thrifty father decided that before a big doctor sees me, he could try the local physician. I didn't complain.

She came in an off-white-and-black patterned sari - even today, I can draw those peacock feathers and the ornate flower-patterns from memory. She didn't talk much, only asked me professional questions on my health. I don't know if she made the correct diagnosis: my pulse raced when she took it, my heart beat harder when leaned over me with her stethoscope. When she was done, she patted me on the head, and said with a smile, "You'll be fine in a day or two." I melted. As she was leaving, she asked my father what I did. He said, "He's an Economics student. Sings a bit." "Next week, you can sing again!" she said, and left.

After that, each time we bumped into each other (often, I engineered this), we'd have a little conversation. Always the same conversation - we'd enquire about each other's health, I'd ask her about the health of the people in the locality, she'd ask me about my economics and my music. In my head, I was engineering a lot more, but in reality, I was highly unsuccessful. One day, without warning, the board came off, and we heard that she had moved with her parents. No one knew where they'd gone or why. The locality gossiped for two or three days, but soon forgot. I moved from that silent romance to the next.

I met Rowena only once after this. At the Central Railway Station, around six months after she left. She stood alone, with a large bag, and looked even more overworked. I noticed her first, but was too nervous to talk to her. She noticed me, our eyes met, and she half-smiled. I became braver, and walked up to her.
"How are you?" I asked, "Long time!"
"I'm okay. You?" she asked.
"The same." I couldn't now ask her about the health of the other people in the locality. Our conversation would end. There was a lengthy pause, before I asked, "You left without telling any of us..."
"I ran away from home. Got married to someone. I'm living with him now in Nellore."
We said some more things to each other, but nothing really registered.

About two months later, I read in a newspaper that Dr. Rowena (still no surname), aged 24, committed suicide in her house in Nellore after her husband, Raghavan, aged 27, died suddenly in an accident.