A Visitor called Death

Only that day,
she was plucking flowers for her Gods,
and chatting with the good neighbours,
Talking of her owes, and her falling health,
but she shone like the afternoon sun
her poplar like body standing strong and erect on her feet,
her forehead clear and voice crisp like potato chips.

Munna, the boy who lived in her house on rent,
was running from here to there and
there to here since early dawn,the next morning,
His face, a wooden block
divulging nothing of what was wrong,
The maid went to her house at eight, and was driven away,
by her freshly arrived son and daughter,
She went to another house and wailed,
Alas! Rekha Maa is dead.

The news spread, and people came flocking,
Rekha Mousi lay , with her lips slightly parted,
cold and dead on a mat.
Women whispered, the frowns questioned,
'How did she die?', she who was only fifty seven and as
straight as a stick,and as agile as a d0e,
What death embraced her in one night?

Munna, who had become her only salvation in a life
of utter solitude, sobbed and
told, Mousi had all the lights on at twelve in the night,
and didn't pick up a call,
He called her son and daughter at midnight
and told his fear,
And they came running from eighty miles,
and broke a door,to find Mousi sprawled on the ground,
as dead as a stone.
Another son expressed sorrow over phone from distant States,
He will reach for sure and attend the Karmas, he told.

How did Mousi die?
Why death visited her so untimely, so young,
without any pre-signs?A heart stroke?Or a brain stroke took her,
Or some secret pain, or the loneliness of years after
her husband died and the children left the nest?
The sons and daughters looked serious and sombre
in their loss,
Munna and his wife looked pale,
and fearful,their faces smeared with tears.

At nine in the morning,
The funeral party left ,with a neighbour at the wheel,
The driver simply refused to drive,
The son, and Munna sat with the body
at the back, Mousi in the same saree and the blouse
with silvery patterns,
she loved to dress to her liking.

Rekha mousi went away,
with many of her older neighbours still alive and shocked,
Accepting that the call came when it came,
Age or health notwithstanding.
All wondered at the enigma of her death.
The death of a woman full of life,
a lonely woman who filled lives with her rantings and laughter.