For The Resident Ghosts...

Riya felt like cancer had ripped her very existence from her, always feeling terribly weak, drained out, unable to muster up strength or willpower or even the mildest wish to get up from the bed, to do her regular chores like eating, cleaning up etc.

She had stopped looking into the mirror since the surgery had snatched her basic feminity( according to her) in the name of removing the cancerous lump.

Her lustrous, cascading hair was gone after chemotherapy and radiation had taken away the remnant luminosity of her eyes and skin, leaving her looking like her own faded version.

She lost her temper almost at every single word anybody uttered now, over petty issues in day to day life.

For example, she shouted at nobody in particular about why her old photos were being displayed on the walls of the house as they were mocking her because she was looking like the shrivelled apparition of her older image. As a result, all her photos were silently removed from the walls.

Along with the photos many other things were removed from her eyesight, like the designer full-size mirrors in each room which she had installed with much ado, the weighing machine, the tent-like clothes( again her version )which she threw around daily, after trying her choicest attires.

But, today, as if the sun had risen from the west...

This morning something very rare and unpredictable happened. The newly appointed maid told Riya," Didi, why don't you wear at least a bangle, bhindi and vermilion? After all, you are married... Why are you always dressed like a widow???"

Pin drop silence reigned in the house, her husband and children expecting Riya to skin the new maid alive with her narcissistic lashing words, which were dominating most of her conversation nowadays after cancer occurred.

The sweet, smiling, soft-spoken Riya seemed long dead and buried, with her own self roaming around like a resident ghost of the house.

But that day a miracle happened. Riya requested (not ordered) the maid to bring a handheld mirror and her makeup box to her bed.

She noticed that her hair had grown shoulder length since she had last cared to notice after the chemotherapy. She adorned herself with powder, lipstick, bindi, vermilion, bangles and a necklace.

Seeing the remarkable change, her husband urged her to get up from the bed to which she had literally rooted herself for ages and to put on any arbitrary dress from her wardrobe as looked like a model in each one of them, so that they could go out on a long-pending date.

The children also gained the courage to approach her. They ran up to her and hugged her tightly shouting, "How beautiful you are looking, Mama. Do try to look like this every day!!!"

Riya smiled her long lost vibrant, infectious smile and uttered, "Thanks a million, darlings, for letting me be 'me', all these years, tackling my tantrums with patience and dragging me back from the realm of the living dead to the living world again..."

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