She held the red plastic bucket aloft. Gazing down at some sixty feet below, she had the urge to empty the pail all at once. But a sudden sensation of swaying stopped her short. Uh ho, Easy Suji easy, get a hold of yourself, girl! It really wasn't the bridge that swayed! No, it was not exactly Galloping Gertie she was standing on! The reluctant swirls of the brown river below beckoned, and waited patiently.
She now tucked the pail under her left arm, and gathered fistfuls of the shredded paper, a little at a time, and dropped the confetti into the river. The bits of papers were released slowly, with care, each toss of hand like a sweep of an old broom, or a stroke of the whitewash. Perhaps, it was more like consigning the ashes of the beloved to a holy river. No, that wasn't right either. How appropriate that a metaphor should fail me at a time like this! She let flow a slow, reluctant, dark chuckle.
A sniff and a tear, the last of the contents of the bucket were dropped! Finally, using both hands like a basketball player doing an easy free throw Sujatha lofted the pail high into the river. The red plastic bucket twinkled, twirled, and tumbled over and over, and fell into the mighty Mississippi with nary a whimper. The sound she heard was not a splash, it was her own breath caught short, released in a throaty gurgle. May be it is the river waters that I heard splattered by the pail, but then what difference did it make now?
Sujatha shook off the remnants of her writings off her clothing, off her hair, off her hands. She was free from them all. Turning away from the railing, she pulled the hood of her sweatshirt, tied up the drawstring under her chin - a neat and secure double knot. She pulled the long sleeves of her jersey over her fisted hands, and started walking off the bridge with the warm sleeve-mittened hands snug in her pockets.
Nobody can now say that she clung to useless hobbies, nobody but nobody in the clan can point her out, that she was trying to make waves, or be different. Poof, splash, there gone! No more, gone was the last scrap of evidence of her pursuits. She was now freed from her habit, freed from an avocation away from home.
Now, I am ready for marriage, Father! She looked forward to seeing the beaming face of her mother. Oh how thrilled she would be. Such a nice obedient daughter, who won't want such a gem of a girl to be the daughter in law of their household? Lost in the reverie, Sujatha didn't see the silvery wedge of a sports car that came careening around the corner. Neither did the driver of the car see gray college hoodie that was halfway across the bridge.
Sujatha knew instantaneously, that she was joining that red plastic bucket that had she so reluctantly let go. That paper confetti, still swirling lazily toward an equally reluctant and lazy river now became a celebration of something. Join me now my works, over these blessed waters! Around her, the currents alternately tinkled and gurgled. The river sang to her. One moment she heard a lullaby; another, she heard trills like a didgeridoo she fashioned out of a plastic pipe last year in music class. Then again, out of nowhere she heard bits of country song that her teacher from Kearny, Nebraska was fond of humming, "Gonna take a lot of river, Mississippi, Monongahela and the Ohio ... to wash my blues away."
How odd, she thought for a moment. These waters are both warm and cold at the same time, yet I am so comfortable right now. I feel so at home, are these waters of the Ganges?
And then she remembered that she had never been in the Ganges, and it was at that moment that her soul set off on a journey that was at once freeing and forbidding.
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The very first complete English sentence that Sujatha wrote was "Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool?" It was a line of a poem which she would practice memorizing for months on later, but at first she was made to learn to write that sentence first. She had already practiced writing the individual letter and small words for weeks on end. She wrote on the chalk slate for hours till her fingers went numb and won't unbend. At first she traced two inch high letters with chalk pencil, graduating to one inch high traces a week later. It was not until she could write the letters with eyes closed, that she was allowed to transfer her exercises to paper and pencil.