K rishna looks in the mirror and almost doesn’t recognise herself. A beautiful lady in her fifties in a plain grey silk saree stares back at her. She wears a string of pearls and matching pearl earrings. A radiant smile completes the picture; her favourite frozen ittar , dabbed just so on the underside of her wrists, leaving a beautiful fragrance around her. As she goes around the house switching off lights in the rooms and dimming the lights in the living room, she remembers the last time she got all dressed up – her daughter’s wedding day. Like that day, today too, her saree is new – a gift that arrived from her daughter this week as an apology for not being able to come down to visit her as promised. And while that hurts really badly, she cannot help but enjoy the rustle of the silk as it swishes around her when she walks. Krishna has never been conventionally beautiful. And yet, she has always been attractive in a quiet, unpretentious way. And t...
Seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary