Escape.

Shantha shifted uneasily and adjusted the shoulder creases of her fitted flannel shirt, worried about judging eyes, mostly her own. She had paired the shirt with loose corduroys and tied her hair into an immaculate bun. Just as how a wine loses its tartness with age, Shantha’s face too had begun to show wrinkled lines. She stood behind a table of neatly arranged sling bags, totes, quilts, decoupaged bottles, hand painted coasters, each her own creation. She wondered if they would give her little secrets away to the buyer, each one a tiny reflection of a past she had long left behind. She had spent all of the previous night attaching tiny neon price labels with tie strings to her handiwork. It was her first sale at the Vestkanttorvet flea market located close to the city center of Oslo.

The Scandinavian food stalls were a treat to one’s olfactory and gastronomical senses. Blocks of succulent cheese of all textures and tastes - rindless bocconcini, aged gouda, brie, gruyere - were stacked alongside and on top of one another like a pile of Jenga; a sourdough boule sat in the middle drawing unsuspecting shoppers to stop and break bread, quite literally. The smell of Za’atar wafted through the air, telltale signs of a Middle Eastern spice shop somewhere close by. Other stalls sold antique crockery, old souvenirs, second hand clothes and a lot of what one would assume had its place in a pile of garbage. A set of old-fashioned speakers played a familiar song in the background. Shantha hummed along and smiled,

“Did I waste it?

Not so much I couldn’t taste it.

Life should be fragrant,

Rooftop to the basement…….”

~

She looked at his clear eyes; they were so lifeless as if he had already passed on. An intravenous tube ran through his frail hands that twitched in pain as a nurse tried to insert contents from a vial of medicine into them. The on-call doctor made his third round for the night and checked for pulse. Still alive. Here lies a man who took it upon himself to make my life miserable – in life and in death, she thought.

She remembered this man, a 41 year old then, inebriated, staggering to even stand straight, when it was barely 10 am on the clock.

She remembered the time he had come to her parents’ house with a proposal for marriage what seemed like many light years ago. She had looked at her mother with unsure eyes; something was amiss with this man, something reeking of poor self-esteem and insecurity issues sitting deep. And before she could make sense of what was going on, here she was, in an emotionally abusive marriage with two kids with a man who was always perched at the center of his universe. She wasn’t sure at what point she deciphered she was going through abuse.

She remembered the time she wiped a layer of dust off of her trophies and gold medals and gave them away at the local paper mart. That, with several other certificates, fetched her all of Rs. 40. My education wasn’t a waste, after all, she wondered.

~

The hospital looked like an eerie deserted railway station at this hour. People wandered around aimlessly, with no sense of urgency. Some sat distraught in waiting rooms, hoping desperately for dawn to bring in something good. It was as if the world had slowed down to help the dead cross over.

The next morning, the nurses came and changed the rumpled sheets where Shantha’s husband lay. Her children signed a few documents necessary to take the body home. The next few hours were a blur; people moved in and out of the house in flocks and the scene had begun to resemble a movers and packers vehicle offloading at a site.

“It’s time, Shantha.” a familiar voice held her at the shoulder.

“But..”, faded Shantha’s voice.

“No more. You said no 15 years back. I didn’t right that wrong then. That guilt will never leave me. I am not taking another one on my watch. Pack your bags – the bare essentials, I have your ticket, we leave by tomorrow’s red-eye flight. Carry a heavy duty jacket – Norway gets cold this time of the year.”, her friend from school Shyamala quipped.

She said a final goodbye, most importantly to her older self that did not know how to put itself before others.

~

"God Morgen!", a nervous Shantha welcomed a few locals to her stall, feigning nonchalance, but not succeeding. She had broken herself free from bigger shackles; she could afford to take this slow.

She remembered a line from her granddaughter's favorite book, the Harry Potter series. ‘Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect.’

After all, she had learnt how to escape her own mind.