Prose
Travelling Light : Ranu Uniyal
Ranu Uniyal teaches in the Department of English, University of Lucknow. She was a Commonwealth Scholar at the University of Hull, UK. She has published four poetry collections in English: Across the divide (2006), December Poems (2012) and The Day We Went Strawberry Picking in Scarborough (2018) was translated into Spanish (2020). Her latest poems are published by Red River – This Could Be a Love Poem for You (2025). A book of poems in Hindi – Saeeda ke ghar – was published in 2021. An author/ editor of several books on literary criticism, she writes and reviews extensively.
Staring at the carpeted floor, papered walls and empty ceiling of an unknown house, a lump dislodges itself at the pitch of my throat and eyes flash with an insipid glare. Brown and pink of the room mixes staunchly with the deep grey of my heart and ripples of intrepid gloom sink in with a smell of unwashed towels and dirty socks.
A night here perhaps and then I move away into the twilight of another city, another door and a still unknown keyhole. Tomorrow I shall take the train to Beverley. Maybe the mood will lighten and the spirits soar as the fog clears the mind rotted with guilt and disuse. Like her I could not put my head into the gas oven, but unlike her I had a strong urge to kill someone.
A man, an animal or even a fly would do. It is rather hard to control one’s instincts sapped inside out and dried like an almond shell. Like her I wanted everything. I could not do with half-heartedness or with a few lumps of everything. Life, love and poetry – I wanted them all to survive. But none did. And I simply could not bring myself to the fact that imperfection and guile go hand in hand. There must be truth somewhere if not here maybe I would discover it at the platform or the back street of Cottingham or the shop where I purchased my last pair of sunglasses. Deceitful the teeth rattled as I sat holding the clutches of my worn out toothbrush.
Tomorrow perhaps I shall find a dentist who would stop them from chattering like this. It hurts when they go beyond control. Lies, lies and lies they seem to utter. I am searching for a pack of truth so that I could munch it like the Kitkat or golden crisps. If not I would have held it in my arms and never let it go. Good things are hard to come by they say. And then I have never had it so good. Everything is fine. Absolutely delicious is the time. I don’t have to spend a penny on anything. Then what’s your problem? What are you fretting about? Thoughts rumble off and on. Frozen words have to be kept secure. I do not wish to see them defrost and die. They would sink into oblivion, like one of us. Emptiness and solitude sound like clichés of modern existence. And I do not want my experiences to drown into worn out clichés. After all there is a difference between a toothbrush and an experience. One outgrows the other.
Years ago I remember my mom had forced a glass of Ovaltine down my lips. It never went down and had stood dumb at the throat. Mind you it is still there pale and grisly and each time I eat something it travels with me, the taste of Ovaltine. It is there a perpetual reminder of the meaningless offence. Every single night I hear rats pacing up and down the staircase. This is not a childish hallucination, but for the past one year I have heard their steps. Believe me they are rats. Soft and nutty they couldn’t be beetles. Beetles make a rasping sound. They scratch, but they don’t run. Rats – I find them wherever I go. At fifty six one begins to see signs of senility in some women they say. I am only forty.
So what’s the fear? I don’t talk to the walls. I don’t smile at myself. I am a serious person and I don’t talk unless asked to. I giggle a lot. But isn’t laughter a shade of light heartedness? And doesn’t this go with wholeheartedness? I am complete. I need not be reconstructed. I have a history and I plan to write my future. I collect facts. I read fiction. I write poetry. I despise lies and I am still waiting for truth. Phone me if ever you manage to discover it before I do. My number – it does not exist in the directory. My city – it follows me wherever I go. My name plate – I managed to hide it in the gas oven.