The City and the Old Woman Who Lives in the Woods

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The old woman walked into the main street, and chaos gripped her like a thief with a knife. She trembled and stood frozen for a moment on the sidewalk. Three teenagers, their eyes on their phones, almost knocked her to the ground as they passed. The rushing stream of cars and bikes gave her vertigo. For a moment, she believed that she had entered a fatal phase in her life. “I will die here like a canary that comes into contact with an electric line.” 

She had not set foot out of her cottage in the woods and into civilisation for many years. After her husband passed, she made herself into a recluse. They had no children. 

A man in the nearest village brought her groceries and an occasional DVD from the cable store. She loved to watch musicals and cartoons. 

In another life that seemed ten lives ago, she was a rich farm owner. She had many horses and a bustling farm. People came to buy her produce and work for her. She had cows. She made cheese and yoghurt and sold them at the nearest village market every Sunday.  

Another life and another time, as I already said. “Everyone I knew is dead, or they have failing memories. The living do not remember me. One should not outlive one’s relatives, friends, and acquaintances,” she sighed as the thought crossed her mind. 

The main street had hardware stores. She wanted to buy bulbs and a small hand tool to mend her vegetable garden. Working in the soil was the only thing that kept her body fit and her mind from wandering. Mind is like a bird. It will fly the coop if you do not grow old in humility and wisdom. 

Her mind was as sharp as the hand tool she bought and put inside her shopping bag. She cautiously trod the footpath to a café, finding a corner table there with a view of the street, and ordered a coffee. 

The classic wrinkles on her face shone in the warm, inviting light inside the café. She was 89 and looked like a shrunken pink bean bag, worn over time. Yet, the twinkle in her eyes made up for everything changed and lost. A joyful, involuntary smile appeared on the young waiter's face as he took her order. 

The mountain air and solitude had made her healthy and strong. She would lift a 20-kilo bag of cattle feed with her bare hands. 

Even the people in the city could tell she was different from them. They nodded with respect when their eyes caught hers. 

After finishing her tea, the old woman opened her bag and carefully extracted a folded silk cloth. She unfolded and spread it on the table’s top as if she were in a ritual. 

Looking at its intricate design with a focus that forgoes the entire world, she seemed to be looking for a clue or a hidden pattern. 

The sun had climbed up the sky by then. The day was turning out hot and dusty. The waiter approached her and asked if she wanted to order anything more. She said no. 

He curiously glanced at the cloth that looked like a scarf and looked at her, hoping she would explain. All the old people he knew did a lot of explaining. They love these tiny trips down memory lane and always share them with strangers. Old age changes you. Less inhibitions and more openness afflict you like a silly cold. What he could not realise was that she was not the type. She looked the type but was far beyond such frivolities of old age. 

The waiter went away. She folded the cloth again and put it back in an inside pocket in her bag where it had belonged. Then she walked out of the cafe and walked towards the bus station. 

The silk scarf could have been anything from a beloved’s gift to her in her prime to a daughter’s expression of long-distance love. All that was predictable about it had been turned mysterious with her inexplicable act. Now, waving that scarf, she could make any magic she wanted others to believe. 

She went away with her bag and the mystery hidden inside. The world is made of two kinds of people. Those who create magic and those who are mere spectators. The old woman and the city were just like that. City has an innate sense of certainty, which began to crumble when she entered it because she was from the outside, without a yearning to belong to the crowd. The old woman was an outcast from the margins, where the rules do not hold.  

The city felt naked and yet unseen under her un-wanting gaze. It had nothing to offer to her, and the story of the silk cloth will lay forever hidden from it. It longed to unravel the magic that she left incomplete. As the bus she took climbed a steep curved road that led to the direction of her cottage, the city stood, deprived, on the banks of the woods, like a seed pod flung away from a tree by a mischievous monkey. The road kept meandering across the blue mountains and touched the sky.