Time Warp

There seemed to be a time warp. In a mere eight hours of travel, she reached an older, more uncluttered existence. No matter how many times she made this journey, it always came upon her like a shock. She tried to rationalize away the differences but her endless brainwashing of herself could not be carried on for more than a week. Long before the end of that week, she would be yearning for home. A wide gulf of incomprehension settled between her and them and while occasionally it was possible to cross it, it was never possible to build a permanent bridge.
Over the years she learnt to separate the sweet from the sour and savour only the sweetness. The sourness did pop up occasionally despite her best efforts for her tongue had a mind of her own and seemed to respond faster than her power to stop it. The very laziness of the place was relaxing. There seemed to be sounder sleep, calmer thinking and an absence of hurry. But very often the uncomfortably warm, humid atmosphere took on a viscous quality that made her feel as if she were choking on invisible gulps of some syrupy liquid. She could not swallow the liquid and it felt as though it would force itself down her throat and into her lungs and drown her. Leaving that world and re-entering her own brought her back to life and the freedom to be herself and not be ashamed of it.
What was her parents thinking when they consigned her to a lifetime of trying to reconcile herself to that world? They could have married her off to anyone but they chose this family which ironically gave no importance to hers. Parents often decide courses of action for their children without having any idea of the consequences. Even her own mother would not have been able to adjust with the Stone Age thinking that went on in her husband’s house. Women were always subservient. They were to walk ten steps behind their men. They had to contrive to be attractive to their own husband but unattractive to every other man at the same time. They were not to talk much. They could eat only after their husbands and the other men of the house had eaten. The men existed only to be served. The women were supposed to do everything in the house. The men need not get themselves even a glass of water or return said glass to the sink. That could be why the men married women far younger than themselves – the younger the better to mould as they would like and to fetch and carry, cook and clean, wash and mend. In that world, women were always secondary and would always be so. In eight hours worlds changed and ages vanished and the present was pushed away into the past.
Every time she went back, she experienced the same sense of non-belonging – the same agony of trying to fit into a mould that pinched. Perhaps one day when the winds of change blew strongly enough, there would be place for her in that world.