Cassandra’s Story by Meenakshi Chawla

When I met her for the first time, she was in her seventies. A writer with a conspicuous past. And no future. I knew her through her carefully constructed body of work – aloof in its low-pitched understatement. The words welded together smoothly and the reader was led into the labyrinth of her mind gently. Radicals populated her world but they refused to ape the sound and fury of the radicals in the world. As someone who followed her writing carefully, a relatively unknown writer who examined her ideas and their implementation critically, I never failed to marvel at her story-telling. So elegant and old-fashioned in its restraint.

When I met her at her home – through a friend – it was a strange meeting. I had an uneasy feeling I had met her before, somewhere, sometime; at the same time, I was hesitant to meet her. What would I tell her – that I was a fan? Authors like her did not have a fan following. She’d probably laugh at me, or if she were in one of her vicious moods, she might even kick me out of her home.

Still, I accompanied my friend to the house. Age and neglect had tiptoed in upon her while she had been weaving her words into story webs. I had a presentiment that our paths had crossed for a special purpose. An unexplained nostalgia overtook me. The overgrown garden with its accumulation of grasses and weeds and sewn-up flowerbeds brought back a memory I didn’t know existed.