Barbara was small, slender and breathtakingly pretty. A woman whose age refused to reveal itself, she had the startling ability to knock you off your feet. And when she took your hand, you did not want to let go for anything in the world. Her smile made her look exactly like Juliette Binoche, the lady who starred in Chocolat. I was rather inclined to put her age at around 36, notwithstanding the few wrinkles at the corners of her almond eyes, which, as I fell deeper into her spell, seemed to lend her character. In the couple of days that we stayed in the bed & board that she ran, I did not see anyone else there. The house was reasonably well maintained, though the occasional sharp eye could spy a frayed carpet here, a worn curtain there, making you wonder if she needed a hand. The epithet 'poor widow' that one of us had applied to her during those sharp-eyed moments seemed a bit drastic, in afterthought, considering that her partner, after all, might just be away for a few days. She had caught me a couple of times in her library, dipping into Maya Angelou and Salman Rushdie. "What do you think of Salman Rushdie?" she had asked. Embarrassed beyond words, I barely mumbled, "One of his books was banned in India for a while, and after I came here, I haven't got round to reading him." The same scene was repeated when I had to shamefacedly admit that I hadn't read V S Naipaul either. When I mentioned that I was brought up on a diet of colonial fiction, she was sympathetic and casually mentioned that she was a teacher herself once, and very subtly mentioned the condition of 'those poor African children' fed on colonial literature, under the pretext of education. When an overawed me popped the question whether she wrote herself, she vaguely hinted, "Occasionally, for that sailing magazine." Sailing magazine? Before I could ask whether she owned a yatch, however, she had moved on to another subject -- life on the Isle of Wight (one of many isles in the United Kingdom). "There are no motorways here," she said, "hence you can never drive too fast. That seems to slow down the pace of life as well. I am training to be a driving instructor. Believe me, you need a great deal of patience for that." She gazed at me fondly when I said I was my driving instructor's nightmare, a look that seemed to say, "I wish I could teach you. Things would be different then." By now, even if she had casually let drop that she had swum the entire Solent coastline, I wouldn't have been surprised. But when she said, "I have driven on the mainland for 30 years", the effect was numbing. Even if she had just arrived that minute from the mainland, that would have still made her 48! And I couldn't muster enough courage to ask how long she had been on the Isle. With my heart rivalling the fate of Titanic, realisation dawned, sharp and clear, that those glistening eyes, the golden hair, the Juliette Binoche smile were from a generation that my mother was proud of. Rama Varma has since realised that appearances can be deceptive. Illustration: Lynette Menezes Tell us what you think of this diary Be part of an exciting venture! Write a Diary!
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