Daima whispered something that I pretended not to hear. Then she screamed and I sat up and looked at her with consternation. She talked about the way the new bride in the house was trying to change everything in a forceful way without thinking about the sentiments of the old like her brother, my father. The first thing that she did was to break the vow of austerity by having hot and spicy items on the menu nearly every day. Then to make matters even worse there was a talk of a little party that would not have anything religious in nature. I could feel her spewing fire as she said that it was too much for her to bear. I chose to play safe and kept quiet. She said in a stern voice that she needed to voice her protest and sought my help. I was thinking about the number of page views that my new post would attract and how I would increase my moz rank. As the widowed aunt looking prehistoric with her shriveled skin pestered me about finding a way to protest, I told her in a complacent manner that she would do better to burst on the scene as a blogger. Then what she said sounded as gibberish but I stuck to the point in the hope of getting her as a docile blogger at my side.
After dinner she met me again on the terrace on the persisting summer night and fastidiously learnt nearly everything about blogging and a blogger. I told her on the strength of my knowledge of what I myself learnt from the posts I had to read on a daily basis to inject life into my blog. Daima was sweating profusely as the wind had dropped and then she suddenly hit me with the hand fan demanding an explanation for my suggestion for her starting a blog. I winced but I regained the composure of a dogged blogger and told her that it was her critical acumen that would make her a successful blogger. I also told her that though she was old she did not have any morbid obsession with death and could make the most of the last few days of her life in a critical manner. Then she lowered her voice to a whisper and said she could not write as her fingers seemed to tremble all the time. Though I was touched I told her in a voice that did not quiver that she could upload pictures on her blog without having to write anything. She at once cheered up saying that she would like to upload the cute image of her grandson crawling on the floor of his house. But then she fell silent without saying anything. I did not press for anything further from her as I knew that she would not be able to upload any picture of her grandson as she did not have any.
Daima was the widow of our immediate neighbor who had died many years ago. She was a fairly educated and the credit for this went to her father who stood his ground fiercely against a stifling orthodox atmosphere of the family. Her education stood her in good stead when she had to fight for her survival with her young son. She managed with the interest from the paltry savings of her husband and gave tuitions to the children from the locality. Then she did something exemplary to bring up and educate her son. Her brilliant son graduated from an engineering college and left the country to graze in bigger pastures, keeping her mother floating in a world of dreams. But he did not come back as the overseas job kept him preoccupied with a fashionable wife and different style of family life. She received some money from him and then it all stopped on the excuse that life in the west was very expensive. She was rescued from a futile attempt to end her life and honourably accommodated in our house by my father. Once in his childhood days when my father returned from a cycling race with the mangled cycle and bruises all over, she had been a wall before his father and he could escape his punishment. On many occasions she prepared sweetmeats for him and gave him the love of a son, though the gap in years was not too great. He broke down when he saw her trying to put an end to her life due to the negligence of her son.
Daima was the guardian of our house and one could not flout her but the new bride seemed to test waters by introducing new rules. She became passive and did not want cross paths with her. One night she got a mild fever and had the new bride sitting at her bed side nursing her for hours. The only interruption that she seemed to experience was when the perky girl screamed at her husband saying that he should take a picture of her nursing the aunt as she wanted to use it in the next post on her blog. The aunt stiffened and I ran out of the room, evaporating.
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