THE PROPOSAL

Sadhana sits in her college library at 11 o'clock sharp and looks over at the lawn of the adjoining house, and thinks, everything is so sharply differentiated in colour. That is the first thing she notices each time, the lawn cut so fine as to give an impression of being a light green carpet from that distance; the blue and white stripes of the large sunshade; the glittering while walls of the huge house beyond the grass without any kind of dubious shading given by time. And then the lady of the lawn too wore a definite colour almost all the time. Purple maybe, or blue. Today - Sadhana looks beyond Duleep's shoulder - she is wearing red.

"I am leaving tomorrow," Duleep says. "This is probably the last time I can ask you."

Sadhana wonders whether it was the fact that she was following the painting course in College that makes her aware of colours first. At this angle, the secondary predominates the scene before her, and there on that flower bed, the primary. She wonders whether the only other student of painting taking the course with her has discovered this view. But it is unlikely, she thinks. It was only at this time that she notices Nalaka being in the library as well, and she always grabs this seat. He sits at a table slightly in front and to the right of her. No view. Sadhana does not feel bad. Nalaka hardly ever seems to look up from the pen and ink in front of him.

The lady stretches her legs slowly from the deck chair to the stool in front. Elegant legs. Sadhana's position was close enough for anyone who sits at the tables by the windows to see if the legs are slender or not, but far enough for anyone in the lawn not to notice if they are being observed. And at this time, from about eleven in the morning to twelve, Sadhana sits here, and the picture below is as much part of her consciousness as are the pages of the book in front of her. This place earlier was for her alone - but today Duleep is sitting in front of her, and she is trying to adjust her mind to his presence in her space.

"Please Sadhana, this may not be the best place to ask, but I knew you would not come out to go anywhere else with me."

There are tiny red sandals on the feet too. Sadhana is now familiar with the fact that the lady wears shoes at home, and her eyes instinctively travel the length of the legs to the feel too. The slenderness of those legs however does not give her the same feeling of fragility that she gets as she sees the thin white arm and the elbow beneath the large checked short sleeve on the table slightly in front of her. The full shapely legs stay poised and inert, but the thin arm makes a series of nervous movements. But Sadhana knew that for all its awkward jerkiness, if she were to go over and look at the paper in front of Nalaka, the lines drawn there would be strong and sure. She was yet striving to get that confidence into her art.

"It's funny, in a way," Duleep says, his broad, strong-jawed face breaking into the smile that makes his whole face extremely attractive - it's the lines on either side of his face, concludes Sadhana, that makes the smile so - "you might be about the only girl in the college who has not hinted in some way that she wants to go out with me. And you are about the only one whom I really want to ask out. I think everyone knows that by now."

She wonders whether the white Pomeranian is late today. No, there it is, frisking out into the sunlight from the open back door of the house. He dances along the straight margins of the flower beds lining the wall, dipping his head to the flowers in a hurried, impatient courtesy before he trembles up to his mistress.

"I've put this off long enough, and guess what, suddenly this is the last chance I have," laughs Duleep, but it sounds nervous, unlike his usual hearty laugh. "Tomorrow I leave for the States, and will get back only after I get my MBA."

She waits for the slim arm to fall down from the deck chair, a lazy arm, for the dog to dance a jig around. Perhaps the fingers move slowly on the white fur, but she is too far away to see. But the fingers of the lady do not really interest Sadhana. Because always, at this time on the table in front of her, there are other long fingers working furiously with pen and ink, and their intensity is enough. She could watch Nalaka because the objectivity she sought to observe was given in the absolute concentration he had in his work, shutting her, the library and really anything else in the world, out of his scope of awareness. But she had begun in recent times to notice that the fingers sometimes froze into immobility - and this, when he felt her eyes on him. It embarrassed her that the observed and the observer had the possibility of establishing a personal link; but the harder she tried to restrict her eyes to the lawn and the book, the more aware she became of the way he hunched his bony shoulders over the table, the way his hair, however well combed it looked as she came in, always ended up looking rumpled and distraught by the time she left. It had begun to upset her - this sense of losing control.

"Sadhana, I know you are different I know that you want to have things in life that others might not care for. You want to be a; a; painter, isn't it? I know that it is only you and some other boy who follow that course here. You must be wanting to paint desperately. I mean who else would learn this kind of thing in this day and age;; That's O.K. But there is something you must understand, with all these ideals and all that. Money is very important, specially if this is the kind of life that you want to have. You are very, very beautiful. And you are full of life - of hope almost - if that's the word I want. I mean, to be with you gives me the impression that anything is possible in the world - the old dreams, even the crazy ones. That is very precious to me. Very precious;"

The boy brings out the small white stool to the lawn. He always looks clean and tidy with hardly a wrinkle or stain on his shirt and sarong. Sadhana wonders if he washes and irons one set of clothes every day, like she had heard Nalaka say he does to his checked blue shirt and black trousers, or whether he has several. He must be having several, she concludes. Washed everyday, they would get the faded effect that the clothes of the man just to the right of them have. The boy places the stool near the deck chair. The Pomeranian acknowledges him with a series of turns around his legs. Sadhana smiles. It is always funny to see its excitement.

"Specially because in this world that I am going to deal with, things will be too practical for me to believe in anything but facts and figures. But it will be a world that will have money, of giving you the opportunity to do what you want, Sadhana; I would hate to see all your hopes come to nothing. That sparkle in your eye should never be lost. I would feel that I am protecting something, something quite above the everyday things we meet in life, if I could have you beside me with all those crazy dreams and hopes of yours. Do you see Sadhana? Do you understand me?"

The servant comes out now with the silver-gleaming tea tray. It sometimes has a plate, though it is always too far to see what is on the plate, and sometimes it doesn't. But she knows that the lady never touches the plate anyway. He bends down and leaves the tray on the stool. He walks back slowly.

"All I ask is that you wait till I come back. You know about my family, Sadhana. I don't have to tell you what I can offer you"

The lady is moving her legs. Sadhana is surprised. Usually, she hardly gets up from the deck chair while Sadhana is in the library.

But today she is moving her legs, slowly. Perhaps she is going to get up. Sadhana's eyes widen.

"I can promise you a grand house, a car, and all the other luxuries that any woman would want; and the rest which;; well, I am sure, the two of us will find together;"

The woman moves out of the shade of the umbrella. The gleaming dark brown waves frame the small oval face as she looks up to shake back the loose thick hair. The sunlight catches her earlobes and sends a gleam towards the girl. Sadhana watches, almost holding her breath.

The lady moves slowly towards the flower beds. The riot of colour complements her dress, but Sadhana wonders if she realizes it, from that proximity. The figure and the movement remind her of a horse - well groomed and well kept.

"So Sadhana - will you marry me?"

The lady stretches out a hand. But it does not touch the flowers. The other hand stretches out too. Far out. Both - far, far. The breasts come forward, thrusting upward. Stretch, stretch and the lady, widely, slowly, enormously - yawns.

Sadhana stares at her for a moment seeing nothing, seeing everything, in that moment of time when one does not know if the colours one sees are those of the mind or those outside. Then she looks straight into Duleep's eyes. "Oh Duleep," she says. "The lady yawned! And I am sorry. I cannot marry you."

She realizes that the painter's hand had not been moving for quite some time only when it drops the pen with a clatter. In the silence, even before she understands that Duleep has gone away, she feels Naiaka coming up behind her. Then a small touch on her neck, just where it meets the back of her ear, of five thin fingers, almost trembling. And in that touch is the beginning of a journey they will go together, - in the dark, in the light over thorns over petals - in a trembling uncertainly taking the bends and curves leading God knows where.

Madhubhashini Ratnayake
