The Open Cage

As news of another School Kalolsavam arrived, she found herself remembering her life…

She was beautiful once, the kind of beauty that belonged on Malayalam magazine covers of the seventies and eighties, soft focus portraits of women with jasmine in their hair and dreams in their eyes. She had talent too. But opportunities are not given equally, and hers slipped away before she learned how to reach for them. Marriage came early, followed by the slow closing of doors she had never known were open.

Her husband was a good man. He gave her shelter, stability, and a daughter who grew up carrying her mother’s beauty and a gift for dance that allowed her body to speak with grace and feeling. And so began the journeys. Mother and daughter travelled together under the midday sun to dance classes across the city. Sometimes they stopped at Patter’s Hotel near the beach, a small refuge where they shared a modest meal.

When School Kalolsavam season approached, the house transformed. Nights stretched into rehearsals. Together they stayed awake, mother and daughter, until movement became instinct and the daughter’s feet carried rhythm even in sleep. The mother sat at the edge of the practice space, watching. Every turn of an ankle, every graceful extension of an arm carried within it the dreams she herself had once held.

On the night of the competition, she waited in the wings, invisible as mothers often are, hands clasped, face tense. When the prize was announced and applause filled the hall, a tightness within her eased. The next day, seeing her daughter’s photograph smiling back at her from the newspaper, she allowed herself a moment of pure joy.

After that, life settled back into its old routine. The newspaper clipping was carefully cut and saved, pressed between the pages of a book no one else would open. She went back to cleaning rooms that no one noticed and fed the fish circling their tank, the cats that came to her door, and the dogs who followed her faithfully. She watered the plants in the garden, watching them grow in ways she never had, and fed her parakeet, her favorite, in its cage.

As another School Kalolsavam approached, she sat in her garden in the fading evening light, surrounded by cats and flowering plants, remembering her life. She had learned to think of that as enough, almost…

When dusk set in, she opened the parakeet’s cage and let it fly free, watching until it dwindled into a fleeting tip against the fast setting sun.