An Old Woman
by Arun Kolatkar
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- Setting: The Khandoba temple site at Jejuri.
- The Pestering: An old woman demands a fifty-paisa coin from a tourist.
- The Proposition: She offers to show him the "horseshoe shrine."
- Narrator’s Pride: He initially feels superior and wants to dismiss her as a nuisance.
- The Challenge: Her question, "What else can an old woman do on hills as wretched as these?", strips him of his excuses.
- Visual Mirroring: The cracks in her face are compared to the cracks in the sky and the mountains.
- The Realization: The narrator feels his own superficiality "shatter" like glass.
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The encounter and the narrator’s irritation
The encounter begins with a physical intrusion. The old woman "clutches" the narrator’s sleeve, asking for a fifty-paisa coin. She uses the "horseshoe shrine" as a pretext to earn her keep, refusing to let go. The narrator’s reaction is one of modern, urban annoyance. He has already seen the shrine and wants to "end the farce." He views her as a "burr", something sticky and annoying that won’t leave him alone.
The turning point and the shattering
The turning point occurs when the woman speaks. She acknowledges her own misery and the wretchedness of the hills. Her rhetorical question, asking what else she can do, confronts the narrator with the reality of her survival. The narrator finally "looks" at her. He sees her eyes are like "bullet holes." The deep wrinkles or "cracks" on her face become a visual metaphor.
In a surreal climax, these cracks extend to the hills, the temple, and the sky. The narrator’s sense of self-importance "shatters" like a piece of glass. He is reduced to nothing, while the woman remains as a monument of endurance.