The Old Woman's

A short- short story

There was a peculiar shop at the end of the valley market. The piers leaning, the floors zig-zagging, leaning against gravity. Awnings of red and green hung from each floor, and large windows on all sides hinted at the inviting jumble inside. The shop towered over every other building in the market, and if you climbed to the attic, you could see the whole valley. At night, it washed the market street in its glow.

The shop sold many knick-knacks. Old Chinese boxes, windchimes, breath mints, and odd furniture you could not figure out the use for. The watches and clocks filling its walls never synchronised. The shop was a nursery, an antique store, a tea shop, and you might occasionally find sweets and books almost all the time. The shelves kept shifting every day, and as a rule, you never found what you were looking for.

Your friend would come home one day with lavender hand cream, telling you there was new stock. The next day, you don’t find any. The shopkeeper, an old woman, would be of no help either. If you asked her, she would say, “Hand cream? Do I have hand cream? Why don’t you look around? There are so many wonderful things here.” You go looking for hand cream, but around the corner, where there were ottomans last time, you find a lampshade of Madhubani art. As light from the window filters through the canvas, the fish with red and yellow scales move in a current of blue.

The old woman was from an old family in the valley. If you asked the oldest person in the valley, they would recall playing with her younger sister, perhaps. She had travelled when she was younger. To her customers, and anyone who’d listen, she would tell tales of fantastical places and objects she had seen. A crow had once brought her pearls from the ocean in exchange for colours to paint its wings white. Sometimes she would tell of an umbrella that changed colour with the weather outside. She said that the umbrella had given her the idea of opening a shop of wonderful things.

She lived somewhere in the shop, though no one had ever found her belongings. People had looked for hours and hours, but never even found her bed. Some believed that, like everything else, her belongings also kept shifting through the shop. Though how she found her toothbrush and clothes like this every day is for anyone to imagine. What she ate was also speculated upon by the children of the valley, with a healthy dose of does she eat children or pumpkins thrown into the mix. Though sometimes she would ask one of these children to get her hot syrupy Jalebis from the sweetmeat shop. The children didn’t mind because she always gave them a little extra money to buy themselves a treat too.

And then one day, someone heard her muttering under her breath, “...big…escape…here.” She closed the shop early that night. The next day, the shop opened an hour later than usual, but there were no awnings above the windows. From the display windows of the shop, she appeared to be twining and untwining her fingers behind the counter. The shop closed early again. The valley was abuzz with what could have happened; she had always opened and closed her shop at the same time, except for the past two days. In the evening, someone saw a young tourist enter the shop, and it seemed the glow of the shop grew dim.

The valley saw its fair share of tourists, and the shop was popular among them; most of them went in with the anticipation of treasure hunters. But this tourist was a bit different. He had not sat by the lake, had not talked to any locals, and had walked around the valley at the pace of a morning walker. The owner of the Homestay where he was staying said he had refused the popular breakfast of the valley and stuck to eggs and bread.

On seeing him enter the shop, ears found their way to the windows and aisles of the shop.

“But why can’t you get new ones?” asked the man.

The old woman explained, “That is not how it works. You have to choose what’s in the shop”

“I just want meenakari dishes like the ones my friend got from here,” he said, folding his hands over his chest.

“Let me show you around. There are so many interesting things here,” the woman offered imploringly.

“You’ve been saying this for two days. I just want you to tell me where those dishes are,” he replied

“I will try to be as quick as possible with the tour, and we can look for the dishes too.”

“Okay, only if you help me find the plates.”

She hobbled ahead, and the young man and the ears followed her into the many aisles of the shop. As they moved around, she pointed out almost everything to him that was on the shelves, telling him about the art or the origins, or some other trivia about a piece, but he only nodded or grunted in reply. Many a time she even tried to launch into one of her stories, but the man would march ahead before she could even finish the first sentence. With each grunt, the old woman’s voice became more shaky. When they had covered the ground floor, she took him upstairs. The shelves were more crowded on the first floor; there were more stools and stalls here.

“How about a garden gnome?” she pointed to a gnome with a mischievous smile sitting on a stool.

“I do not have a garden,” he replied.

They kept moving. She kept pointing to bound books, brass door handles, and ships in bottles. But the young man did not show any interest. The woman had started twiddling her thumbs again.

When she had pointed out everything on this floor, she stopped and observed the man for a moment, the lines on her forehead growing deeper. She took the man to the next floor. Paintings lined the walls, wooden cabinets were scattered across the floor, and musical instruments from far-off places stood. She began her routine of pointing to objects again. But she kept missing objects, and stopping mid-sentence to move to another object. Several times she sighed. Then she lost track of him, and found him several minutes later, tangled in fabrics undulating from hangers several feet above to the floor. It was when she was untangling him that the ears caught her gasp.

“Oh, I didn’t think there would be a bed under those curtains,” the tourist sounded genuinely surprised.

“No, no…this is not for sale. You must go now, you must go.” She flailed her hands at the tourist, almost shooing him down the stairs and out the door. Everyone else in the shop was so surprised to see the old woman lose her cool that they left quickly, too.

She closed her shop as soon as everyone left and did not open it again that day. The shop remained closed the next day and the next. The valley speculated on what the old woman would do. The children kept watch for a glimpse of her, but even the windows remained shut. On the fourth day of the incident, the tourist left the valley. The fifth day, she came to the sweetmeat shop herself. She bought Jalebis and had them with the first batch of breakfasters. She opened her shop too, with all the awnings and so many things in the display windows that one could hardly see the inside of the shop. The valley streamed into the shop; she was behind her counter again, and talking to the customers in her same wispy manner. The shop remained its usual self, only customers would sometimes find curtains, hand mirrors, and clothes with the tag ‘Not for Sale’ on them.

When one of the children asked her what happened with that tourist, she replied genially, “Why don’t you look around? There are so many wonderful things here.”