A drinking woman

Lena is the only woman I know of in this village who drinks and gets drunk.

She lives in a nice little house with her brother and a sister-in-law who recently returned from Dubai or someplace. They seem like decent people. Lena herself is a sweet-faced young woman with a friendly smile and a mop of short unruly curls.

But often she gets very drunk.

Then you'll see her weaving barefoot down the road, but with a drunkard's care. She is always dressed in a long green satiny gown with short puffed sleeves. The gown flares out gracefully. It's all frills and flounces. On one shoulder is a satin bow.

She looks like some skinny, ragged creature out of Vogue for Urchins. Or like someone who got into a scuffle after a grand ball at a rich man's house. Or like some sad, jilted woman eternally condemned to traipse about in her wedding dress.

When the urge to drink is upon her, she will try and wheedle two rupees out of you. That is how much, I'm told, a glass of the stuff costs. Cheaper than tea.

She always tries to earn the money first.

She'll approach you with her sweet smile and offer a few cashew nuts fresh from a tree, or a flower, or a stray kitten, or a cutting from the croton in her patch of garden. The first time she offered me a flower I thought she was just being friendly.

Now I know better. If you don't give her the money, her sweet smile will vanish and she will glower at you, muttering dire curses in Konkani.

When she's drunk she'll still be muttering dire curses, only now her eyes will glaze over.

I wonder where she drinks. Sometimes I feel anxious for her. After all, she's the sole woman among drunken men. But when I see the two local drunks – the squint-eyed stout fellow who always greets me cheerily, and the skinny curly headed fellow - I think 'nah'. There's something so comic about each helping the other to walk straight. You can't imagine them doing her any harm. I hope so, at least.