“Yes Daddy…” I answered my phone. I was clearing my kitchen after a sumptuous Sunday lunch. Daddy uttered just a few words and the call got disconnected. I am not sure of how and why the call got disconnected.
***
I used to always tease her …and none of the times she failed to blush when I teased her saying that she looked like Nutan –the Indian film actress from yesteryears. That blush - stolen from an adolescent charm followed by, “Chal re ladki…” resonates within me.
Milk white tresses tied into a frail bun - the size of a tennis ball - that stuck comfortably at the nape of her neck...salty-peppery permanent scowl that hung from the forehead over once sparkling, but now, dulled, grey eyes which seemed to have surrendered the vigor, the compassion or the sheer joy of being alive on earth. Her nose was very sharp - gleaming with a gold nose-pin and her lips were slightly turned down. The cheeks on her oblong face were sagging and there were deep lines etched all over her face.
If I were to illustrate the look on her face just in one word…it would oscillate somewhere between contumacious and melancholic depending upon if she were awake or asleep. Her entire frame was aged and wrinkled owing to the years of struggle she had labored. The wrinkles were so entrenched in her skin as if they just belonged there…as if hiding a secret… as if sorrow – evenly divided, packed in small packages was ensconced under them.
Comfortable Dormant Sorrow.
Wrinkle Wrapped Warm Sorrow.
A sorrow that once had been awake – doing its job. A sorrow that now is tired and aged and asleep in its permanent house – under the wrinkles of my Grandmother’s arm.
Jaanki Devi – my grandmother was born more than eighty years back in Sambalpur, Orissa. Within a few years of her marriage, my grandfather caught a pernicious sickness and was bed-ridden for as long he managed to live.
Their fate was designed by destiny, times by adversities.
With the little moue and the trembling squint she used to make while reading, I am certain that she had never studied beyond ‘just about being able to read’ levels. Since any other job was beyond a possibility, to support her unwell husband and two daughters, 27 years old Jaanki Devi started running a small departmental store. The store did just as it was destined to do – help them meet ends. She managed the store end-to-end all by herself.
She got both her daughter sent to school – the elder studied till 8th standard only – reason being a handsome suitor came along and the younger one (my mother), managed to finish 12th from a Convent school. Years passed by and with great difficulty she managed to save money to get both her daughters married. She got her elder daughter – my aunt – married to a plump business man. And, my mother, to a government serviceman. After she got her daughters married, her brother’s untimely demise brought responsibilities of his kids. Just when she thought that the loss of her brother had sunk-in, her husband – my grandfather decided to leave this world, depriving her of whatever meager support he had extended her – in the form of him just being alive.
Shockingly, granny didn’t shed a tear when grandfather passed away. She mourned. She did. Decided to wear her forehead bare, stripped her wrists of bangles and abandoned colors of her wardrobe and embraced black and white.
I saw her not cry. I saw her carry out her daily routine as if little had changed.
After long deliberation, one day I asked her, “Nana passed away…Are you not sad, Nani…”?
She touched my cheeks with her dry, rough hands and said, “Crying is not my idea of grief.”
The sorrow under her wrinkles conspired once again and this time, it was her elder son-in-law, lost to a cardiac arrest.
When the elder daughter – my aunt - came wailing, she didn’t shed a tear. Though, it was visible that a part of her had died with the news, she was unflappable.
“Maa, What I am going to do”? Sobbed my aunt.
“What do you mean? You are going to live! Like I did! Now, I don’t mean survive. I mean LIVE!” Nani said enduringly.
“You will take care of your house, your children, your grandchildren. You will make sure you do everything for them that he would have done. That’s how you keep him alive – for them, for yourself too. Besides, I am here for you.” She said.
Nani’s idea of grief was a little atypical. She didn’t believe in sitting over it and giving it all the attention. She believed that grief should be ‘ignored’.
“You must turn to doing your thing” She would say. “Grief is like a beggar on your doorstep. It brays. Asks to you care, demands that it is heard out and hopes you give into it. But, if you don’t do any of that, it goes away.”
So, Nani, after many grief’s let loose on her, would turn to ‘doing her thing’. She devoted her time and self to family. She nurtured and raised kids. By the times kids were raised, they were ready to be married…soon after they were married, babies were born. One after the other, responsibilities kept coming to her like waves at the sea shore. They go back for sure…but only with a promise that they will return. She spent most of her life fulfilling responsibilities – responsibilities which originally weren’t hers, responsibilities that she felt were hers.
My grandmother was born with a creative streak. In her early years, after her cleaning, cooking, sending daughters to school was over, sitting in her departmental store, she mastered and later, imparted, teachings on sewing, fabric art, embroidery, crocheting, knitting and painting. She also tried her hand on gardening and wood carving. She did it all, with the only possible exception of ‘living’. She often mentioned, which I understand only now, that she had been, for years, slowly and gently getting consumed by her dreadful destiny.
For her, the journey of life had been a starkly straight naked road. No bends. No turns. No detours. It was a road which was windswept…no trees under which she could lie down and rest awhile…no gardens, the beauty of which she could stop and adore…no water wells, from where she could drink and quench her thirst…no birds encircling overhead, chirping of which she could lend her ears to. A bare road leading her to the inevitable. At any given point in time from where she stood, the end of the road was visible. She knew, what lay ahead. She was afraid…afraid that she didn’t have the disguised gift of the fear of ‘not knowing’. And THAT consumed her!
She had been unwell for a while. Doctors said that there was nothing wrong and advised her to eat. She had stopped eating in the last 8 days. When forced, she would manage to croak, “I just can’t eat…”
I had seen her last about 11 months back during my two day stay there, which was after 10 years of my previous visit. Those two days went like blink and gone! There was so much to catch up on with everyone. At the end of two days, when I was leaving, she hugged me and said, “Take care of yourself…”
As a child in summer vacations, we would visit Nani’s house and would spend an entire month. Those 30 days meant – unlimited supply of ripe Mangoes, stealing more Mangoes in hot afternoons, sneaking into the departmental store and going back with pockets full of stolen candies. Evenings meant going to the Bazaar and having Gol-gappe while shopping. At the end of the vacation, she would buy us new clothes and accessories and just about every glittering thing in the store that me, my siblings and my cousins laid eyes on. However, THIS time, there was nothing. “…I don’t have anything for you...” she continued. I squeezed her lightly while embracing her and replied, “I don’t want anything Nani…” We exchanged smiles and I left.
During those 10 years, I would call her only twice a year – Diwali and Holi. I started calling more frequently to speak to her only when she could hardly speak.
That Sunday, 17th July 2011, I had called her and attempted to speak to her at 12:30 in the afternoon. My aunt said that she waved her hand in a ‘no’ saying she couldn’t speak. At 2:30, the same afternoon with her last breath she went ahead to embrace the other part of her which had been waiting at the end of the starkly straight naked road. As long parted soul mates, they melted into each other and passed into eternity forever.
She left no legacy for us. What she left behind are her memories – a reminder of impervious integrity in character. A character that had the infinite tenderness of (grand) motherhood and the heedless will to vanquish hardships. What an honor it is to be her grandchild!
The phone, I was told later, had got disconnected because I had dropped it while I collapsed on the kitchen floor when daddy informed that my dear Nani was no more. “End of her struggle” I thought to myself. But such solace won’t work at the time of such a loss. Her voice, for years, had been the only available commodity for me…that too now was taken away from me.
I wept but never got tired of re-running in my mind the time spent with her. The way she blushed when I teased her, the way her skin felt (with sorrow underneath, hiding deep secrets), the way she smelled, and her nose-pin that sparkled each time she moved…nothing anymore would be available. I hadn’t met her for 10 long years, and when I did, for those two brief days – most of my time was spent with everyone else but her. Despite that, her demise saddened me to a degree I thought I was incapable of. I did a quick recap of my life only to understand that the last time I had felt like this was never.
I was lost in her memories; when a sudden, urgent yearning to touch her appeared in my mind. “Impossible” mumbled my mind and I dug my face into the pillow and wept silently. And, like a shock, a thought appeared in my mind – to touch, to feel, to embrace something she had touched…I ran out of my bed, opened my wardrobe and began searching recklessly, for something that had been given by her – a saree…an earring…a jewellery box…But, I found none. “There has to be something….”, said my mind and continued my insane search until I grew tired of searching. I turned to my dressing table with a dying hope to find something.
I opened the drawer; I found nail paints…lotions…cosmetics…Bindis...but nothing that she had given me. This search too disappointed me…I didn’t find anything that had been given by her…nothing at all that had been touched by her which could put me at ease. Disappointed I was just leaving my dressing table that something caught my attention…I stopped suddenly…and stared myself into the mirror.
I continued to stare myself into the mirror when it struck to me. Pins and needles began running through my spine and for that fragile moment, my body froze. Liquefied ache spread and filled each possible creak and crevice under my skin. An overwhelming grief knotted my stomach and the lump in my throat began to choke me. At that very moment, fresh pain began cracking through my tender and puffy eyes in the form boiling tears. I embraced myself tight and allowed tears to soak me when it struck to me that the only thing that I had, touched by her - was me!
Jaanki Devi – My Lovely Grandmother - She was her own life; She became her own death too.
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