It’s been two weeks since my grandmother passed away now,
and I’m sitting writing this in the airport.
I learnt about it, when my mother messaged me over Whatsapp, as I was
pulling into the parking lot at work. The first thing I tried to do was to call
up my parents. My dad was too choked up to talk. And then I cried, briefly,
quickly; I had a call I had set up for 9:30 AM that it was too late to cancel.
I pulled myself together and took it. I kept my voice low, and I don’t think
anyone on the call realized. And then, I sat at my desk, trying to cry quietly,
until my manager came and stopped shocked. I cried to her, and then I got back
to work, and every hour, every so often, I would find tears rising to my eyes
again and again. But the body and mind are resilient, and there’s nothing like
burying yourself in work for getting over grief, and the first time I laughed
after the news, at a joke that someone told at work, I was shocked; the sound
seemed too loud to my ears. I’ve laughed many times since then, with my
friends, with my cousins, but sometimes, as I think of her, when someone talks
about her, as I write this now, my throat tightens up, and my eyes grow hot.
I guess I didn’t actually believe that she would die so
soon. It wasn’t that I thought she was particularly strong – she was delicate
and fragile, the volume of her seemed to be made more of the sari she was
wearing than flesh and blood. But I guess I thought she wouldn’t die simply
because she was mine- my grandmother, and surely, she couldn’t be taken away so
quickly, before I saw her one more time, before I was ready to let go. But the
truth is, I was never going to be ready to say good-bye. But her death has made
the pillars of my world seem a little more brittle, and I look my remaining grandparents
with just a little fear, and hold on just a little tighter than I would have a
year ago. The distance between the US
and India, bridged so easily by flights, phones and email, suddenly seemed
interminable.
She was, as I said, a small person. She lived simply. Her
affection was shown in small gestures, nothing effusive; the small box of paal
khoa pressed into my hand as I was
leaving; coming home to freshly made fried diamond pakodams.
When I was young, she lived in my uncle’s house. I visited
weekly, on Saturday, and she would attempt to teach me the Veena. I was an
indifferent student, but she tried her best. She lived in our house in first in
Tiruvanmiyur and then, in Alwarpet for many years, and the image of her every
morning, playing the Veena in the swami room, humming along, even as her
fingers grew stiff, Nuggy watching from the doorway (he wasn’t allowed to
enter), sticks with me.
She was very fond of Nuggy, of all my uncle’s dogs, and of
animals in general. She’d feed the squirrels and the birds with the leftovers
every day. She was often the one to feed Nuggy too, tearing up the chappatti’s
into small bits, rolling the rice into little balls, because he was such a
spoilt brat of a dog. And if he rebelled, she’d call one of us, to coax him
into eating.
When my sister was young, I remember her reading the Narnia
books out to her. It didn’t occur to me until many years later, that she too
might like reading for its own sake (just like I did), when I saw her reading
Jane Austen. Generations, its seems, are not really that far apart.
She had other hobbies as well, crochet, cross-stitch. I
don’t know if anything remains in the house of any of the pieces that she did.
Most of my life, she
was active, healthy. She would walk (and sometimes I would go with her, from
our house to the bus stand. She’d walk from my uncle’s house to her sister’s
place. It was only when she visited me in the US, some years ago, that I
realized that age had slowly caught up with her.
We’d gone to Washington D.C. for July 4th, and
walked down to the park to watch the fireworks. She’d leaned on my arm all the
way there and back, and for the first time, I realized that age was catching up
to her. I wish I’d been a better host that time. I remember not being able to
take much time off, searching frantically for some misplaced souvenir, being
short and snappish, when we came back from Niagara. The trinket didn’t really
matter at all. I wish I’d realized that then.
She and her sister were very close, all the way through to
the end. When I was young, I would visit Anamma’s house every weekend; see her
and maama; they would reminisce for a while before Appa came. I would pluck
pink flowers from the vine in the garden. Kumar Maama would give me stamps.
Anamma would give me kalkand when we left. When Anamma grew old, when she could
barely recognize anyone else, she always still knew her sister.
Going back for the ceremonies, there is a small absence (she
was not a large person), though of course, thoughts of her are more present
than ever before. Still, it is jarring as I consciously realize, that I will
never again ask where she is (when I go to see her), how she is (over the
phone). There is really nothing that I would have said that needed to be said,
if I saw her again. Still, I wish I had seen her one more time, spoken to her
once more. But once more would never be enough. It will have to be enough.
