My dear grandmother is no more. I knew when it happened we would all feel very sad and it was inevitable someday but yet because it has happened so soon it is making me feel worse. I may take no real solace in the fact that I met her in October because that was hardly a meeting. In fact my last few meetings have been on similar lines owing to the fact that I'm always in short supply of time when I visit my native place and especially my maternal grandmother because I have to dedicate more time to my paternal grandmother's place which, to be frank, I have no interest in visiting. So I hardly remember what I said to her but I do remember that she wanted my daughter to be a big doctor just like one of the ladies from Karki who had made it big abroad. She was irritated that she could not find the newspaper to show that lady to me but she was mighty impressed with her.
That was my grandmother always. She was so active and alive to what was happening around her, in the world. She came from an educated family, all her four brothers very well read and doting on her. As far as I was concerned, I think I always loved her dearly, intuitively, even before I really understood anything. I lost my grandfather when I was five and the loss was felt more in the bitter tears that I saw my mother and aunts shedding. So it was my grandmother for us after that, like a mother hen in that big house which would be so full during two months of summer holidays. My family, sans my father who always managed to keep himself busy in holidays, would be one of the first ones to reach our native place though my paternal house was invariably the first destination. My mother was very clear about it and I spent my time there mostly with my father's cousin sister's family and always facing my grandmother's ire for it. But there was nothing to do for me in my father's place; there were no books, no magazines, nobody to play with and nobody to talk to. All my grandmother wanted to do was to oil and comb my hair and my grandfather, well, though I have seen him in his very good and really bad moods, was hardly at home. Compared to this, my aunt's place just below our own was heaven; it had books and though I laugh at them now, my idle mind devoured all those cheesy criminal stories and pathetic melodramatic plays that used to be stacked up in that house. Of course there were better options too; all of them played chess very well and I learnt my chess just by watching them play. And my uncle was a very good storyteller and could make us laugh to no end with those silly stories and he was very patient with us too. So when my grandmother's angry call pierced my happiness, I would sulkingly run to curse my food and again run off in the evenings to another happy destination - my mother's friend's place. More about it some other time.
Now, coming back to my maternal grandmother - so it was after spending some 2 weeks of this life that my mother would permit me and later my sister to go to her place, when one of my aunts/uncles/cousins came to fetch us. I was always very glad to see them and was impatient to leave but my joy was mostly shortlived, because I could not bear to spend the nights without my mother. It sounds very childish now, but even till my 9th standard, I remember crying bitterly in the nights thinking of my mother who looked so near yet so far(it was 8 kms distance between the two places) and my sister and I alternately would cry and console each other. My older cousins tried hard to help, Manjanna tried to get me out of it by making royal fun of me but it was no use and once my finally exasperated grandmother asked me why the hell I came there at all. I think that shut me up for that season.
My grandmother was not the kind who was mushy in her love for children. I don't remember her ever cuddling me, hugging me or calling me with any of those sweet names. But she was that way with all her 18 grandchildren and I didn't mind it at all. I do remember the occasions she was upset with me - she rarely had the time but once when she combed my hair, she got angry with my tantrums and gave it up never to do it again and once more she was really angry with me for insulting Goddess Lakshmi by cutting my nails in the evening. But I always knew she loved us, even when she called me plainly, 'Tangi', as was the practice. She was busy in those days, cooking this or that for the clan and the visitors but she always asked us about our studies and about the people in our place she knew. There was general freedom for the children which we did not misuse as such and there was so much to do. Children were entrusted with so much of work like seeing the cows off for grazing, overseeing the calves, calling one or the other uncle from the coconut plantation, bringing something from the nearby shop, posting letters, guarding the huge load of coconuts when they were cut and dried, picking arecanuts, being proxies in some mandatory ceremony in the neighbours' place and so on. We always felt proud in discharging these duties and we were pampered with delicious mangoes after we returned.
I could go on and on like this because some of the best memories of my life are built around my grandmother's place of which she was the backbone. We were financially struggling in those days and the 20 Rupees she used to give me meant a lot to me. When I joined college, she was worried because she had read about ragging in the newspapers. Engineering gave me offseason holidays so for the first time I spent time with her when nobody else was around and helped her in the only Ganesha Chaturthi I attended there. She was eager to know about college life, was irritated because her vision had slightly deteriorated so she could not read easily. My marriage must have given her pain but she never spoke to me about it. I never felt her love change because of that and it meant a lot to me.
I think the best thing about my grandmother was that she never forced her views/herself on anybody. Her children adored her and she had a cordial relationship with all her daughters-in-law and a very close alliance with the daughter-in-law she stayed with. I've never heard her quarrel or talk cheaply about anyone. Even when she criticized someone, she was always smiling as if to say, life is like that. She saw the world change and took everything in her stride, even when all her brothers, a loving son and a dear granddaughter passed away. I think the biggest blow to her must have been when her youngest son broke his back and I had thought he would die in front of her very eyes and that would kill her. But she didn't let that happen and passed away quietly. I wish there were more like her. I wish I could be like her.
