My Grandma by Mahua Sen

My childhood memories swim back to those beautiful days when the sun would peep through the half-open window of my room (konar ghar – the corner room). It’s a bungalow with 10 odd rooms, each having a different name befitting their location and use! And often, the first sight of my mornings would be of my grandma doing a round of all the rooms with incense sticks and a diya, worshiping the Gods and forefathers, chanting knotted mantras, which a baby me would barely understand! Sometimes if I was lucky enough to wake up an hour before my normal waking time, I would tag along with my grandpa to pick flowers from our garden. My granny was progressive and tolerant, yet with a cogent personality! She carried herself with a panache I’ve narrowly seen in any other woman of her time! And the umpteen number of stories that she would narrate to me, from fairy tales to Indian mythology, real life experiences to her “made-up” stories tucked with a moral, helped me to be “Me” today! Yes! Words are not enough to pen-down what my granny meant to me! The little and big memories are hovering around my mind’s eye today, as it’s been one long year of her heavenly departure. The fondest of my childhood memories are entwined with her. How she would buy us popsicles secretly, lest our mothers would scold us for the fear of catching a cold. How she would engage us in constructive little things like making garlands out of freshly plucked flowers, stitching dresses for dolls (out of spare fabrics), weaving sweater with the help of dried coconut-leaf sticks, teaching us how to write Bangla letters (despite of living out of Bengal), teaching us euphonious Rabindra Sangeet, giving us the responsibility to bedeck the house with Alpona (rangoli) on special occasions. We were barely 6-7 years old then! And those little things made us what we are today! 

Today when I sit on the porch of my ancestral home, sipping a cup of hot ginger tea, I reminisce each and every memorable moments from my childhood. I browse through the childhood memory book, turning each page with tenderness. 1And I can almost smell the memories as they engulf me in its might. 

Last summer, when I visited my ancestral home, I was disheartened to see my granny’s deteriorating health and had vowed to come back during winter the same year. 

As promised to self, I headed back home to spend some more time with my 90 year old granny. One of the best decisions I’ve taken till date! That particular visit gifted me few more days to spend with my grandma. I had completely dedicated those 8 days to her. I would sit beside her, crooning the songs that she had taught me, the songs she would always ask me to sing, but this time I wasn’t sure if she was listening, there was no expression, there was no thrill in her eyes. She seemed unmoved by events around her. I applied her favourite cream on her wrinkled hands and face, reminiscing how she had spent hundreds of days applying ubtan to me and my siblings, how I miss her 1-minute quick fix for everyday problems. Teardrops rolled down my cheeks and I prismed more childhood memories!

Taking a spoon of sliced fruit, I tried to feed her. She stayed still, expressionless. After taking 4-5 pieces of mixed fruit she would wave her hand, an indication for me to remove the bowl out of her sight. Even making gestures was painful for her limbs – I felt so. The thought made me utterly melancholic.

Fruit reminds me of the summer holidays. The sought after time of the year when we would visit home. We had a huge orchard, which had a variety of mango trees with their different names and taste, and time of ripening. My granny would know each tree by heart as if they belong to our clan, each having a particular name. As a child I would sit beside her under a mango tree during my summer customary visits and would plead her if I could eat few bites of the unripe mango. To which, she would always nod and ask me not to tell people at home, lest they scold me and rebuke her for being my partner in crime!

A cascade of memories gushes out of my memory chamber blurring my vision with tears as I write this.

A month after I came back, I got the terrible news of her demise….