Deluge and after
All that I have been writing from some time in the past has been very personal self-consolation stuff. This one, to be precise, is as personal as it gets, and for that reason writing this, is as difficult as it gets. It is about the person I loved the most and what her loss signifies. My grandmother passed away in November last year. Here, I try and delve into the tiny form of words meeting the formlessness of my grief and to tiptoe around the cavities of my own knowing.
I always end up comparing my grief to others’ and thus I would abscond confronting it. I would compare it to my father’s, my mother’s. What is my “puny” grief compared to the “real” grief of others? I know it is terribly ill-founded to think like that. The irrational heart of grief warring with the omnipresent pressure to conceal it, to move beyond it and once more conform to convention. I realise that the answer or atleast an alternate way is in seeking the freedom to argue, grapple, and grow with the grief you’re experiencing. It is your personal possession which has to be dealt with honesty and not disregard. Grief is one of the hardest things to put words to. And there are certain kinds of pain that do not get easier, but perhaps do get more familiar. Perhaps after holding grief for long enough, you recognize the way it sits in your body at a certain time of the day. Perhaps it does not surprise you in the way it might have at first. There is a small comfort which starts to build in the familiarity of grief, even though the loss itself never goes away.
I think of dadi a lot. It gives me pangs in my chest. Then there are times when I think of her and end up smiling recalling her idiosyncrasies, which she had in abundance. This makes me think if this is how we respond to losing people close to us? Feeling the sorrow for the void which takes their place, then indiscreetly smiling at the good memories, and then feeling sorrow again due to the knowledge that these good memories would not get a chance to repeat themselves ever again.
Dadi was 86 years old. I am 23 at present. When I look back, I realise how minute a part I was of her life. This old lady who had been shrinking in her size with a slump in her spine was an ocean of experiences and the ebbs and flows of life. I don’t know if I knew her well. As I try hard to remember, I think I knew the last 5-6 years of her life intricately well. To an extent that I could even preempt her words. Before that I vaguely remember her. I have sporadic recallings but it is difficult to form a complete picture out of them. She changed a lot. Her ordeal with Parkinson’s and the high number of medicines her body ingested daily brought out significant changes in her both physically and psychologically. It was gradual and thus it gets hard to point out.
She had a grace about her but more than that, she had a ferocity in her beauty. She spoke what she had to, demanded what she wanted, held a pride in her poise, and behaved without a fear of judgement. Physically she had become diminutive but she had an air and persona around her and made sure she became the centre of attraction at all times and places. Her smile and her eyes were my most cherished aspects of her.
She had a vigour for life which often confused me. Her permeability for wonder was infectious. Things would enter her vision as couriers of bewilderment. Boisterous and wide-eyed, she would feel elated to know the fact that her hair had started blackening again. She revelled in the company of people, demanding all the attention when conveying her part of the dialogue and then unapologetically turning her ears the other way when the other person would get her chance to speak. She would call her daughters, tell them her side of the story and then put the phone down before they started speaking. She would say “mu rakhu ab, maari saans chad rhi hai” (I am keeping the phone down now, I need to catch my breath). She would call women (younger to her by atleast 20 years) who displeased her “dokri”, meaning an old woman in not a very polite sense of saying.
In her later years, she was akin to a toddler in her disposition and dependency. I have often called her chota bacha. When I would tell her not to behave childishly, she would say “budha or balak ek jasan howe” (old people and children are similar). She would go to the kitchen and secretly bring a mango or sweets and hide them under the cushion to eat when no one would be watching even though she had had her fill of them earlier in the day. She would act in a stubborn manner when she was resisted to act as per her whims.
Her sense of humour excited me a lot as well. When I would get up late, she’d sarcastically say good morning (in her Mewari accent) and then break into a chuckle. Often when she couldn’t cut a fruit because the knife had gone blunt, she’d say “ye chaku to thare kakaji ki dai ko” (this knife is as old and as useless as some old uncle of yours). She would imitate the way she saw Tamilians eating rice by using their hands filled upto their wrists on her train journey to Rameshwaram and then would start laughing at the silliness of their style of eating.
She required a 24/7 watch. I would call it dadi-sitting; for the times when I had to keep an eye on her in the absence of my parents. She always knew what she had to do when no one was watching her. Being someone who was always occupied in managing the house, elderly life did not come easy for her. Her eyes would always find unclean spots or bed sheets untucked, plants unwatered or the sink/wash-area unclean. The problem was that now her body did not support her, which she being her, would never accept. She always managed to fall down while walking or standing for long. I don’t think there is spot in the house where she hadn’t managed to do so. Mostly she would go unscathed but there were instances when she broke a bone, bleeded due to a cut somewhere, or got bruises on her head. Funnily, she never accepted her own fault in falling and hurting herself. She would say she didn’t fall and only sat down when found on the floor. I would tell her if she is enjoying it so much then she better keep sitting there.
I would often ask her about her childhood or the time before I was born. This would be about her growing up years, her village, or relatives. Once provided with a trigger, she would relentlessly talk about something or the other with great passion. For me, the stories were not as important as seeing her reminiscing about these things with immense joy. Her expressions, the glimmer in the eyes, the frequent chuckles, were all so endearing to just sit beside and be a part of.
She would tell me she had a cow with the name Parvati. She would tell me that she would never step into the village pond with other children because she was afraid of water. She would tell me how she was very good at maths before she was taken out of the school after class 5 to get married. She would tell me that they had just started learning the English alphabet and that now she knows the alphabets independently but couldn’t make out the words. She would tell me about her saheliyan (friends) and that they all must be dead by now. She would tell me about how as daughters-in-law they would divide the chores and who did what amount of work and who evaded doing it.
She would often end up crying too when she remembered something painful (or beautiful?). I would quietly hold her hand or move my palm over her forehead; not to console her but in an attempt to connect with her in that moment. She had given birth to 8 children. Out of which 4 couldn’t see the light beyond a year. It is not for me to comprehend what that does to a mother. Even so, the death of tauji (my father’s elder brother) in 2003 had the most profound impact on her psychologically. We tend to intellectualise loss and handle it through the philosophical consolation (as Tagore demonstrates in ‘The Postmaster’) of its inevitability, but what for a mother seeing the suffering and death of her child. Should we expect a pragmatic answer from her? Without an experiential referent, can we even empathise?
We shared so many quirky traditions that feel lost to me now. Touching her feet first thing in the morning and giving her a peck on the cheek before going to bed made the bookends to my day. Somedays, I would come to her room late at night and she would ask me to give her an amla candy from the side desk of her bed. It would keep her mouth and throat moist for the night. We would eat fruits together, I would give her one piece/slice and then eat one myself. I would tease and mimic her when her jaw almost touched her nose while eating because of the absence of teeth. When she would be feeling well, we would go for a drive to have ice-cream or juice. She would chide me for driving through the jungle (trees) and not taking her to the city and the market, the sight and sound of which she cherished heartily.
One summer, my mother had gone to my Nani’s place. Dadi had to move to my bhua’s house. I used to go and visit her every alternate day. The smile I was welcomed with, when she used to see me, I cannot convey in words. The generosity of it could never be forgotten. The feeling that someone was looking forward to seeing you and cherished your sight so much was felt there and then with thunderous waves inside me. With dadi was the only time for me that I was so expressive and explicit about my affection for someone (by buzzing around her all the time, caressing her, sleeping with my head in her her lap). She would mostly be indifferent, chiding me away for disturbing her while she counted and arranged her sarees and bangles. But then, there were these moments when she would smile at me after I met her after sometime, or tell me “bhaya, aaj boliyon koni mara hu” (you did not speak to me today) when I would be busy and not speak to her for few hours or when she would almost sprint to the door with her walker and moist eyes when I would be leaving for college or some other city. These moments – their innocence and purity, their wholesomeness – have opened depths in me which I love to dive into from time to time. Is there anything in life which comes close to these moments? I don’t know and I don’t care.
I can speak Mewari to the T. I learned it only by conversing with her. I have ingrained it to an extent that it often becomes my inner self-conversational language. I call it my grandmother’s tongue. However, I cannot talk in Mewari to anyone else. I haven’t ever in the past. It was always only for talking with her. I often find myself recreating what we used to talk. Saying my part and then trying to recall and put in words her side of it. Most of our conversations were the same redundant things; I would annoy her by asking silly questions and she would get irritated and reprimand me by saying “thane to faltu ki baatan hi aawe, kadi aachi baat to bol mat” (you only talk hogwash, never speak any sense).
There were times when her voice would go very feeble. My mother would call on me to understand what dadi would be trying to say. I got it correct 9/10 times. It was more because I would understand her body language and her half-spoken words very well. She had gone quiet in her last days. More because she couldn’t muster the strength to add sound to the movement of her lips. Her gestures too were mostly left undeciphered. My 9/10 mark slipped to zero. I tried to read her eyes but could only see an eerily calmness. I could never forget her eyes during those days. They were the most beautiful I have ever seen them but they also disconcerted me. The curiosity-filled-glimmer was replaced by a restful tranquility. My dadi, the strong-willed fighter, who even at the heights of sickness when asked “aap kadi theek we riya?” (when are you getting well?) would reply with “kaale we jau” (by tomorrow at the most) was now for the first time through her eyes displaying an acceptance of sorts.
These last days with her – helping my mother in nursing her – have, in my opinion, brought me closer to my human side. I think I now have a slight idea of why caring and serving for beings outside of ourselves is considered as closest to the idea of being human.
Last two months have been traumatic for me. I am feeling overtly existential and numb. I think it is possible the numbness we experience is a survival mechanism our heart has employed in order to get through this exceptionally difficult time. But on the other side of all this loss, the numbness will be less useful. It must be about being able to let it go when it no longer protects you. There are these lines which I come to quite often - “I want to learn to make something holy, then walk away – Holy the making, holy the letting go”
I see my relationship with my dadi and her presence in my life as a very fortunate series of events that took place in the preliminary part of my life. I feel extremely grateful for the space and love which she had provided me with to be myself in the truest sense. I feel more depth within me because of her. I feel emotionally closer to myself. I feel a fragility which I do not seek an escape from but want to explore more. And thus, if I had to define the word ‘holy’, then this (experience) was it.
There is this sequence which keeps playing in my head in which I am traversing amid a crowd where not a face is known to me. I am anxious and I am sweating. My heartbeat is rising and I am on the verge of falling apart. The unmooring sense of a freefall is taking over. Just then, a voice I recognise echoes through the place. There she is sitting on a chair, calling out to me: Aey bhaya! With that sound in my ears, everything goes back to normalcy. In the midst of this cacophony and the flashes of people going in all directions, I go towards her and sit down besides her on the floor. Everything else disappears. It’s only the two of us there. She is sitting in her usual pose; one arm on her stomach and the other’s elbow pointing out. I am no more anxious, nor am I sweating. There we are and I feel like I’ve come home. I have been taken back into my sanctuary.