One of the topics that I have quiet circumvented till now is the topic of my Grandmother. Not because my heart is made of steel but because of the immense pain it brings with it, even though I take refuge in the happiness and comfortness it provides. My grandmother was born in the year 1951 in the magnificent port city of Vishakhapatnam. She was what the nobles and you well educated men and woman would call an illiterate. Having no primary or secondary training in the field of education but having successfully mastered each and every element in the field of values, culture, tradition and all the other things that the generations to come find irksome, boring and outdated she was married to my Grandfather in the year 1969, where I do not recall. My grandparents had successfully brought forth into the world 5 kids. The youngest of the descendants is my mother and the other four were boys. My grandmother was a staunch devotee of all the Gods and also completely sublimed herself in the care of her in-laws, this was expected and accepted of an Indian wife at that time, such were the values of this strange land. Now I say the phrase about gods because from my interactions with the people close to her she never stuck to one god but kept on revolving as she wanted to bear no discrimination among the
gods, pardon me if you find my sense of humor somewhat atheistic, I can assure you in any way possible that it is not in the sense which you presumed. Anyways as we move forward, the children grew up and slowly one by one all the birds flew away from the nest and bought new little chicks back to the nest, and the eldest of this new chick is yours truly(Here the chicks are grandchildren there are there are 5 of us). Now these are the bits and pieces of my grandmother that I have ascertained from various sources. Now let me voice some of my own experiences.
My Grandmother in my mind was a happy, caring, triumphant, protective and in a way a complete soul. One of my first memories of her is, her training me to brush my teeth(properly) and potty training me as a kid! Another experience I had was when she woke me up and made me throw a rupee coin in the Godavari Bridge so that the Goddess Lakshmi would shower me with riches, such were her beliefs. The best memory I have of my Grandmother was when she used to bribe me with a ball of chocolate for every letter and number I used to write much to dismay of my mother and her fears for cavities. Soon the time passed again and my sister was born, who had suddenly become the center of attention for my grandparents but my grandmother still showered the same amount of love on me. Such was the bond between me and my Grandmother. When I was around 5 years old and my
sister was an infant I was in the city of New York due to the nature of my Father’s work, which is of least significance in this context. I was attending school over there itself as education in the view of my parents should not be discontinued. I vividly remember the day, it was cold and dark in the morning the ever chirping birds was quiet, the roaring wind was now quiet as a mouse, as I was walking through the lanes and shops I felt as if I was walking by a ghost town. As I reached home, I was quite surprised to see my 4th Uncle who lived all the way in North Carolina to drop on us as it was a long drive putting immense strain on your body. Just as I reached home, my dad who was supposed to be in office came up to me, hugged me(which I felt quite strange) and said that we had to leave for India, even though as I was persistent enough to ask as to why we had to go back to the land of Snake Charmers, I did not receive an answer. Finally when I was aboard on the flight and had nothing to do, the news had been broken out to me like how a Lion waits to attack its prey in its most leisure movement. The only dissimilarity I found was that it was not 1 lion but a 1000 lions attacking me.... As we arrived at the residence where my grandmother was kept, I saw her kept in an ice box, where she stay still, eyes shut and motionless. The people around her i.e. my uncles, aunts and other relatives were quiet and my mother was crying. Now this was my first real experience with pain and death for I was a
young brat of about 5 years of age and had much to learn. My first reaction was that she was asleep and this whole plot was nothing more than an elaborate charade. But, despite my calling out to her she did not wake up. That is when my brattish mind knew that something was not right. I kept on persisting my mother to take her to the hospital. Tears started dropping down my cheeks as I did not know how to react with the pain and eventually I lost my consciousness. All I knew was that I had lost the protective and warmth love forever. I do not have knowledge of the events that happening later that day. But to till this date I get memories of me and my grandmother the happy ones and the sad ones. But as my age progressed I learnt to replace the sad ones with the even merrier memories and moved forward. Now as we proceed to the end. I sincerely apologize if I have hurt anyone’s feelings and if I have missed out anything. Please bear in my mind that this piece of information was extracted and drilled down from the memory embedded deep within my mind for I was very small and immature when this painful incident occurred.
Thank You.
