Kashiben Vallabhdas Vinchhi. That was the name
of my grandma who left this world on last 25th of August at the age
of 78. As I write this I remember all my childhood vacation days spent at
Jamnagar, at my grandma’s home with my three uncles. That was 25-30 years ago.
In our Indian households, a daughter’s son is
always a special member of entire extended family and, no wonder, is spoiled
accordingly. My three uncles were just like famous Uncle Ken of Ruskin Bond, eccentric,
unmarried and always hard up for money. Still they pampered me with whatever
they had. Sometimes they would take me with them to watch movies or showed me
around the city, bought me candies and famous ghugharas of Jamnagar and would
bring bicycle for me on hourly rent even though I didn’t know how to ride it.
Whining and pestering and pressing grandma for
daily pocket-money (char-anas or 25 paisa) or for some other things was a daily
routine. One thing i liked to do was to observe grandma performing her daily
chores. At that tender age, I loved to watch grandma taking out smoulding coals
with tongs from the burning earthen hearth after the cooking was over and
dropping them into a water container. I especially liked the sound of smoulding
coals when they dropped into the cold water.
Grandma enjoyed complete health during her
lifetime. However, mentally she was not that sharp. As a child, I have observed
that in her leisure time when there was nobody around except me, she would start
muttering, with all her facial and manual gestures, her grievances and
complaints to an imaginary group of sympathisers or her critics. I would
jokingly ask her, “Who are you talking to, grandma?” and she’d stop for a while
and would resume soon after.
There was a friar, an old, healthy Brahmin with
white beard clad in long white robe and dhoti and red topi who used to come
daily to grandma’s home at noon for the alms. Grandma would give him a bowlful
of wheat floor. I would never let her do that during the times I was there. I
liked this old friar very much. I liked to watch his gesture of surprise and
his exclamatory sentences with which he would welcome me on the very first day
of my arrival: “Oho! So Rajkotians have arrived!”
It was always fun being at grandma’s home. I
waited for the vacation in order to be there. Apart from grandma and dotting
uncles, there was one more person whose company I enjoyed: Anvar. The area
where my grandma lived was heavily populated with Muslim families. Anvar’s
family lived a few blocks away from grandma’s home. We became bosom friends
when we were just 7 or 8. We were always seen together, played all sorts of
games and talked about girls. He had a fair skin while I was wheatish. Once I
asked him what I should do in order to have a fair skin like him and he
suggested I should massage my face with goat’s milk. We chased goats together
in order to get the milk, and I religiously followed his suggestion for a long
time with no satisfactory result. I gave up the idea for good. Soon after 2002
riots, I happened to be at my grandma’s home. Once I was out with Anwar till
midnight and grandma and uncles grew worried for me. When I returned, they told
me, “You should not to loiter at late nights with Anvar. Who knows what will
happen?” I replied I was not worried as long as I was with Anvar. The bond that
bound us was too strong to be shaken by any riot on the name of any religion.
Once when I was in sixth standard, I was
taught how to make envelopes in the school. I not only prepared a makeshift
envelope, but also wrote a letter to my grandma and sent it to Jamnagar. That I
should put necessary stamps never crossed my mind at that time. I knew
grandma’s address by heart. When the mail reached there, the postman charged
the double amount to grandma which she happily paid considering that it was my
first mail. My uncles kept that letter for a long time and then it was lost. I
wish I had that letter.
As I came of age, the charm to visit grandma
home diminished. There were long intervals between our visits. Seven years ago,
my uncles and grandma came to Rajkot. As they didn’t have wherewithal to buy a
house of their own, they stayed with us.
Last two years were much painful for her.
Weakness had overcome her and now she muttered more than earlier. The doctors
said she was losing her memory. She couldn’t tell the day. When I asked her,
“Which day comes after Monday?” She couldn’t asnwer it correctly or she gave
any random day as an answer. In a few months, she lost much of her vocabulary.
She forgot the names of things. When she wanted to eat something, she couldn’t
name it. We had to take a few names, if one of them fitted her demand, she
would nod her head. She forgot people. However, she could remember the names of
the family members. Pointing her finger at me, mummy would ask grandma, “Who is
he?” “He is Hitesh.” pat would come the answer. We may forget entire world in
our last days, but there are few names that remain intact in our memory
storage.
In her last days, she remained restless
throughout the day. She complained of bedsore, her inability to move on her
own, not being able to take a bath and change clothes on her own. When I saw
mom spoon feeding her, I thought life is a circle and we have to finish it in
one lifetime. We end up where we started from: feeble and helpless.
When someone close to us dies, we remember the
good that they did to us, the bad they did to us, the good that we did to them
and the bad that we did to them. And we experience a strange mix of emotions of
sadness, regret as well as joy.
Every death teaches us something, open up an
unknown aspect of life broadening the horizon of our understanding of life and
death. Every death you encounter in your life, prepared you for your own death
and you learn the art of “dying gracefully”.
