With the shingara and roshogolla she would call for when I visited her
I have not written about my grandmother since she passed away. This may be because I wrote so much about her when she was alive. Many of you were invested in her stories and said she reminded you of your grandmothers.
I do remember her at odd moments. When I wake up after my afternoon nap and think of calling her, as I often would, only to realise that I can’t. Or when I see the bougainvillaea tree downstairs in flower. I remember a hot summer afternoon when I visited her and saw bougainvillaea flowers for the first time. White, purple, orange, red. The trees she had planted had begun to flower. Grief hits you when you least expect it. As it did the morning we were to leave Kolkata for home after her funeral. I would always visit her on the day I would leave Kolkata. Travelling to her place and then to the airport was not the most convenient route, but then I would be in the city to visit her, after all. I realised that I would not make this detour again and finally broke down. Luckily, K was around. I do not know when I will go back to Kolkata. I do not see any reason to.
Customary selfie before I left for the airport
I feel grateful to have been the one to perform her final rites. It was closure, in a sense.
K and I met my youngest cousin in London a few days ago. He is the youngest grandchild in the family, and I am the eldest. My grandma was 47 when I was born and 71 when he was, give or take a year. Maths is not my forte.
We were the first family members that my cousin met in person after Didu passed away. He told me he felt disconnected and alone after receiving the news of her passing. He regretted that he could not attend her funeral.
I told him that Didu would understand. She kept her children’s and grandchildren’s interests in mind from the moment her eldest daughter moved abroad after marriage. All her grandkids stayed outside the city for their education and careers. She took joy in our achievements rather than resenting our absence.
With my mom
I reminded him that she had moved out of her home after marriage. She left suburban Dhaka and a comfortable life for Allahabad first, and then for Delhi, eking out a new life with her husband. Everything had changed for her. She was living in cities at the other end of the country. There were no reels or YouTube videos to give her a sense of what to expect. She was surrounded by people who spoke a language she did not understand. She was living in a nuclear family after being part of a joint family. She had no one to fall back on. The buck stopped with her. She had four children to raise with limited means and a husband to look after.
She was unfazed when some of her children and grandchildren married or entered into relationships with partners from other communities and religions. She welcomed them as her own. It is up to us to inherit her (and our grandfathers’) progressive values, I told my cousin.
With K, seeing pictures of my niece
I told him that she loved him and was proud that he taught at a college in London, just as she loved the rest of us. I told him how she would speak to me about all her grandchildren, expressing concern about our trials and tribulations and joy at our achievements. She would speak fondly of her great-grandchildren… and she would count our cats amongst them. My grandfather had passed away earlier and was equally fond of all his grandchildren. They had played a big role in looking after my brother and me when we were growing up, and my cousins too.
It is their love for us that binds us all together, I told my cousin. That he should never feel alone or disconnected.
And that is my post on my grandmother.
