Jayati

She looked like a freshly plucked Gardenia that belongs more amidst dark green leaves than skillets and scoops in a cramped kitchen. She spoke in a low clear voice that sounded like wind chimes on a day of light breeze. Her eyes were dark and smiling. Her lap was my favorite napping place.

She had told me that she loved ME the most on this earth, on a hot summer afternoon when I was sore about losing exclusive rights on her with the arrival of my baby sister. Today, twenty-five years later, I remember that tantrum-filled afternoon distinctly. She patiently fed me chicken stew and explained the absurdity of her ever loving anyone more than me.

Those days she took me out on walks, pointed out constellations from the roof of her house on clear starry nights and taught me how to make garlands from flowers we got from her garden. She also surrounded me with books that I chew, tore and looked through. Soon I developed a deep craving for them.

Later she introduced me to Robi Thakur, Bengali magazines from Kishor Mon to Desh, and a vast corpus of Bengali literature. She taught me to look people straight in the eye. She taught me to be truthful and forgiving and trusting, values I experimented with a lot (and still do). She believed in the fundamental goodness of people and hoped that someday, I might, too.

She was my friend, my confidante, my maternal grandmother. We were intellectual co-explorers. She was the most affectionate person I ever knew. Tipu (our big black dog : ), Sarbani (my sister) and I fought for her attention and her lap space all the time. She smelled faintly of turmeric and other spices, Basanta Malati (the brand of her moisturizer) and of the garden she tended to. She was a part of me, a part that you cannot imagine losing.

Yet I lost her eight years back, this very day. I wasn’t there in Calcutta where it happened. She was ill just for two days before that (which didn’t stop her from fulfilling her household duties of course). No one quite knew what went wrong with her. She was in her mid-sixties. The end had come through a cardiac failure. But what initiated it is still unclear.

But I know. She literally died of a broken heart.

Why, how, where constitute a long story and this is not the proper place for details. With her, a part of me consisting perhaps of goodness, love, innocence and compassion died as well.

I didn’t cry when I heard about her. I haven’t properly mourned her loss yet. The tears just come sometimes without warning, after all these years, so do the memories. I am still quite indignant. You don’t just leave someone you averred you love the most on earth like that. Like I didn’t matter.

I inherited her library and progressively, her handwriting. She loved seeing new places, meeting new people, cooking (marvelously) for everyone. One thing that she didn’t learn however was, how to assert herself.

I often feel she is with me whenever I see beauty. “Look didima!” I murmur under my breath. “Fireflies! And I never thought I’d see them here!” How she loves the new places I go to, the exotic dishes I order at restaurants, the new books I pick up. She taught me to enjoy the gift of existence without guilt or reserve. I sometimes hear her voice in my head, “Khub bhalo, bhai !”…

~ by feistyfeline on July 10, 2007.