The Women of My Life: My Maternal Grandmother

By the grace of God, I was blessed with a number of role models while I was growing up. These people were brave, kind and wise, and taught by example more than by instruction, and I point to them when I think to myself of all those who had a hand in shaping my identity. Most of these people are not alive today to see and reap the fruit of their creation, but they are fondly remembered, and their legacy will be kept alive and passed on to my children. 

One of the most important women of my life has been my maternal grandmother. The magnitude of her contribution to my life almost dissuades me from attempting to write about it at all, for fear that I might do her a disservice by being unable to capture it all. But, all things considered, it is better to take a poor aim, than take no aim at all.

My grandparents lived in the same city as the one in which I grew up, which meant that I saw them once or twice a week. My grandmother once told me that she was lucky to have this luxury, but in retrospect, I think I was the lucky one. To list some of her qualities, she was brave, strong, affectionate, agreeable, generous, patient and very nurturing. To have seen her embody these qualities in her everyday life left a mark on me. 

She had her own idiosyncrasies too. For instance, she liked to collect tiny glass bottles of homoeopathic pills. She loved to organise these on her bedside table. My grandfather often lost patience with this habit of hers, and would grumble about it. She nodded to everything he said, and then did what she wanted to anyway. This was quite funny - she bickered quite a bit with my grandfather on a plethora of little issues, but if anyone else dared to say anything to him that she construed as ‘disrespectful’, they would be sure to incur her wrath.

Another one of her eccentricities was her habit of carrying a safety pin affixed to the bangles she wore on her hands. She thought safety pins could hold the world together were it falling apart. Some other odd collections of hers were: strange smelling soaps, containers full of talcum powder, rubberbands, buttons, heirloom quilts, refrigerator magnets, and ink pens that didn't work any more. I came across these while ransacking her almirah, which was one of my favourite things to do as a child.

She was one of those women who poured her love out in the food she fed her family. She cooked all manner of delicacies, and it is to her that I credit my love for cooking. At mealtimes, she would be the last to sit down at the table, only after she had finished serving everyone else. And even then, to my great annoyance, half of her mind would be on who needs a second helping, rather than on eating some herself. When I was younger, I enjoyed her payesh (rice pudding), her pulav (flavoured rice) and her cholar dal (coconut spiced dal). When I grew older, I made notes of her recipes in my cell phone, and recreated them myself. I still have some of those notes in my phone today. And I still cook some of those impeccable dishes, and when my children ask me who taught me to cook macher jhol (fish curry), I’ll tell them stories of my grandmother too. My grandmother was also skilled at preparing chutneys and achaar (pickles) out of any vegetable or fruit you could name. She dried these in massive glass jars in her backyard during the scorching North Indian summers. Homemade pickles are becoming a thing of the past, sadly.

I remember when I was in the third grade, I managed to contract typhoid. For about a fortnight, my grandmother came over to my house every morning to watch me while my parents went to work. She gave me a sponge bath, fed me her famous fish and rice and let me watch cartoons for as long as I wanted. After that the 8-year-old me foolishly wished I fell sick more often.

Another of my favourite memories is that of a festival celebrated by Bengalis, called Jamai Sosthi, which honours the contribution of a family’s son-in-law. Every summer, on this day, my parents took me to my grandparents’ house. My grandmother cooked a variety of dishes, and my father was most uncomfortable with the generous helpings she insisted on heaping onto his plate. I was awed by her generosity at other occasions too - she would routinely give away some of her best saris, bedsheets or dabbas (containers) full of food to the maid or the gardener, and fought with my grandfather on his objections that her actions make them lazy in their work.

Needless to say, after my mother passed away, my grandmother was inconsolable. For more than three years, she wept everyday, stopped cooking, fell sick very often, and became consequently weaker. By a miracle, she did manage to recover slowly. This is when she told me that she draws all her courage from me now, and I am the only source of light and meaning for her. I was overwhelmed, and a little unnerved, by these words. For the first time, I noticed how small she looked. She had always been small and womanly, but she looked uncertain and timid for the first time in my entire life. Nevertheless, she (and also my grandfather) came to rely on me more from then on. She called me every other day, gave me advice about life, and taught me how to make chicken stew over the phone. Every time I went to my hometown, I stayed at her house. She told me stories about her mother (whom she revered very much), packed up food in containers I could take back with me, and gave me home remedies for everything under the sun (from how to get over a cold to what to apply to my hair to make it grow longer). All I did for her was update her phone’s operating system, clean the backyard once or twice, and change a tube light.

Even today, I look back on those days and draw strength from the fact that I was able to offer my grandmother a bit of hope and make her smile at a moment when she was unable to justify existence. No amount of wealth, professional achievement, or erudition can afford me greater meaning or satisfaction than this strength. It is the biggest or perhaps even the only accomplishment of my life. If I risk being immodest in saying so, it is because a lack of pride in the right things seems to me a greater risk. I thought I was taking care of my grandparents, but it was only when they passed away a couple of years ago that I realised that in taking care of them, I was actually giving myself purpose. I was always a beneficiary, from my first breath to their last.