We are self-absorbed people, sometimes more than we care to admit, but other times, just more than we know. It came up when we were driving to a weekend retreat, listening to old Hindi music and talking. Drifting from different things, the topic of discussion reached marriage and love.
“Aaji and Aazoba also had a love marriage, you know?” my father said.
Although I remember hearing about it before, I perhaps hadn’t paid much attention. So, I was shocked. Also guilty. And slowly, like a drop of ink in water, the guilt spread across my body. We pretend to care about everyone and everything all the time. We pretend to ask. We pretend to listen. But only when we can’t sleep at night, when we need to know—we do any of it.
My grandparents—Aaji and Aazoba—were the two people who loved me the most. Aazoba passed away when I was much younger; Aaji passed away a few years ago. He wasn’t bedridden or anything, but he had it coming for a long time. Hers was sudden; she was healthy. But unlike him, I find some consolation in the fact that I was there to care for her in the final days—when she was in the hospital.
When I think about it, I never got to know them. Or even about them. At least not as much as I’d like. Not about their childhoods. Not how they spent their days of youth. Not about the love they shared. Not even about their days of old age and solitude, for some of which I was there.
And they will never get to know me. I wonder if that’s how it’s meant to be. Then it fills me with this universal, raw sadness—the worst of the kind.
After Aazoba passed away, Aaji refused to stay with us or my uncle’s family and lived alone in the same house. She would take the scooter and go to a nearby ground for a morning walk with her friends. Some days, they would go to a dosa place for breakfast on the way back. The rest of the morning would often be consumed by the chores. After fixing her lunch, she would watch tv for a while and then have a siesta for a couple of hours. In the evening, she would again take her scooter and go around the market, maybe have a vada-pav or a kachori from her favourite store or buy some fruits and vegetables. Once back, she would call me, or my dad or uncle. Then she would binge on tv serials till her eyelids felt heavy. I can’t say if she was happy, but she took care of her somehow.
The only anomaly days would be when she had to go to the army canteen to get groceries or to the bank for administrative work. Or when any of her grandchildren visited during vacations. It was during one of those holidays that I learned to ride the scooter—her scooter. She would sit behind me, and we would go to McDonald’s. She liked the McAloo tikki. The happy meal cost 99 rupees then.
I wonder how living like that feels. The same day every day. Like fragments of time fused into a single stream, without a way of discerning one from the other. Like living the past, the present and the future all at once.
What bothers me the most is that I had time with her. I lived with her for two years—my last years of school. But then, I was absorbed by a dream. I didn’t know how I got there or why, yet, I was chasing after it with everything I had to give, without questioning it. I was like a climber plant that needed support to grow. And she was the support.
She took care of me, from clothes to food to toiletries. I taught her to use a smartphone. I helped her with filling out all her forms and other admin work. We would watch movies together and sometimes go to restaurants for dinner together. But there is a lot that I didn’t do.
“Now that you got your first salary, you should gift your grandmothers and aunts sarees. Something nice and comfortable they can use for every day.” said my mother one day.
I had gotten the stipend from my first internship. This little achievement could be traced back to when I lived with Aaji. But she had passed away by then. I bought everyone else sarees but couldn’t buy her one. She would’ve loved it—a lot—I’m sure.
“Tea is ready. Can you toast some bread? I like how you toast them.” she would say.
“How many will you have?” I’d ask her.
“Just two.” would be the answer.
Few other things hurt more than the feeling of lost time.