A Kind Soul with Cracks in her Soles

During the summer months in Telangana, even with the scorching sun blazing above, Jalajamma would walk bare foot. 

"Her soles must have hardened to become built-in chappals" Sunitha surmised, whenever she saw Jalajamma walk with cracks all over her soles.

Jalajamma looked pretty even with a shriveled body and wrinkles on her face. Sunitha always wondered what a looker she must have been when she was young. Jalajamma said she got married when she was about 18, somewhat late for girls of her time.

Jalajamma was hard of hearing right from a very young age, which only worsened with advancing age. When she landed at Sunitha's place as a widow with married and settled children of hers, she was this inconspicuous lady with a diminutive body. Little did Sunitha know that within that frail body lay a strong and stubborn spirit that had defied all odds in life.

To Sunitha's great relief, Jalajamma, who was a distant relative of Sunitha, came to her house to take care of Sunitha's young daughter after the untimely demise of Sunitha's husband. As Sunitha had to put in those long working hours at an MNC, she felt very relieved and thankful to Jalajamma when she joined their family.

Her husband, Jalajamma said was quite tightfisted all through his life. She stated this as a matter of fact, that for the life of him, he never understood why one should put coriander leaves in any dish since according to him such embellishments failed to serve any purpose. That's why she said, he forbade her to use all such things in her cooking. That, to Sunitha, painted the picture of Jalajamma's marital life and the lack of freedom therein, though she never once complained about it.

Maybe because of the tough and extremely frugal life she led, Jalajamma tried saving every paisa, even if it wasn't hers. She would do a hard bargain with all the vegetable vendors even when Sunitha told her it was okay to spend as much as she wanted freely.

Her worsening congenital Asthma condition made her wheezing grow stronger rendering her lungs weaker by the year. Soon her walk became almost like a crawl. But even then she refused to be cowed down. She would wake up early, bathe before the sunrise in spite of Sunitha requesting her not to do so during heavy winters. As stubborn as a mule that she was, Sunitha's pleadings literally fell on Jalajamma's deaf ears.

Many a time, when Sunitha returned from work, she would find Jalajamma fast asleep in the sofa with the TV on, totally oblivious to Sunitha's arrival. That's how she caught up on her sleep as her wheezing hardly allowed her to sleep during the nights.

God and prayer were Jalajamma's anchors in life. She observed fasts on various religious occasions and frequented the nearby temple every morning. Her favourite pastime was to read magazines in the vernacular language. She would sit in the chair with its back resting against the wall near the window and spend hours reading. She watched her favourite regional soap operas on TV with the volume on mute, because volume made little sense to her. And she didn't shy away from taking the control of the TV remote, when it was time for her serials. 

Knowing about Jalajamma's quirks, Sunitha decided to give her a free hand in the kitchen and it worked well for both of them – Jalajamma got her freedom to cook and Sunitha got her freedom from cooking. It appeared to be a win-win situation and peace prevailed in the house.

Soon it was time for Sunitha's daughter to leave for her undergraduate course from an engineering college in Bengaluru. Jalajamma too decided that it was time for her to return to her family in another city, having completed her mission of helping Sunitha raise her daughter into adulthood.

Sunitha was not very sure whose departure hit her the most, when she faced the empty nest. But soon life fell into a rhythm. Occasionally, Jalajamma visited her for a couple of weeks and they had their together times once again. 

By then Sunitha had grown up the corporate ladder at work and she made it a practice to force Jalajamma to take money from her pleading with her to spend it on whatever she wanted to, secretly wondering whether the parsimonious person like Jalajamma was capable of spending it on anything at all.

During one such visit of hers, Sunitha asked Jalajamma "Last month during the floods, I hope your family was fine."

"Thankfully, we were all okay unlike many families in the state" she continued, "Thanks to you, I could do my bit to help some people who suffered some serious loss."

"Why thanks to me?" A confused Sunitha asked.

"Because, I donated all the money you gave to me to the flood victims" answered Jalajamma, leaving Sunitha totally speechless.

(This is a true story with names changed.)