Grandma Tales: Six

PRATIMA

My parents always knew that both Aneesh and I loved our grandma dearly, perhaps much more than we loved them. But they understood the reasons and were not very jealous about it. My mother sometimes would complain that we ignore her and overlook her love and affection for us and that grandma is spoiling us both. Now that I am a mother myself, I can understand how and why she felt so. Children shower their affections at the strongest objects of their desire. Whether the object is a toy or a person, the child does not differentiate. I see that my little son ignores everything else when he is given a new toy, and his obsession lasts for a few days before he throws it away. But with grandma, it was always different. We never really got tried with her and she with us. I don’t remember a single day when we were put off by her, and whenever we were away from her for some reason, the nights and days would seem long and lonely.

My mother’s secret wish was perhaps we would get to treat her like we treated grandma. And this secret wish, though lost on us, was not unknown to grandma. She would make it a point to shoo us out of her room whenever mom came back home from work. She would ask us to go and hug mom and give her a glass of water or something to eat. Sometimes we would refuse, and to our utter disappointment, grandma would scold us badly. That would make us hate her for a while and rush to mom. But mom used to be so tired that she would shoo us back to grandma. Many times we found this a bit to difficult to handle, that quiet tussle between mom and grandma for ownership of the children. Of course, we did not understand it that way then, but we used to feel cheated and unloved whenever such things happened. Aneesh would sulk and sit all by himself till grandma, unable to bear the silence in the house, called out to us.

I wish mom had spoken to grandma about this problem of her’s; I am quite sure grandma would have found a solution and made her happy. I say this now, but not with any malice for my mom or grandma. I know for sure that mom loved grandma as much as we did, in her own way. I have heard her say that she wished she had a mother like our grandma. She was not on very good terms with her family anyway, which was because she had married dad much against their wishes. My mom is a Christian and dad is a Hindu. I grew up to wonder how caste and religion control our thoughts and behaviour in a way nothing else does. Being a Hindu, my grandma would have surely found it difficult to accept my mom as her daughter in law.

Grandma never ever talked about my mom’s religion. In fact, grandma once surprised me with a story that, at that time, seemed quite strange to me. That day, grandma appeared to be in no mood for stories even though we were pestering her for one.

“ Look, children. Stories don’t grow any more in my mind. I guess I am getting really old for stories now and have lost my ability to tell stories. It happens you know. You are now kids and love listening to anything I am telling you. When you grow older, not as old as me, you will lose interest in stories. It is sad, but that is what life does to you; it takes away all the stories in you and leaves you to grapple with life as if it is a battle.

Your grandpa could not tell stories. He never read novels or fiction or comics. But I can say this for him; he had the art of making any subject sound interesting. Of course, he always bored me with serious lectures on medicine, and what research was going on and what he was doing. But there were many times when he would start a subject on his own and would make me sit spellbound for hours.

He once took me along for a health camp he had organized in a village. This was much after we had moved out of our village into a far off city. I had lost contact with village life for a long time now and I wondered why he wanted me to go along with him, but the fact that we were visiting some village attracted me in some strange way.

At the village, we saw poverty and ill health in all its glory. Most villagers were malnourished. Just when your grandpa was checking up some villagers who had turned up at the clinic, there was a big commotion outside. Some sort of fight had erupted and a scuffle was on. My husband went out to see what the matter was. I peered out from the door. We saw a man dragging a girl and others beating her. Your grandpa ran to intervene and save the girl. It so transpired that the people beating her were her family and relatives, and they were beating her the girl had the temerity to fall in love with a boy of a different caste!

In the night, we stayed over at the nearby rest house. Around ten or so we heard a knock on the door and opened it to see the girl standing outside. She had come with the boy she loved. She wanted your grandpa to help her. I wondered how we could help this girl. I knew that marrying outside your caste, and that too out of love, was something our society still does not tolerate. I know it is a bit different now, but back then, it was heresy. We all love peace and villagers are known to be submissive and weak. But the same weak village folk can turn killers to protect their caste and religion, that I knew. I was afraid all this would spell doom for the girl and the boy.

My husband too was thinking. We were here for a day or two, and we were not here to sort out problems of strangers. Yet the girl had come to us for help, and no one except someone with a very cold heart could turn the girl and the boy out. But what could be done for them, I wondered.

Your grandpa asked the two to sit. The two had fallen truly in love with each other and had even done the unthinkable, they had sex. There was no way for the girl to run away from the boy for whatever reasons. Her parents were still not knowing this, and the boy, God bless him, was prepared to marry her and take her as his wife.

There was no way in which we could convince the villagers and her family to accept the boy. Her family would be cast out if this happened. The boys’ parents too would not accept the girl for they would be boycotted and hounded by the village if they did it.

Trust your grandpa to do something different. The next day, early in the morning, we left the village. The boy and the girl went with us, in hiding, so that no one would ever know where they went. We took them to our house. Your grandpa, the night before, asked me what I felt about the two. I told him that it was bad of them to run away and they should not have fallen in love, knowing full well the consequences. Your grandpa laughed and said.” Do you really think that love is something that happens in a planned way? Do you know I belong to a lesser caste than your family? Did your father ever tell you that? I knew you were my soul mate the first time I saw you inside the crocodile. And I know you thought so too. Did you then think what caste I belonged to, or would you have rejected me if I were a Muslim or a Christian? Your father never once asked me about my caste, though I told him on my own. He said that it was enough for him that I was a fine human being and that I would love his daughter and look after her well.” That was that. My respect for my father and my husband was sealed that night. I told him he was right, and we should help the children in whatever way we can. Then we spoke with great excitement about how we would secretly take the two away without getting caught.

We took the boy and the girl home. Your grandpa would not allow them to marry yet. He first wanted the boy to take up some job so that he can look after the family. The boy had very little skills and had not done any job before. Your grandpa, after much thinking, asked him to learn driving so that he could become a driver. And he paid for it. The two got married later and the last I heard of them, they had two children and were doing well with their life.

Pratima, your grandpa was a great man. Not like Gandhi or anyone. He was great at heart. A human being of the highest order. And that is what I learned from him. When your grandpa was gone, your father was yet to be married. Then he comes one day and tells me about this Christian girl he was in love with and wanted to marry. That day reminded me of our visit to the village and our meeting with the boy and girl. I remembered what your grandpa told me about love. And the moment I remembered what he said, I could make a decision with my head and heart. I felt bad your mother’s parents could not learn this important lesson about love. It is we human beings that made caste and religion but we did not make love, God did. And that is why we say love is blind in so many ways.”

My grandma could surprise anyone any day. Being illiterate, she could talk with a great amount of understanding that comes by experience, not education.