A Sketch
GRANDMOTHER
Dr. B. Parvati
My grandmother lived until her 66th year. She must have been fair complexioned once but in her later years she developed a skin disease called leukoderma. She became weak and dark, water accumulated in her stomach. She was in bed for three or four years while a faithful old servant Sitamma attended on her.
One or two years before her end came my grandmother developed a fancy for entertaining guests every day. She insisted on serving them with savouries and delicacies when they came to see her. It was alright in the beginning but we all soon got tired of such things. My elder sisters, my father, mother and a number of her relatives, the cook and servant often told her. “We’ll take them inside and serve them properly. Not here. It is a sick room”. My grandmother was a clever and intelligent woman. She soon found out that people at home were not being truthful. She resented our action or inaction in this matter. She was particularly angry because when she proclaimed a dark brahmin who came home every day was Vishnu none of us was inclined to believe so.
She always had - some sweets and savouries in stainless steel boxes ready for us to eat after we came back from school. I cannot say I was her favourite grandchild because she doted a lot upon my eldest sister and the third one. How much she did is evident from the 40 sovereigns of gold, a house and fertile fields she gave to her eldest grand daughter, just a two stringed gold chain for the second one, equal amount of gold and bangles for the third one and of course a plate which Neighs one kilogram today of silver which she was so amused to give me. One day she called us all to her bedside and said “Tell me your wishes, I will give you whatever you ask”. While my sisters thought of gold chain and bangles, the glittering big silver lotus leaf shaped plate attracted me greatly for then I was only a child of eight years or ten or even less. I was angry because every body laughed when I said so and I did not understand why they laughed.
Soon she became very ill and the end came on one afternoon. She was conscious and bold till the end they said. I took my name after my maternal grandmother while my sister took hers from my paternal grandmother. “You two have the names of a mother and mother-in-law. No wonder you fight,” my mother often said. Was my grandmother not fond of me because of my name or was I too young while she was old and ill? I remember her sweet - song from Adhyatma Ramayana which she used to sing before dawn in a soft voice, her sitting before the coal stove busy taking the decoction in a huge brass filter, boiling milk, making coffee, churning curds. She was not very generous in giving me as much butter as I wanted to go with my early morning meal which consisted of cold rice, mango pickle, ghee, butter milk and butter. I never liked coffee and I didn’t relish milk either. I don’t remember what she did after that but later in the day she prayed, went round the Tulasi then finally swinging her hands in salutation, she looked at the skies, sat-down with her Tulasi beads for sometime, then ate food from her silver plate and washed it herself.
That she made my mother unhappy and was always a very dominating woman I know. The whole household including my father obeyed her implicitly. Only when I grew up I understood that my father was not strictly obedient. Later when I knew enough to understand the reason for my mother’s plight, I was angry with my grandmother.
But was she that unkind? I think she was not. She got married to my grandfather who was a widower, when she was eleven. She bore my father when she was thirteen and by the time he was ten, he had only his mother to look after him. In her long lonely life where did she find courage and strength? Was life cruel or kind to her? What was in her mind deep within, I cannot imagine or fathom for I feel a great tenderness for her in my heart whose plight was similar to that of thousands of women of her days. She was adamant and superstitious, but I remember she opposed shaving the head of a relative whose husband died. “Leave her, she is young,” she said, a woman with some feeling for another woman.