what the Grand Old Man had said...

... i get to know after 18+ years...

The man in question is my paternal grandpa who was a doctor, had nine children through his two wives (my father being the eldest of his children and I am his first born)... this man was the only man whom i have seen my father love and love unconditionally. he was the man whom my father told everything; even things my Mom did not know, this man knew... so when my wedding with B was fixed, my Dad told B, "I have one request to make and that is, you will need to meet my parents."

i had never heard my Dad refer to his step-mother so. He always called her endearingly, "Ma-go" (which literally means nothing, but means 'My Mom', and meant a lot to LM, my step-grandmother).

now, i was not particularly fond of Dr M because he was extremely patriarchal, a quality i detest and detested from birth. another reason i did not quite like was the fact that despite having three sons (my father and his two younger brothers), he remarried when my grandmother, SM, died of child-birth of placenta previa, something i had after R was born and i had never seen two men, B and Dad, as worried...

al these are not the point of this post, but what the Grand Old Man told B when he went meeting them is. and how did i get to know this and when is what this post is about...

i was cooking a while back... and B comes to the kitchen and says, "Minus SM -- your grandmother's -- attitude, you are quite a good wife." This is not B, i thought... Has chicken pox infected his brain?

I turned back at him and asked, a little stunned, "Have you met SM?" He was in no mood to answer but i would not buy his silence. after much cajoling, he said, "your grandfather had told me when i met him before our wedding, 'You are marrying someone who is the apple of my eye. My eldest grandchild, she is a lady of strong likes and dislikes, very much like her Grandmother, my first wife, the lady who shared my life for six short years, sired three sons but who taught me what value honesty holds in life. She was a lady of attitude and this lady you are marrying, has inherited this trait in full measure. Take good care of her...'"

i was stunned since in 18+ years, B has never told me what went on behind the closed door meeting that he had with Dr M...

many thought have passed my mind since then...

1. have i correctly juged my own Grandfather? or was i harsh on him in my mind?

2. does B know SM better than i do? I had never heard anything about her from Dad who never mentioned her. whenever he talked, he talked about his Ma-go, never about his Ma... though the three brothers were wholly reared by my Dad's maternal grandparents, SM's parents. and the closest i got to seeing her was in the lone photo of hers in Dr M's bedroom, a photo which still hangs there in loneliness...

3. what more did Dr M tell B? I did not want to ask any more questions... my heart was already heavy with what i heard...

4. why did B keep this to himself? had he promised so?

one comment... but so very heavy...

bringing up Mommy

in the midst of a meeting, i suddenly see my mobile ring and guess who was calling: Mom. she now has a roaming mobile and the call was to tell me that she had reached Nainital where she has gone with her friends for a vacation... she'll also be visiting Almora and Ranikheth...
i ran out of the meeting, took her call and spoke briefly...
as the call ended and i was headed back to the meeting room, my mind raced back to those days... those days of gloom... those days when suddenly i became responsible for Mom, without any warning, without any foretelling, without any sign of things to come...
and the "those" days were when Dad passed away... R was two year five months, i had a very demanding job with a 10-hour day, B was awaiting his transfer from Mumbai to Kolkata, while i had already taken the transfer...
to top it all, Mom was now alone in a two-storey house, not knowing how to fill her days and nights, not knowing where to sign on a cheque to withdraw cash, not knowing what and how much to cook for herself, not knowing why her husband had left her alone, with a busy daughter and a son who had to get back to his place of posting...

i literally stretched the days, day after day, to pack in more... my job had to be attended to with a lot of details since the financial institution i worked for was raising public money and i was looking after that in Kolkata, R needed me, Mom was helpless without me ( i called four times an hour to keep her occupied) and i was staying with B's family at that stage, which had its own set of demands, though not tall...

my day began early, at 5.30.
6-7 was driving class.
7-7.30 -- with Mom over morning tea
7.30-8 -- pack R to school
8-8.30 -- get ready for work
8.30-9.15 -- commute to work
9.15-6 -- work
6-7 -- commute back from work
7-7.30 -- with Mom over evening tea
7.30-9 -- R time
9-9.30 -- dinner with R
9.30-10 -- put R to bed and doze off

and in all the calls i kept making, i was trying to address the fact that she had to continue her life, she had to be able to manage herself, she had to make a new structure for her day, she had to stop depending on anyone (even me, though i did not have the heart to tell her that)...

it was almost like having two daughters all at once, one young in age and needing care and one older, needing compassion...

i started taking her to the banks to get her money in place, got her pension sorted and started, make an Excel sheet of her investments, got her started on a Library membership so that she could spend her time reading...

three years passed exactly in the routine above, only change, we had our first owned home and shifted in... B got an offer in Delhi and was not sure whether i could leave Mom alone and come with him. i assured him i would... i wanted Mom to grow up, be independent and live her life...

i left for Delhi, she saw me off with a blank look... but i knew in my heart of hearts that she would carry on...

and she has...

Chaitra sale and a crucial decision i made early on

this month in our calendar is called Chaitra... the last month before the New Year (Nababarsha), which falls either on 14th or 15th of April each year...
and every year at this time, there is a clearance sale of garments... from shops to footpath stalls (i would not know about malls that have sprung up now), every shop that sells clothes, offers a sale...
shops are choc-a-bloc with buyers since customers suddenly become more trusting when it comes to goods offered on sale, mostly women, who buy for an entire household... there is (was, to be more apt since i am talking about 18 years back, when i left Kolkata, interspersed with two brief stays in between) a custom of gifts to youngsters and people who come helping at home on Nababarsha...
whether goods really become cheaper on sale, i have no idea... what i am convinced about is that the quality of goods genuinely suffer...
if one can go on the first few days, one lands up buying quality stuff at bargain prices, made more attractive with saree clad Bong housewives who, gloat over their bargaining skills with the shopkeepers, in mid-day scorching sun...

as i write this, i re-experience the numerous occasions when i accompanied Mom in her exploits, shopping for Nababarsha... money was limited, she made a long list, edited it to delete items which she thought would not make it through Dad who would not look at the list, but would allocate the funds for them...
if the going was good, she would be allocated all that she asked for... if not, she would have to be happy with what Dad thought was appropriate...

i vividly remember the little victory she scored when the amount was okayed... or the little hurt on her face when it was not... and it is the latter that had convinced me the need to be independent financially so that i could go impulse shopping, if i needed to...

i saw the same victory on her face when she was here with us last year and i was out with her, she next to me on my modest car, bought with my own modest means... but there again, it was laced with a thin film of tears in her large eyes (my large eyes are from her) on two counts... of joy that her daughter has done what she could not; of sorrow that her husband did not live to see what she has...

i don't know which of the emotions was primary, though...