It was only as a teenager when I learnt that my grandmother had defied her indignant father to run away with her lover, my grandfather. “It was quite the scandal. I was a polished Brahmin girl and among the oldest of eight siblings,” she admitted sheepishly. As a thirteen-year-old in whom romantic desire and rebellion had begun sparking every now and then, I was thrilled at this cheeky revelation. How brave and so remarkable! – I would later recall this intimate admission in my years studying at university, ruminating dutifully as a gender studies enthusiast and smugly informing anyone who would listen – I come from lineage where fathers are accustomed to being left red-faced by their fierce daughters.
But something about her admission felt starkly at odds with who I saw and knew my grandmother to be. We grew up in the same bungalow, her and I, and I recall that she was undeniably reputed for her fashionable sarees, killer gambling instinct at the cards table, diamond jewellery and cutting sardonicism. She was most notorious for the latter – her trademark cruelty. Particularly towards women.
My childhood memories with her are dotted with raucous instances on account of both of us: Me, grovelling outside her locked door as a child, screaming and begging to be let in so I could watch her drape a saree and dab perfume for her cards party and save myself from the misery of being by myself. Her, complaining to my mother about the greedy snacker I was. “No need to watch out for that biscuit and pickle thief in the kitchen, then”, she would wink at her in my presence. Me, weeping impudently when my grandmother remarked in a room full of other adults that I could have been considered pretty had it not been “for that nose”. “This is an unbelievably angry and loud child”, she would point at me and inform our kith and kin and visiting guests whom she presided over on her lounge chair for evening tea and imported chocolates.
As an adolescent, my child-like wailing transformed into pointed barbs at her. “You have no business calling me ugly,” I would growl at her with a lump in my throat, “when clearly your son passed down that nose you mock me for”. Later, in my college-going days, she enquired whether I ‘rubbed shoulders with’ young men. It was her manner of prying information on whether I was being wooed. I adopted the shock-and-awe principle and promptly informed her that it was I who wooed several suitors, enjoying every moment of her palpable shock. “I wonder what you know about young girls seeing men their families don’t approve of”, I would additionally shoot, hoping the barb would land on the nerve intended.
In death, I could give her what I desperately yearned for during her lifetime: compassion.
Sometimes I needled her unprovoked. I wished for a reaction every time. Or perhaps a declaration of love. A gesture of tenderness. Or kindness that she did not promptly demand I repay. These never came. Instead, my twenties witnessed a swirl of cruel and berating jokes at dinner tables, long periods of silent treatment, timely emotional withdrawal and hysterical demands that I return the memorabilia and hand-me-downs she gifted me. Ultimately, there were financial sanctions in a bid to peg me home and ensure that my running away would only be temporary. “Gone girl”, my folks would joke amongst themselves and later recount this to me in more jovial times.
At other times, when I was allowed the rare privilege of kinship and ally-ship with her, it was when my grandmother’s notorious pranks and punishment were directed at other female relatives. On those occasions, I was not just a stunned bystander, but to my delight, was regarded a fellow trustee of the gossip that followed the cruel dressing-down and social humiliation of another woman. For example, when an aunt politely refused to plate herself some dinner that my grandmother took great pride in having arranged for a special occasion from local social clubs and mutton-patty boutiques, my grandmother openly brandished her stubby index finger and demanded my aunt leave the table and seat herself separately in the living-room area till the rest of us finished dinner. “I will let you know if we want to share dessert after”, she coolly informed her, her voice increasingly triumphant with every sagging centimetre of my reddened aunt’s shoulders. This episode would go on to be immortalised by my grandmother as the time she single-handedly showed that “too-big-for-her-boots published author her place”. And I made sure her little boy watched, my grandmother would chuckle and remind me, lest I dared forget.
It would take years of estrangement before I would be asked to sketch my family tree and label each member with personality traits and unique behaviours as I recalled them or heard from the stories about them. Something unimaginable struck me as I pored over my finished work. I saw my grandmother – with whom I had ceased any intimate relationship – as a little girl desirous of love and approval of her quick-to-rage and perpetually disapproving father. As a young bride whose natal family cut off all contact, not a single congratulations offered. As an anxiously proud Master’s graduate in Economics in her early twenties, all slated to take on professorship, only abandon it and step up as her ailing mother-in-law’s personal nurse and thrifty domestic manager. As a middle-aged wife anxiously waiting on her husband as he made pit-stops to his girlfriend, the widowed Mrs. G’s palatial home after office hours. A patient wife to my grandfather who brought Mrs. G to family vacations abroad. She even made it to the Safari World group photo, flanked by my father and grandfather and the digitally inserted monkeys and wild trees that framed our group smiles, tourist packs and candy floss. My grandmother – an unwitting thread in a remarkable web spanning generations of deadly family dysfunction.
On the day she passed, I met her as she was shrouded in spotless white sheets topped with gentle arrangements of white carnations, roses and green foliage. Dainty cream and gold-woven silk sarees sat regally draped atop her. Her favourites, I was informed. I placed a box of her cherished assortment of milk chocolates by her marble-cold feet and under it, a hand-written note, where I informed that I although I did not forgive her, I saw her and thanked her. I had finally gotten around to doing things I had never permitted myself to do. I gently informed her as I smeared chandan and haldi on her forehead and feet that I really liked myself and practiced complete non-tolerance of infidelity and familial subservience. I preferred stocks to diamond jewellery. I had a career that appreciated my booming bluntness and a little toddler whom I thoroughly enjoyed parenting. Those who do not make my life better, I simply do not entertain them, I whispered to her, half expecting my light teasing to cause the resurrection it usually did. For once, my grandmother had nothing to say. No snarky, narrowed eyes or belittling come-backs about my character. In death, I could give her what I desperately yearned for during her lifetime – compassion. A little bit for her and pot-loads for myself.
