Grand Parents
Often I think about my grandma, whom we called deda with love. I have a lot of memories of her from my Childhood. Whereas for my grandfather, nana, I have only a few. I don’t have any memories of my dada or dadi as both of them were long gone before I arrived on this planet.
I remember my nana and nani being old with one contradiction though, nani’s hairs, which remained black up until her death. Nana was short but must have been a handsome man in his youth. I remember my nana gave me three presents, a English hard hat, not of much use for me, a zippo lighter and a winter jacket with fur. Winter jacket was my favourite. I never new why he gave me the hard hat or the lighter. Clearly there was no use of it for me. Last memory of him I have of him lying on the makeshifts bed of bamboo sticks with cotton stuffed up his nostrils. It was in preparation for his funeral pyre, I know now.
Memories of my nani are many. She was a strong woman she lived by herself for a long time in the village. I often visited her with my mother, one of her 10 siblings, who would go to check if she was fine and needed any help. I remember my nani feed me me butter cream from milk and fried fish. With her age it became harder for to be by herself. At this time she moved in with her eldest son. I visited here there too some times. I remember her thick glasses. Her white sari, she always wore white cotton saris, often resembling mother tress-a. He sink was fair and wrinkled. He often chewed beetle leaves and the juice kept her lips red and there was a smell of tobacco. For Bengali women it was common in those days to chew beetle leaves. I don’t see that now a days.
There was one funny thing about her, her Hindi was very poor. Although she was originally from Bangladesh, she lived in India since she was 18 years of age but didn’t managed to learn herself any hindi. I communicated with her in my broken Bengali. During her very old age I often took her for short evening walks holding her hand.
Last I remember she got very very sick unable to move and even simplest of things became hard. My mother often went to help her during this time. I regret not visiting her a lot during last few months. She passes away thereafter. But good thing of that is I still have in my head the image of the strong women and not one of a helpless old lady.
