Reminiscences of Granny

Thakuma was old and infirm, in mind and body. She was a diabetic who craved sweets, a heart patient who didn't bother to take her pills regularly. She was a "shuchibayi" too, obsessed with the Hindu habits of ritualistic washing. She would head down to the bathroom clad only in a Bankura gamchha, often topless for part of the procedure, despite my vehement remonstrations with her. When I was smaller I would try to fight her, and am ashamed to say, physically restrain or even hit her, because of this. It was one of my longstanding fears that my schoolmates would see her in that condition and mercilessly rib me about it. There was of course no one to restrain me as my parents would be away at work and the maid asleep or too apathetic to interfere. Thakuma loved me though. When I was a lot younger, we would sit for hours at the verandah, feeding grain to the birds, mostly crows and sometimes sparrows. She told me that the crows would bless us and bring us happiness if we fed them. Ma didn't like this. She tells me, me and Thakuma threw away 2 kilos of wheat in a single day just like that once. Obviously Ma didn't care much for corvine blessings.

One of the more enduring images I have of thamma is her being seated with legs crossed, clad in her white cotton "bidhoba" saree and head hung upon chest while wrapped in a cream colored shawl. She would mostly be seated on her chowki facing the window watching the people, sometimes the odd goat, cow or her favorite birds outside. In our older house, she seemed to know the whole neighborhood and its rhythms well. She could tell when the durwan would get up from his" khatia" and do the "paychari", or when the coalseller's wife would light her earthen stove after a morning of rolling small peat balls by hand. She would know when the resident cow in the patch of grass across our flat would be in labor, and how the little black goat was related to the older red matronly one. Then we moved to a posher neighborhood, and our house now faced other four-storied apartment buildings and a wide two laned road with fast cars swishing back and forth every day. Thakuma's crouch grew more pronounced, her chin now buried in her knees, her eyes bore a vacant look. Her ears would prick up though if the dosa or bhelpuri wallah happened to pass by. She would sometimes have those goodies brought up to her, especially when her other grandchildren, my cousins, would be around visiting us. She seemed to enjoy these occasions the most, sitting in the middle of her chowki huddled up in contentment, as we crowded around her playing our own games of chor police or Scotland yard. She would sometimes play a hand of Ludo, but she sucked at chess. But she was my first chess opponent and I soon got bored of beating her.

Thakuma didn't have natural teeth. She had had them pulled out long ago, when she was in her forties. Apparently she had some gum disease and the dentist decided the best way to deal with that would be to pull out all her teeth! The lack of teeth didn't let her jaw settle into some constant form. She had a permanent pout and her cheeks and mouth would always be in a state of restless flux, giving me the impression of some ancient cud-chewing animal. I used to love this face of hers and pulling her cheeks out or squeezing her narrow shoulders gave me great childish pleasure. Troubled at these childish torments, she would whine in her old woman way : "sheno na, shuno na!" which would roughly translate as "quit kneading me!" She had a set of false teeth which she would put on when somebody other than a close relative would be in to see her or during her annual visit to Durga Puja pandals on Ashtami day (this is the only day in the year that I remember her actually venturing out of the house). This would make her look an entirely new person, more self-assured and less dependent. I didn't much like this look of hers, I preferred her much more as the cute pouting kneadable punchbag of a granny!

Thakuma was an anarchic island of anachronism in our new Salt Lake apartment. Her black framed glasses, her stout-legged darkwood chowki, her false teeth that would stay immersed in a small jar of water, her big can of gangajal which she would liberally sprinkle every now and then, her "meatsafe" with its wire meshed doors and quaint contents, her "Benimadhab Shil er ponjika" with old ten rupee notes folded into the pages, her annually renewed Bankura gamchhas : she clung on stubbornly to an older way of life and its associated artefacts in our modern home.

After coming back from the brink several times, she finally succumbed. That was the first time I saw death up close. Strangely all that I remember now is the dull lifeless stare in her eyes and the feeding tube stuck in her nose for her last few days. Of her funeral rites I remember little. Just that there were lots of people and a trip to Keoratola's shoshan. In our Salt Lake flat, baba and ma sometimes still refer to the room she used to be in , casually to me, as "thakuma-r ghor" and I believe the "meat safe" is still there although the "chowki" has long since disappeared. This was all ten years back almost to the date and no body has had much of a problem carrying on with life without her I guess. Yet when I sit down to think about it, the impressions seem very distinct and fresh and at the same time unreal and far-removed, like all things to do with childhood I guess.