Day 16

I wish I had known her better. I wish I remembered the touch of those calloused hands, for I am sure they were calloused, because if not her touch I remember her scrubbing dishes sitting by the old well in her house. She died over 10 years ago and for some reason I bear the guilt now of never having made the effort to sit by her, for choosing to watch tv over sitting by her.

Deuta still looks for the tastes that inhabit his memory , the tastes that brings back the memory of a mother whose hair had not yet turned completely grey. My grandmother – Aaita as we called her – was awkward just like Deuta. She was no story teller, no singer of lullabies but she was the presence around whom we all gathered once every year.

The courtyard in her house was ours to turn into a makeshift cricket ground, into an imaginary lake where crocodiles swam, into the dark world where horror stories were swapped. She was always around by the betel leaf creeper that had wrapped itself around the lanky betel nut tree, by the old well, by the stairs hunched up on an old mooda pounding with her stone pestle.

Aaita never wanted to leave her house but old age and a fall in her courtyard on a rainy day left her with no choice but to move in with us. She stayed in the room downstairs with a tv. She no longer had company of her old friends who she wanted to grow old with. She sat by a low stove and cooked Deuta’s favorite dishes. She walked up and down the narrow pathway in the garden holding on to her walker for balance. She stared vacantly at the television. She fanned us with the cane fan on warm summer days.

We flitted in and out of home on vacations. On those vacations most often I would forget that she was there, downstairs alone. I could have looked closely at the wrinkles on her face while she told me stories in her raspy voice. But I forgot to sit by her, distracted by tv or other such mundane things.

Then she fell ill and it wasn’t that serious. But things spiraled out of control and she still remained forgotten by me. Then one day Deuta called to say Aaita was no more. I didn’t feel anything. I had never seen death before. By the time I went back home the funeral was done. Last time I had seen her she was in the hospital but no one thought that would be the last time I would see her.

But the guilt of never having spent time with her when I had a chance gnawed at me. Then one day I saw the dream that has never left me. Aaita was there on our terrace, glowing in all white, radiating light. She smiled at me, a brilliant dazzling happy smile. Then poof, she turned into a butterfly and flew away.

I don’t know anything about my grandmother. I never sat by her eagerly waiting for her to tell her stories. I did not ask her how she cooked the most delicious fish curries. I did not ask her if her bow legs bothered her. I did not ask her who her favorite child was. I did not ask her if she liked me.

I feel her loss now many years later. I feel the burden of my selfishness. I am guilty of having forgotten my grandmother while she sat alone day after day thinking about things I will never know now.

Day 12: The art of forgetting

I have practiced forgetting for so long that years of memories have buried itself under layers of cobwebs. I first realized remembering was painful in my first month at boarding. The memory of a mother who would be sitting at home mourning the loss of the company of her children, the memory of my comfortable bed at home, the memory of the garden bathed in morning mist became a burden that I could not carry with me.

So I taught myself the art of forgetting. In the alien environment of a boarding school many miles away from home I pushed away thoughts that would grip my heart with a feeling that I had not yet learnt to comprehend. I found myself with no other choice but to push away those inexplicable feelings of longing that found me every night.

The only contact that remained with my parents was the weekly letters we wrote. The letters would then have to pass through the censorious eyes of the hostel warden who allowed no mention of our miserable state. Any explicit mention of homesickness and the letters had to be rewritten to sound suitably cheerful. A few times I tried to pass off coded message written in broken assamese.

I soon internalized the censorship imposed on us by school authorities and learnt to say unimportant things that wouldn’t create any upheaval in the world I had left behind. The fights with dorm mates, the crying alone after being reprimanded by a teacher, the fear of walking alone to the toilet at night – all of it remained unsaid. Instead I wrote about how the weather was so warm at night that we had to sprinkle water on our beds to be able to sleep, about winning the inter house dance competition, about the inter school art competition that I was going to take part in, about numerous test marks.

Not saying what mattered became the norm. I never learnt to talk about friends, heartbreaks, disappointments, fears, apprehensions with my parents. In the brief holidays when we met it was easier not to broach topics that would disturb the harmony that appeared to have been established.

After a few years in boarding school, forgetting came naturally to me. Once inside the impenetrable school walls, something would switch off and I would carry on with my life with a sense of detachment that I have never been able to shake off.

In college it became convenient, for fear of my choices being met with disapprovals. The distance was already too wide and there seemed to be no reason anymore for me to bridge that gap. My parents were already strangers with whom conversations about boyfriends or college politics seemed unfamiliar. I could not recount to them the little things that had happened every day of the years that I had spent away from them. It was too much history to encapsulate in the few days that I met them.

They had not met the dorm mates I spent nights sharing contraband food items with in the dimly lit dressing room. They had not seen me perform in the inter house dance competition. They had not heard me speak nervously at the school assembly. They had not seen me take charge as a reluctant house captain.

My parents too learnt the art of deceiving. They too never shared their trepidations with us. They never told us about the days after we left how they spent all their time in the hospital so as not to return to the empty house. Their letters too carried the weight of things that remained unsaid. So much so that when my father was diagnosed with throat cancer we did not even get a whiff of the illness that my parents had decided to deal with alone.

The burden of all the years of unsaid things becomes heavier every time I meet them. Now words come out broken in a language that has become rusty on my tongue. I am not sure I can enumerate or quantify what I have lost or gained.