Losing her

I lost my grandmom yesterday. This is my first experience of losing a loved one. I don’t know how to feel, how to react. When dad called me at 7:00 in the morning I avoided his call thinking that he must be on his morning walk, and called me in the wee hour just to ask of my well being. Thinking of calling him back later, I pulled my quilt over my face. The second time my phone vibrated with my aunt’s call, I knew something was wrong. The wailing sound on the other side of the phone made me jolt from my bed. I felt guilty for avoiding dad’s call, really guilty.

After a bumpy ride in a Tata Sumo for 5 hours, we reached Birgunj with teary eyes. Everyone was waiting for our arrival, for taking away grandmom from us forever. As she lay on the pyre with the red chunari, she was looking just too beautiful and too animated. We were waiting for her to get up and tell us that she is fine, and she is going to be with us for many more years to come. We were waiting for her face to light up and consequently lighting ours. We kept waiting when they took her away for her journey to a new world. “Ram naam satya hai,” they said. The music of the band playing outside told us to celebrate her departure. Just that, we could not.

I was given the responsibility of cleaning the house while they went to the ghaat. As I went upstairs, I looked at the vacant space where she sat every time I visited home. As I entered my room, I expected her to quickly follow me like she always did. She had so many questions to ask, about life, about work, about this, about that. So many questions, I would complain. She had this need for everybody to be with her all the time, not to leave her alone. But, no one would think of her need for being with her as her need to feel loved. Today, when everybody is here for her, it is ironical that she isn’t here to get our love, our affection that is finally coming out of us, something that was hidden deep in our hearts and we never realized it.

As I swiftly do the cleaning and organizing, I wait for the voice that would tell me to get the phone every time it rang even when I were closer to the phone and knew that I am supposed to get it. I wait for the voice that would remind me of the rules and regulations of the house. I long for the authority, the power, the spirituality, the faith.

How we would get agitated every time she saw the repeat telecast of every tele serial and how we would remind her that she had already watched the episode last night. Every time, she would say that “No beta, see this scene was not shown last night.” She monopolized the television set, and now the set lies in the corner, with no one interested in it. As I sit inside my room, the silence of the living room haunts me.

I have grown up with her. I feel guilty for telling the world that she cried when I was born. I have mocked her, I have hurt her. For all those times, I feel sorry. For all those times, I detest myself. How can I have been so mean and so unreasonable? She gave me all the love she could. I was her bitiya rani, the granddaughter she was immensely proud of. Every time someone visited our house, she had one story associated with me to share with everybody. She loved me. How could I have doubted her?

She was always the one in power, and we were so used to it that in her absence, we feel lost. There is sadness, but more than that there is this feeling of losing a guardian, who stopped us every time we were to take a wrong step, a guide who reminded of the little intricacies of life.

There are relatives, well wishes, neighbors, and others who visit our house all day long. Certainly, everyone has anecdotes to share about her. All of them are interesting. Some make us cry, while we laugh over the incident when she literally caned a thief who tried to take her possessions many years back. She was a gossip queen for me in the sense that she had so many stories to share about people that existed in her small world. When the tables turned today, all I could do was smile as I looked at her freshly framed photo.

January 7 2010