Ragini's
grandmother passed away last May. The Headmistress broke the news in her
office. Abandoning her usual starchy look, she spokewith gentleness, warmth and
sensibility. Conventional, soothing words. When she stopped, Ragini got up,
thanked her and left the room. Her uncle would be coming to pick her, she had been
informed.
'She
went to her dormitory, took her suitcase out and set it on the bed. Her
room-mates came in with expressions of awkward sympathy. She looked at them and
felt that she did not know them at all. To get away from this world, her
everyday world that
now seemed to belong to another life, she retreated into the Library. She took
a book from the shelf, sat in the quietest corner and opened it. Her eyes scanned
line after line, her hands turned the pages, but it was as if the connections
between her
senses and her brain had been snapped. "Nanima is dead, Nanima is
dead," a voice in herbrain chanted meaninglessly.
On
the drive back home, Ravi Chacha told her that Nani??ia had
passed away in her sleep. It was quick. A single massive heart attack Nanima
was all of seventy eight. Like the Headmistress, Ravi Chacha too
said all the right things. 'Seventy-eight/ Ragini thought. She had known Nanima's
age, but never thought of her as old. By dusk, they were home. Ravi Chacha
drove straight to Nanima's house in the suburbs—the grey stone house
with white shutters and a red-tiled roof. As always, at the first glimpse,
Ragini's heart did a happy back flip. Everything was as it had always been. A
white fence with jacquamantia spilling over in a profusion of blue and green.
Plants,
greenery, life everywhere! Now, the front door would fly open and Nanima would
emerge, a beautiful smile lighting up her gentle, lined face. The special smile
she reserved for Ragini. The front door opened. Revant, her younger brother ran
out with Sheroo, Nanima's eight-year old Apso. Her parents followed at a
slower pace.
No Nani?na.
For the first time, no Nanima. To hide her disappointment, Ragini
bent to pat Sheroo. Over the next few days many people came to the house. They
looked at Ragini's Nanima, now framed in a big garlanded photograph that
hung on
the drawing room wall. They looked at her unsmiling photo-studio face. Some
shed tears, some talked and some were silent.
That
is not my Nanima, Ragini wanted to say. My Nanima is not an old
lady in a pale sari, staring out of a frame. Her eyes are alive. Her smile is warm.
It curls itself around your heart and gives it a tiny squeeze. To get away from
the sad, sober faces, Ragini went out into the backyard. Here everything was as
she remembered.
Nanima's
tulsi plant thrived. Sheroo slept on a mat under the mango tree. The
roots of that mango tree went deep into Nani?na's life. Its ancestor had
flourished beside the cottage on the mountainside where Nanima had been
born. When she was married and moved to the farm in the plains, the first thing
she did was plant a mango sapling. When Nanaji had died and the farm was
sold, she moved to this house and again she planted a mango sapling.
The
sapling grew into a beautiful, bountiful tree. Its mangoes were the sweetest in
the world. It bore fruit every other year. And when it did, Nanima made
pickle. That year, before she died, Nanima had made mango pickle. And in
the hot, mid-day sun in the courtyard, the big, brown and white jars sealed
with cloth caps absorbed the slow, steady heat, and the mango pickle in them
ripened to
perfection.
Somehow, the sight of those jars reassured Ragini.
A
week later, Ragini's parents gave her the news. Nanima it appeared, had
left the house to Ragini. 'To my daughter's daughter'.
Grand
daughter, yes, but 'daughter's daughter'? Why had Nanima phrased it like
that? What had she meant?
All
Ragini's friends admired her mother. Ragini's mother was smart and polished.
She was a successful professional who ran her own advertising agency. In fact,
she looked and sounded like an advertisement herself. "Maximise your potential,"
she would say to Ragini. "You can be anything you want to be. Just do
it."
But
Ragini, just average in studies and not terribly good at anything in
particular, was not sure about what she wanted to be. Her mother, she knew, had
dreams for her. A great career, fame, money, success...All the things that she
herself valued. But did Ragini value them too? At times she felt she and her
mother would never speak the same language, would never understand one another.
She said this to Nanima.
"She
is so different from you. And I am so different from her. How is she your
daughter?" Now in that house, the house that belonged to her, to the
'daughter's daughter' she asked herself this question again. In reply, there
was only silence. Not the assuring silence of Nanima's understanding,
but the empty, echoing silence of her
absence. Her growing absence. The growing, deepening, widening black hole
inside Ragini.
The
day that was to be her last at nanima's house came. She was going back
to school the following morning. By the next vacation, this house would be
sold. Her father and mother had told her that. Her share of the money would
finance her studies abroad. America, England, Australia...wherever she wanted
to go. Wasn't that wonderful? Ragini had not said a word. What could she say? That
the house was the only link she had with Nanima. And if that link was
snapped, what would she
have? Would they understand? She doubted it very much.
So
it was that on the last day, Ragini woke up with a heart so heavy that she
wished only for the day to end. When she went into the dining room for breakfast,
she smelt alu parathas. Who was making them? Ma? But Ma was not one to
spend a precious Sunday in the kitchen. Usually, she slept late. And Ragini and
Revant were given their breakfast by the maid.
So
what was Ma doing in Nanima's kitchen, at Nanima's stove,
spooning ghee over the paratha sizzling on the tava? "Oh, it is you,
Ragini," Ma looked up quickly from
the tava. Beads of sweat glistened on her face. She pushed back her hair and
left a streak of flour on it. "Will you lay the table? I have given Malati
the day off."
"Why
alu parathas?" Revant asked, looking critically at the pile.
"You don't make them, Nanima does...did."
"Nanima
made them. Now I do," Ma said evenly. "They may not be
as perfect, but eat them all the same."
"But
why alu parathas?" Revant persisted. "Because the pickle is
ready. You can taste it today. And achaar
and paratha go together, don't they?"
Aam
ka achaar. Revant looked interested. So did Papa. For, as she remembered, the
first tasting of the Mango pickle had been a family event. It had become a
tradition. With Nanima's passing away it too would pass... Ma passed the
glass bowl with the pickle. Ragini took a piece and kept it on her plate next
to the paratha.
For a long moment she looked at it.
The
oil it had been steeped in, spread in a golden puddle around it. The aroma rose
up to her nostrils. Her eyes blurred. 'Never again,' she thought bleakly. 'No
one to make aam ka achaar.' No Nanima. No grey house with white
shutters and a red roof.
She
tore of a bit from the paratha, put it into her mouth, then nibbled at the achaar.
It was perfect. Amazingly it was as wonderful as it had always been. She
looked up. She looked straight at Ma, as if seeing her for the first time. Ma
was looking at her, her face a question mark.
Her
face that suddenly seemed so like Nanima's face. The same expression.
The same eyes. Light brown. Nanima's eyes. Ma's eyes. Ragini's eyes.
Suddenly
Ragini knew. Yes, Nanima was there with them. In the colour of their
eyes. In the colours of their memories. She was there. Connecting them, binding
them though they were so different. Even though they would continue to argue
and believe that they would never understand one another— she and her mother.
Nanima
had passed on, but she had not left them. How could she, when she
was in them? In her daughter. And in her daughter's daughter.
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