I've always thought my grandfather and I had a
special relationship. I've been told I was with
him in the car park at the hospital when Sana was born which is one of my
earliest imagined vague memories. Vague, or imagined, as the case may be, it
really doesn't matter. I loved him anyway. I‘m forgetting my own life at a
really rapid rate, but I can remember many scenes from my childhood with him. I’ll
never forget the ‘Silence Game’ that he played with us so seriously for so
long which we never ever suspected wasn’t a bona fide game! He would sit on his chair in the verandah, the one on the left side and Sana and I would sit on the
other two. I remember also (in the days before 2000) him riding the scooter out for errands and how we used to run to open the gate and come back on the scooter with him.
I remember how wonderful he was after he lost his
eyesight: how he never complained or whined about it, but took it with his
trademark brand of humour and wit and had an unbroken and unshaken faith. I remember
how he would sit and read the headlines as far as his limited eyesight would
permit him, how he watched the news for hours together everyday and how both of
them always consequently knew everything that was going on in the world. I
remember him never failing to watch Munshi on Asianet at 6pm(or was it 7pm). I can remember watching parts of Malayalam
movies with him where he still understood more of what was going on, without
looking, than I did. I remember how he used to sit, with hands interlocked, head tilted down and eyes screwed up,
concentrating on the dialogues and the way he used to laugh at a joke, the
sudden bark of laughter.
I remember how he used to put on the pump every day
and listen for the water to fall from the overflow pipe and how he started delegating it to us: a special task. I remember how he used to tell us stories: about how he joined
the army, how he bought the house, how he met Ammachi! His favourite saying was “Be content with
what you have”. I remember how his dialogues could be really funny and
surprising. I remember how he took stupid stands sometimes just to irritate
Mama or Reji appa and went on arguing with them, sometimes with hilarious
results, with everyone getting quite agitated! And then there was his ‘Tapatha
thithips’ , samosas and buns...there's such a flood of memories!
Life won’t
be quite the same without him in it.
And I'll try to continue to remember.
