I started this blog a lifetime ago, writing about a grandfather I hardly knew.
This Deepavali, having gone home to visit my grandmother and of course get cozy with her infamous mutton curry, in between mouthfuls, I was a little touched and struck by the independence (perhaps loneliness),kindness and even tenderness of this matriarch.
We don't talk you know. Mainly because I don't speak Tamil and she speaks hardly any English. But year by year, I get by with saying Yes, No and Enough Already. She makes fun of my Tamil and I hang my head in shame. Repeat 20 years.
My earliest recollection of my Grandmother was her sitting in the kitchen with my dad, talking deep into the night, the yellow flicker of the single oil lamp etching shadows on the wall. It was during Deepavali past I think. I was five. We were visiting and we all bunked in my Grandfather's squatter house then. Within its papan walls and zinc roofing, there was so much laughter which due to circumstance and adult foolishness finally ebbed away into nothing. For us anyway.
My Grandmother is ageless and yet, as I grow older, I see her descent into old age and my heart breaks a little.
This Deepavali, having gone home to visit my grandmother and of course get cozy with her infamous mutton curry, in between mouthfuls, I was a little touched and struck by the independence (perhaps loneliness),kindness and even tenderness of this matriarch.
We don't talk you know. Mainly because I don't speak Tamil and she speaks hardly any English. But year by year, I get by with saying Yes, No and Enough Already. She makes fun of my Tamil and I hang my head in shame. Repeat 20 years.
My earliest recollection of my Grandmother was her sitting in the kitchen with my dad, talking deep into the night, the yellow flicker of the single oil lamp etching shadows on the wall. It was during Deepavali past I think. I was five. We were visiting and we all bunked in my Grandfather's squatter house then. Within its papan walls and zinc roofing, there was so much laughter which due to circumstance and adult foolishness finally ebbed away into nothing. For us anyway.
My Grandmother is ageless and yet, as I grow older, I see her descent into old age and my heart breaks a little.
1 comment:
awlaa..you make me miss her la you! tsk. (and also the mutton curry)
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