I know this comes as a shock to you since everything was normal between us when I left. You may think that this has to do with my grandmother’s death. Yes, it does; but it is not about her death but about the love in her heart with which she died.
Almost a week before she died, she mumbled out a name with her feeble lips that left the entire family baffled. She had been unconscious for several days and we had begun to call our relatives and prepare them for the news. But, with that name, she sprung back to life.
So, we began to call back our relatives to assure them that grandmother might make it to Dashain. This news of her coming back to life was neither a joyous nor a sad one. Though everyone revered her, she was known to have her favourites even amongst her own sons. All of us, her grandchildren, believed that she loved our housemaid’s daughter more than us. She was what you might call rigid. She didn’t argue with people who didn’t share her values. She rather withdrew from them. And once you were on that list, she’d still smile at you but her cold eyes would make it obvious that she deems you to be a moron not worthy of an argument; least a conversation.
Next couple days, grandma kept calling out the same name. We tried to figure out who she was asking for. There was no one by that name within our family and close relatives. We went through the list of her friends. “May be she means our neighbour’s son, or her aunt’s nephew.” Eventually, we ruled out everyone. We gave up.
But not my father, you see. He kept calling people, asking for any clue on the name. He spent a lot of time by her; caressing her forehead, rubbing her hands, pulling blanket over her. He didn’t seem relived by her improvement. He continued to be stressed and withdrawn. He seemed to know that my grandmother wasn’t just rambling, that this name meant something significant for her.
Then there was that day. My father brought an elderly man to our house. He was taller than my father even when he crouched a little. He was white from head to toe. On his face, there was calmness of a monk. My father did not introduce him to us and he only smiled at us. My father guided him straight into my grandma’s room and asked everyone in there to leave.
Inside the room, the man took grandma’s hand in one hand, and caressed her forehead with the other. No words were exchanged. They only looked at each other.
When my father stepped out of the room, people who had flocked by the door fired questions at him. He said nothing in reply. Then my uncle spoke those words we thought was going to get him killed by his own brother, “Looks like mom had a secret lover.”
My father’s face reddened and chill ran down our spines. But he just stood there like a statue, letting the anger wane, he then gave uncle that “you’re too moronic to understand” look, which drove my uncle more mad than a good punch would have.
Right in the midst of family tension, the man walked out and left without a word.
That evening, it was as if grandmother was back in her sixties. She smiled at everyone. Opened her arms to hug everyone, even the ones she’d previously labelled as morons.
She died the next morning. She whispered a word to my father and slipped peacefully into a sleep.
Gossips began before the cremation fire cooled off. Relatives flocked around. Everyone wanted a scoop from the dead old woman’s love story. I just hung around the house unsure what to think. How could grandmother harbour love for this man while being married to my grandfather? Did my grandfather know? Was she cheating on him? How long had they known each other? Somehow, I knew that my father perhaps knew all the answers. But asking him would take the courage I didn’t have.
So having decided to return, I went to tell my father that I would be leaving soon. He was sitting in a couch looking out to the garden.
“Sit”, he said. With a heavy heart loaded with unanswered questions, I sat down near his feet.
“You are graduating this year?” he asked and I nodded.
“Good”, he said and we looked at the garden in silence.
“What did gradma say to you before she died?” I broke the serenity of the silence.
The pause that followed made me want to run back to my mother’s womb.
“Thank you,” he said. “She said thank you.”
“Thank you for what?” I asked; the tone of my voice louder and more demanding.
After a long time, I saw kindness in his eyes. “Baba, there was a woman I loved before I married your mother. When she died, I was inconsolable. It was then when your grandma told me about this man. I didn’t understand the connection then, but I do now. When you love someone truly enough, it doesn’t matter whether they are with you or not. The love you feel for that person, becomes the source of your life.”
“Your grandmother loved this man. What happened in her life... all the stories... they don’t matter. You just need to know that she was a faithful wife and a good mother. But, it was the love for this man, this man she never saw after she got married till the day she died, that filled her with life. It was that life which she gave back to all of us in the form of joy and love.”
So you see, what I mean, when I say that may be I don’t love you. May be I’ve never known love -- the kind of love that makes you forgive morons, that keeps burning inside your heart despite distances, that temporarily halts death, that completes life. I want to understand, I want to feel this love in my own heart. For that, I have to bid farewell to what I thought was love, but that now seems so shallow.
- Swastika Shrestha
No comments :
Post a Comment