What she forgot, what I remember

By Aparna Salvi Nagda

When memories betray you...

Memories betray. They say it all the time. But my chance to believe it arrived much later in life. Through my Aaji, and not through me, this dictum chose to walk into my world. Her memory betrayed her until she became a part of it.

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Aaji embraced the parallel realm last year. To me, she had been long gone.

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Amnesia chased her until she looked back with blank, dry eyes. What would she cry for? She had lost the memory of her dead husband and siblings. Her attempts to slip her hand into the old trunk and search for forgotten photographs turned futile. Amid the frantic search, she would forget what she had lost. The “I can’t find it” panic would soon be replaced by the helplessness of “I forgot what I was searching for.” From desperation to desolation, she traversed the deserts alone.

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Children didn’t believe her. Grandchildren teased her. Aaji laughed with them. Age, she blamed. But how old was she? Sixty, when I was six or seven, if I remember correctly.

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My hand still feels the softness of Aaji’s skin. My nose remembers the aroma of her varan (dal). Her Santoor soap bar, her Cuticura talcum powder, her Jai kajal, her shiny nose pin…oh, I remember it all. And why?

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I am Aaji’s eldest grandchild. Born to her only daughter, I was special. Vacations, weekends, and public holidays were all spent languishing at her humble abode. A kitchen, a living room, and a tiny balcony, this was her idea of a sprawling, comfortable house my grandfather had built for her. Away from insensitive in-laws who gave her damp rugs to sleep on and Wheel bar soap to bathe with, Aaji considered her home a blessing.

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I speak of an era when a daughter-in-law stepping over the threshold of her marital home was cursed. Come what may, the bride had to stifle her yearnings and pretend to live harmoniously with her extended family. Aaji, in 1960, chose to break the norm when the same Wheel bar was handed to her to bathe her premature newborn. Luckily, my Nana stood by her, placing a tender hand on his wife’s shoulder as she held their first daughter. Little did Aaji know then that my Aai would be her first, and last.

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In an age when couples produced babies by the dozen, Aaji and Nana busied themselves caring for and caning one.

Deep within Aaji, the desire to bear more children lay buried. Instead, she raised her sister’s children as her own. The real reward arrived in the form of her grandchildren. The grandmother hen flapped her wings and set about pecking the best grains for her nati.

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From stitching feather-soft godhadis to pampering us with puffy phulkas, Aaji’s love language was unmistakable.

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My grandmother was a poor woman. She didn’t leave behind heaps of gold or hectares of land for my mother. Her cupboard was a shy little thing tucked into one corner of the house, holding a few polyester or nylon saris.

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My Aai, on the other hand, owns an entire wardrobe, silks from varied corners of the country jostling for space. Aaji never went to formal school. Yet Aai recently retired from a reputed bank. What Aaji passed on was an inheritance of willpower and tenacious determination.

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Though I call her poor today by my own standards of economy, Aaji walked the bazaar streets with the aura of Queen Victoria. I often wondered what made this quiet woman suddenly commanding. The sound of fifty-paise coins in her potli worked wonders.

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No, it wasn’t a purse. A purse is stylish, with compartments for credit cards, currency notes, and coins, too much display of wealth. Aaji’s potli was cloth, mirrors adorning its exterior, and paise giving it confidence from within. When she loosened its drawstrings, magic happened. I was treated to ice candies and masala sing.

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That day, Aaji was a rich woman, to me.

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Money didn’t mean squandering it. Not on dolls dangling from shop windows or frosted cupcakes beckoning from glass enclosures. I had to walk straight, eyes fixed on my nose, undistracted by hawkers’ calls. Back home, I was rewarded with phulkas and, occasionally, shira. In the lightness of the phulka and the sweetness of the shira lay Aaji’s love.

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Every vacation, every holiday, Aaji served me these delicacies without fail.

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Once, Aaji forgot to prepare shira. She covered her folly with a blanket of lies. “I’m turning senile,” became her go-to ointment for my disappointments. I never minded.

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In her tiny balcony, she sat staring blankly at the sky, its patterns of ridges and veins. She didn’t blink when Aai offered her dinner at night. With a knitted pillow under her head and a trembling hand resting on her chest, she slept for days together. When she woke, Aaji chose the balcony facing the sun, ignoring the shadows it cast behind her. She smiled occasionally, but her lips, unable to bear the weight of a smile, drooped back into a frown.

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One day, I touched her feet, and she pulled them back, looking at me questioningly. How could she forget my touch? The unfamiliarity in her eyes pushed me off the precipice of pampering I had reached. How old was she that day? I have conveniently forgotten.

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From her, I inherited pride. You choose not to recognise me? Good for you. I turned my back on this version of Aaji. Ignorance is bliss.

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In her mind, thoughts, and actions, she drifted away from us. Her potli lay untouched. Her nati, her only daughter’s first child, received icy stares. Whenever she looked at me with indifference, my skin burned as though scrubbed with a Wheel bar. When I tried to curl up beside her, she recoiled, shivering with fear; it felt like sleeping on damp rugs.

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In her last days, as a mere physical entity, breathing shallowly, she lay listless beside a humming ventilator. I did not grieve her departure. She had chosen Alzheimer’s over us. It was her way of severing ties. Perhaps she had had enough of my mother and me. Of our demands for hot phulkas and warm godhadis.

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Her Santoor soap. Her Cuticura talcum. Oh, why do I remember so much when she had forgotten us?

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Aaji had pulled over herself a quilt of nonchalance. Perhaps the old woman loosening her grip on life was never my Aaji at all. The one cremated last year, beside whose lifeless body my mother wept, was my mother’s mother.

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My Aaji was long gone.