STORIES FOR YOUNG ONES - VI

Sharing some stories I have been telling my three grandchildren 

RITI MEETS HER GREAT-GRANDMOTHER

Image courtesy: Canva 

Ammu had a great way of bringing her stories to life. She would associate her subjects with a colour or with a dish she was cooking or some chore she was performing at that hour.

Riti had grown up listening to tales of her mother’s girlhood. Some or the other uncle, aunt or their children kept drifting in and out of Riti’s home. After they left, her Ammu would recount some interesting event or anecdote related to those or other relatives.

Thus once, while kneading dough, she told Riti about an aunt who hated being given this task. Riti was fascinated by the way her mother could roll out a wonderful ball of dough using powder-looking flour and water. So she could not imagine why the aunt had not enjoyed doing it.

“That was because she did not like anything to stick to her fingers. But then, that was exactly why Grandfather insisted that she prepare the dough daily for the entire family,” Ammu replied.

“But you had a huge family, Ammu!” Riti cried. She began counting on her fingers: “Your grandfather, grandmother, my grandfather, his brothers … five of them, and two aunts. Ten in all!”

“Of course ours was a huge family, and you haven’t counted my mother and five of us brothers and sisters,” Ammu smiled teasingly.

“Oooh, your poor aunt! But then your uncles were also married, so there were other aunts as well?” Riti asked.

“No, not till then. This aunt was last but one of the brood. You forget that we used to be put to work in the kitchen even before we were ten years of age,” Ammu reminded her.

Riti was curious. “I don’t understand, Ammu. You had a large house with marble staircases and all, with many servants. Then why did you girls have to cook?”

“My grandfather said hard days do not ring an alarm before they arrive. And servants may not always be around to wait on you. You should know how to run the kitchen because that is the most critical role in a household. Our schooling was not as important in those days, though we did attend senior school.”

“Ammu, why did your mother or grandmother not knead the dough?”

“Like I said, Grandfather wanted to prepare his daughter for her life ahead,” Ammu told her patiently.

“Besides, my father was the eldest child and lost his mother quite early, like I did. Grandmother, who brought me up, was actually his stepmother and just a few years older than him.

“I too had a stepmother. She was much younger than my father and he pampered her a lot to keep her happy. She had little time for us after she had children of her own. So Grandmother took us under her wing. That meant she had plenty more to do. ... I was very attached to her,” Ammu added, a little sadly.

“Is she dead?” Riti asked innocently.

“My grandmother? Oh no, she lives with my youngest uncle,” Ammu replied.

“Do you meet her often?” Riti seemed full of questions.

Something had upset Ammu. “Sometimes, when we visit my uncle,” she said vaguely. Riti was sent off on a trivial errand and the rest of the story was forgotten.

Some years later, when Riti was 14 years old, she accompanied her mother to a wedding in a dusty old town. It was a chilly day and the girl was feeling rather bored. The ceremonies were over before noon, and Ammu asked her if she would like to meet Grandmother.

“My grandmother,” she said in response to Riti’s questioning look.

“She lives here? You never said a word about it when we left home,” Riti pointed out accusingly.

“It was to be a surprise. Grandmother lives in a colony close by, and is not well, so I would not have missed this chance to look her up,” said Ammu.

Against the drone of the lumbering bus that took them to Grandmother, Riti hurled a volley of questions at Ammu.

“Why does your uncle live in this faraway place and not in the city, the way your other uncles do? Why does Grandpa not look after his stepmother? All your uncles are much richer than him, no, so why doesn’t she live with any of them? Do they all send money for their mother?”

Ammu had no straight answer to any of these. But she did tell her daughter in a roundabout way that Grandmother preferred to be with her last-born, probably feeling closest that way to her late husband.

Riti did not fully understand this explanation, but she could make out from her mother’s reluctant words that the rich uncles were only too glad to have an ailing mother off their hands.

Ammu could not tell Riti that Grandpa, who was a fearsome father to her when she was small, had helplessly watched when his much younger wife frittered away all his wealth on her own siblings.

Ammu’s uncle’s place turned out to be a rundown house. It was one in a row of shaggy flats strung across one side of a square, built around a large open space.

The square had just one entrance, and Ammu’s grandmother – a mere bundle of bones, actually – was heaped on a rickety cot near it.

Grandmother seemed to have been plucked from her bed and dropped there, seemingly to stay warm in the weak sun, but the strong wind was chilly and unsparing. Yet her withered face was all smiles when she recognized Ammu’s voice.

She struggled with the blanket covering her, as if to get up, but Ammu’s aunt suddenly swooped down on them.

She must have spotted the duo when they entered the square. She hustled them indoors, ignoring her mother-in-law completely. They were served tea and biscuits, treated to a long list of the woes that had befallen the family, and then escorted out.

All Ammu managed to get out of her aunt was that Grandmother had spilt hot tea over herself some days back and the burns had not healed fully yet, so she had to be kept unclothed with just a blanket around her.

Ammu refused to move after she reached Grandmother on her way out. Her aunt fluttered around helplessly. Ammu spoke a few loving words to the old woman but out of sheer politeness to her aunt, she did not mention the injury.

It was with great effort that Grandmother mumbled a few endearments into Ammu’s ear, her eyes nearly shut but with love shining through. No complaint about her current state or suffering passed her lips.

Riti was quiet on the return journey. A distressed Ammu kept glancing at the girl, but she could only guess what was going through her mind.

“What sort of love exists in this world, Ammu?” Riti spoke up when they were seated in the train taking them back home.

“Uh, what love are you talking about, dear?” asked Ammu in turn, apprehensive about what was coming.

“So people stop loving their parents when they grow old and frail?

“What is the use of being wealthy and keeping servants if you won’t attend to the needs of your own mother?

“Why do parents live only with their sons? Your grandmother could live with us otherwise, no? 

“Does no one visit her here? Do they know of her condition? Imagine, she doesn’t seem to have any flesh left!”

“Where was this going to end?” Ammu thought.

She was bracing herself for more when Riti said, too wisely for her young years: “Well, obviously there is another sort of love too. Your grandmother still loves you, she still loves all her children, I am sure, and she loves her youngest son most because he is the poorest of them all. Perhaps he needs her most, emotionally, I mean.”

“I can’t say your aunt loves her, but at least she hasn’t turned her out,” she added cheekily.

Ammu knew then that her daughter had grown up during the short trip to a dusty old town.