Our Grandma's Trunk

An object gets reduced to junk when it outlives its usefulness. Today, on Earth Day, I rescued our grandmother's trunk from such a dire fate by reclaiming it from  the mafiosic violence of an overloaded and chaotic storeroom. And, by the patient process of sandpapering the rusted exterior, and applying a new coat of paint, this 60 year old 2'x1'x0.75' hunk of metal was finally accorded a new lease of life. I chose to depict a glamorous kingfisher on the lid because of the bird's pre-dawn waking habit, a routine which our grandmother too observed rigorously until the very end.

This trunk accompanied our grandma wherever she went, be it to visit one of her seven sisters, or her own grown kids. In the case of the latter, it was mainly to help them manage a newborn baby and organize the many festivities which revolve around a birth. In fact, any occasion which demanded her diligent presence, she was there. One would hardly notice her as she moved around unobtrusively like a slow, stealthy shadow, attending to a thousand and one chores.

The trunk contained all she had: a few white cotton sarees, neatly folded, some blouses, a woolen shawl for winter, and a paltry sum of money which she would have liked to invest in the stock market. Black and quite ordinary, it was a heavy little thing and it seemed almost laughable that its content should have been so lean and simple. Just the way she was.

Beyond a smile and a quick, 'Namaste Maaji', I don't think we ever indulged in any kind of  significant conversation. I can conjure up a couple of reasons which might have given way to such reticence. Firstly, I didn't understand the dialect she spoke, and secondly speech was not her forte. 

Overwrought and bent at ninety degrees, she moved around the house straightening things up, or mending a torn dress, fixing a button, hemming a skirt...folding the laundry in a way that it wouldn't need ironing...she always found something to keep herself busy. In an era where televisions did not boom across one's living room and the radio was a means to set the time on one's watch and listen to the news on AIR (All India Radio), we never found her marooned on the island of boredom, wondering what to do with all those hours of a day. She had a bag full of unshelled watermelon and cantaloupe seeds which she had collected, cleaned and sun-dried over the long summer. If nothing else, she would sit down with a pair of tweezers, gently squeezing on the seeds, popping them open, extracting the kernel inside and storing it in bottles, to be later roasted with salt, or to be used as garnish for festival sweets.

In 1930s, in the big haveli built by our grandparents, where our father and his three siblings were born and brought up, our grandmother's day began with grinding the daily quota of wheat flour in a quern-stone and weaving cloth on a spinning wheel, two disciplines which she, along with several women of her generation, had adopted, overtly as an expression of self-reliance, and covertly as a way to revolt against the British colonialism. And, this was only the wee beginning of a long day, which, for her, usually kicked off at 4 in the morning. Waking up early meant being able to sweep the house, mop the central courtyard, start the fire in the kitchen and dive into her usual set of daily tasks before the rest of the household slowly yawned and stretched itself awake from its nocturnal rêverie. 

Relentless in her pursuit of perfection, she went through the day tirelessly, yet never did she thrust any expectations on anybody. She was the epitome of a Karmayogi. Karmayoga is one of the four classical spiritual paths in Hinduism, based on the 'yoga of action/work'. To a Karmayogi, work is a form of prayer. 

Eyes sunken looking into an ever-changing timelessness, skin dark brown and wrinkled like a wise old tree, she gracefully defied the seventh stage of man as described by William Shakespeare:

"Last scene of all

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere        oblivion;

Sans eyes, sans teeth, sans taste, sans everything"

For until she breathed her last, not only did she have all her senses together, but much much more. On this Earth Day I remember her as someone who treaded so softly upon the ground that we didn't hear her pass, nor when she passed away in her sleep...yet a small trunkful of quiet memories remain in a remote corner of the mind, lingering.