God bless

(written in Oct 2011, on my trip)

I sit at the café looking out of the windows that give me a clear view of the square, in all its windy and cobbled glory. Empty chairs belonging to this café and the others around it are placed around the edges of the square, waiting for customers that they know will not come. A moss-covered statue stands tall in the middle, completing the look. There’s the town hall, trying to look dignified and imposing, in vain. There’s the usual assortment of self-important buildings strewn around the square, and even a large clock. A few people wander on the streets, braving the chill, possibly for early shopping. But my eye is caught by a woman.

A lady, I should say. She sits upright in one of the chairs of the café, right outside the window, taking occasional sips from a cup of steaming coffee placed on her table. She is clad in a long, well-cut trench coat and dark colored books that are not muddy despite the weather. Her eyes are clear and her face unlined, though her advanced age is obvious by her grey hair, clearly swept back from her face and arranged in neat frames around it. Her ears sport pearl earrings, but she’s not wearing any other jewellery, except for a silver, delicate watch. There’s a relaxed expression on her face as she smokes a cigarette, though I can’t see the packet in sight.
That, and the grey hair, suddenly makes me think of Nanima. I wonder what she would have to say. Would she balk at the smoking, deeming it unfit for a person who should be setting examples for the others? Or would she instead comment on the whole ensemble – the clothes, the hair, the attitude? I actually suspect that she would be a little admiring. Not of the cigarette, but the fact that an elderly lady is sitting in a café on her own, having coffee, unencumbered by people around her and obviously quite relaxed about it. A rare sight in India. And if there’s one person who could understand the dignity and independence of this scene, it would be Nanima.
Not that she didn’t like to be around people.Far from it. She looked forward to social occasions and had a strong sense of family, first bringing up three children with undivided attention and then pretty much rearing me, my sister and my cousin in our early years, giving us so much love that it acted as our foundation of confidence for most of our adult lives. But she also had a sense of self that set her apart from all her peers who got defined only in relation to their husbands and children.

As I look again at the well cut coat and expensive shoes of the lady at the cafe, I recollect the white and blue printed silk sarees that Nanimawas fond of, wearing them crisply tucked in, a cream shawl on her shoulders, a small handbag on her arms, setting out for “work”. Never mind that the work was sometimes to go and help out at her brother in law’s office, or sometimes to change two crowded buses and travel a couple of hours to reach a village, where she would talk to the women about education and smokeless chulhas. She would often stop by at our place, ringing our bell from below and smiling broadly as I peeped over the terrace ledge and told her how nice she was looking. Sometimes it would be to ask us if we needed anything, sometimes it would be just to drop some goodies she had brought. In the evening, at her little one room apartment, she would cook a simple but hearty meal of paranthas, which she would have sitting in front of her tiny TV. If the next day were a weekend, she would stock up on mangoes or other fruits, knowing that my sister or I would pay her a visit. We would spend our afternoon or evening there, often forsaking our air conditioned room to spend time with her; share our school stories as she listened eagerly, listen to her experiences and advise her sagely, eat up all the fruits and whatever else was available, sometimes just in silence and take a nap on the warmest of beds, and usually go for a walk in the evening, with an ice cream or peanuts at the end of it.
The thought of the peanuts suddenly makes me remember the yogurt covered peanuts I have in my bag, one of my many gluttonous weaknesses. But peanuts make me thirsty and I need to ask for some water. My friends say I must have been a camel in my earlier life, so rarely do I have water. I guess I got it from my mother, who’s the same. Was Nanima like that too?
As with everything else, she was fastidious about eating habits. Not that she insisted on elaborate traditional regiments, but she liked to have her three meals at predictable times, with a predictable level of nutrition involved. She could never understand, or appreciate, people who took food lightly. Not one to sermonize, she would instead take things into her own hands and drum up something simple, nutritious and usually delicious. Not that the kitchen was the center of her active life. She would wash clothes, make breakfast for the family, personally clean her own room, supervise the maids and generally look after wherever she would live. And find time for watching some tv and reading till she slept off with the glasses on her face and the light on. And if you asked her to come out for a movie or shopping, she would be ready in a matter of minutes. How she found that energy that would shame people half her age (and did), I never knew. A couple of times when I asked her, she just said “Jo karnahai so karna hai; aur kuch cheezen pasand hai”.

That simple response is a lesson to all of us armchair philosophers. These kids cycling on the square, do they know what that means? Or are they too dissolved in existential angst and endless debates about what they want versus what they need versus what’s the right thing to do? Nanima discovered early on that sometimes there’s no choice, you just need to deal with what life gives you and make the best of it. Whether it be moving at an early age from Pakistan to India, or living most of her life in stringent financial conditions or the self-absorbed unwitting neglect of her adult children and grandchildren. Or living in a disturbed household for seven years. When she finally left, determinedly shutting her ears to the crying voice of the child she loved the most, she maintained a calm that broke only when she sobbed her heart out for many days, alone. The same calm that she displayed as her siblings and children were struck by tragedy time after time, she alone standing like a pillar of strength, offering both love and a fortitude that tested the vagaries of destiny. You have no choice as you look on the faces of the dead, your loved ones, and retreat into a silence of fatalistic acceptance, yet invincible dignity.
But as I myself struggle to recover from an over exhausted mind and body, and see similar faces around me, I know that the secret to carrying on is not to accept that there’s no choice, but to believe that our choice is about us, and how we react to the world around.

In one of my last conversations with her, she spoke in her usual practical tone about whether it’s worth spending money on her neighborhood kitty considering that each round takes more than a year and she is not certain if she will survive the next one. As I responded vehemently that she is in good health and such statements only attract negative energy, she changed the subject and asked me about my upcoming vacation plans and then signed off with her customary “god bless”. A few weeks later, I returned from the vacation and spent a night with restless dreams about her, waking up with a resolve to speak with her. But she was gone, passed away the way she wanted to, quickly, painlessly and without fuss, next to her daughter.

The square is deserted by now, the chilly wind having dispersed the last of the brave souls. The sky is grey, the street lamps dispel weak light. And the lady at the table is gone. In the faint distance, someone calls out “Nanima, Nanima”, in an urgent, emphatic voice assured of the attention and affection of her response.

The voice is mine, so are the tears.