Life has to move on, but somethings just don't.

Sometimes I wonder what would Life mean if it was not for the people around you who love you more than anything else in this world. When I was young, I would ask mom what is God and I still love to believe in what I was taught. God could not make himself available to every one in this nutty world. So he created a home and a few people to take care of us and love all the sanity and insanity we were born with. We call them family. And somehow they go on to become the base of our spirit. We wouldn’t know.
The strange and the natural part of it all is that when Life takes you to different destinies, you would crave for those times when you could sit together for a lousy chat or the hug you used to simply get when you got back home in the evening.

I remember, when I hit the gate at 4 o’clock in the evening from school/college, my grandmom (maternal) would wait for me at the doorway, simply to greet me with a smile (ohh, I would do anything for that beautiful smile of hers). She would kiss my hand (I wouldn’t let her kiss my cheek because I would be all sweaty and dirty after the tiring day) and follow me in to talk of how the day was.

My grandmom, mom and I would get down to a cozy chat over a nibble and talk of all that had made the day. It always enthused me to find that my grandmom was more interested (than my mom) in discussing all the crazy things we used to do at college, all the latest fashion on TV, cheesy episodes of some of our favorite programmes, my friends et all. She would ask me if I had seen that latest ad on TV, where a girl came in a very trendy salwar suit. Sometimes I would just whisk her comments off saying, “No Achi (Grandmom in Tamil), I don’t think it’s nice”.

We lived in the same place, same compound I mean but she used to live in a separate house for she needed her own space and had so many styles I wouldn’t understand. Sometimes she would beg me to have a spoon of payasam (kheer) she prepared when I would be racing like an athlete to find a place in my morning cab. My cab driver would have already lost all the patience in the world, after waiting for me for 10 minutes.
Sometimes when I would walk over to wish her Good Night, I would find her sitting in a rocking chair, in the corridor, gazing at the stars. And I would assume she was thinking about grandpa. But most of the time, she would be engrossed in a book.

She used to buy me pastries and chocolates every day when I was in school. And as I was enjoying my late teens, I think she still didn’t want to treat me the same way with chocolates and cakes so she would ask “shall we go out for a pizza! “. And those evenings when we would flick appa’s car and drive down to the bakery to have pizzas and ice creams still linger in my heart and I know they would always make some of the best memories of my life.

She may not be with me now. But when I look within, I feel truly blissful to have a smile at the memories I had with her and to have a feeling of warmth she left in me. Some relationships in life have a beauty of their own to be best experienced and left unexplained because words may not do justice to describe the best of what life gives you. Even while distance has intruded your bonding, there is no stopping the relation that is built, there’s no stopping the love, because more often than not, the best things in life are not always tangible.


This post is in dedication to my Achi, who left us this day, three years ago.