My earliest memory of my grandmother, I was about 4. She had just come to Nairobi from India and I was excited to see her. I followed her around as she completed some small tasks, but almost as soon as she arrived, she made for the car as she headed for Satsung. I didn’t want to leave her, so she asked if I wanted to come along, and naturally, my 4-year-old self imagined that this weekly prayer session must feature bouncy castles and a playground or why else would Ba be so eager to return every week? Of course, on arrival I learned that there were no children around, let alone toys, and I was expected to sit silently while the other elderly attendees listened to a lecture conducted in shudh Gujarati. Needless to say, I never went again. But I remember feeling safe with Ba; I didn’t want her to go to a place that didn’t have me in it, so she took me with her.
But today she has left, and this time permanently and without me. Over the years we lost touch. Drifted. She lived there, in India, usually in that remote town in Gujarat called Sayla that only those who know, know. And when I did see her on occasional visits to us in Perth or later London, she seemed in her own world, conducting her own rituals that I had little time for and even less understanding of.
She wasn’t an easy person by any means. As a child I went to her for comfort — a word that not many would associate with her. She never sat still, sutter-puttering about, shouting indecipherable instructions to those around her, making a move to meditate before remembering that she had forgotten to do something. She could be cruel too, knowing just how to administer guilt in the right proportions to get her way. But her daggered criticisms could also come with affection — a strange contradiction that manifested in her at unpredictable times. In a moment she could scold you for putting on weight and be awed by your commitment to education. She could offer compassion to people overlooked yet expect unrelenting loyalty in the face of her abuses.
And yet, she felt. With all her strength, she felt. She lit up in anger, grovelled in pain, begged for mercy from Bhagwan to whom she prayed daily. And with just as much force of will, she held your hand and kissed it. Called you vali and stroked your leg and cried when you left.
So what do we do with the memory of this person of contradictions? How do we hold space for her, remembering her incompleteness, her vulnerable edginess, her tempered love? How do we carry all that she was, wasn’t allowed to be, didn’t allow herself to be, and propel her into the future in all her fulness and incompleteness?
I guess here lies the challenge. To remember, even when the pain asks for forgetting and the sadness asks only for fondness. But I hope in writing this, we preserve some of that essence. A powerful force of a woman whose genes I hope I carry.
