They say there are five stages of grief. Seven maybe. Either way, I think I can say I’ve been through about four. Or am going through them – they’re going back and forth for me to be unable to pinpoint which stage I’m at, right now, at this very moment, yesterday – who knows?
After the first few months, I just stopped counting. I stopped listening. If you look hard enough and want it enough, there’s advice everywhere. But I don’t. Once the tears have dried and you’ve managed to move past the disbelief (which I’ve heard is just about the first step) I think we just do what we think is right and sensible. We pretend we’re moving on with our lives. Things will strike out of the blue, conversations will pop up and the past will be hard to let go. But we’re doing just fine. We think. I think. And then, I reminisce.
The crackling of corn on an open flame, a mixture of salt and limboo with a sneaky dash of chilly powder and a mischievous glint in his eye as he handed me the bhutta… That’s one of my earliest and fondest memories, one that stayed cemented in my mind long after the bhuttas ceased to come and I got too big to swing my legs off the kitchen counter. In fact, I was soon too big to even jump up on the kitchen counter. They’re still the memories that come to me first.
What comes in at a close second are the smells of sukhad and the taste of malido early morning. So many quintessentially Parsi customs are intertwined with memories of him – everything we ever wanted to know about our faith and our culture, we turned to him for, listening to him talk as we stared out the wide, open windows near his rocking chair. One we fought over countless times as children.
Memories of my Navjote aren’t complete without remembering advice from him, jokes, laughter and meeting so many of his friends – I don’t think I could remember even one, unfortunately. I wish I did, he introduced each with a speech, never forgetting anything about anyone. He taught me how to walk down the tables, interrupting my Birdie Dance to teach me how to say Jamjo ji and getting me extra saria from the kitchen to make up for it. I’ve always been grateful for him making sure the sev puri we all craved, as odd as it may have been at a Navjote, was present at my brother’s.
Every time I go to the fridge to sneak a cold cutlet out, I think of who first taught me how to do that. When I stand near his cupboard I remember peering in and selecting his cologne from the hundreds he hoarded there. Watching him fold notes neatly to put in separate pockets. Standing in the room as he hushed us in when no one was looking (usually right after lunch) to give us a treat – often a 10 rupee note that was treasure to us at the time.
We used to move the table aside together when we all sat down for a family lunch, typically on a Sunday afternoon. He would disconnect the phone and I’d pick up the table to swing forward – it seemed like such a Herculean task at the time, but such an important duty assigned to me as a child. That table was where I learnt how delicious plain rice could be if you gently separated it with your fork and spooned steaming mouthfuls of it up.
At ‘sleepovers’ we’d wake up early to help my grandmother make tarts, whispering so we wouldn’t disturb his morning prayers and knowing we could talk loudly again when his cheery voice boomed into the kitchen as he entered to poke his finger in the pastry and steal a bit of jam, before taking credit for the entire thing – something that amused us to no end as children. It was one joke he kept going right till the end.
We were never in want of anything when he was around. He spoiled me to no end – but in a subtle, most affectionate way that never let us take anything about him or his generosity for granted. He’d let me have the last piece of malido, or take all the blue gems or lemon sweets out of the bottle if I wanted to – and he always made it seem like more fun than it should have been. Of course, I had to pay him back for it later; usually by walking on his back.
He was also the most talkative member of our family. He spoke to people on the phone with vivacity I’ve seen few others match – and then he spoke to people in person too. He never tired of telling us about every friend he’d ever had, every naughty thing he’d ever done… we could picture his childhood when he was telling us about it. We knew the history of every bit of furniture in Valsad, every nook and cranny of Devka… there was never a dull moment.
When I want something or I’m worrying about how to get something done, I can almost imagine his slight nod, quick hand raise and assurance that it would happen. Everything would happen. We weren’t to worry about anything. And we really didn’t. He made everything seem possible.
Sometimes I can’t believe he listened to the Spice Girls with me, with such patience. Or how he laughed and played along while we cursed my brother for hitting a single ball against the wall, over and over and over again till the noise drove us mad.
He sat with us at weddings, away from the ‘grown-ups’ while we cracked down on the spines of the banana leaves, relished the saas-ni-machhi, spooned up topli paneer.
We argued about technology, which he never got his head around and he joked about throwing an old computer we gave him ‘Out the window.’ Just before he bought my grandmother her pretty red Dell.
He was good to people who weren’t particularly good to him, generous when people needed it and always willing to do something for someone else – even if it was fixing a television or sorting out someone’s accounts when he needed the taking care of, a quality I really hope we’ve all picked up. There are so many things we will always remember, but not everything can be written down. And, as I’ve learned to accept, not everything needs to be.
His last birthday, in between eating more salted wafers than he should have, he never let the exhaustion show, sitting there as long as he had to, his smile as wide and his voice as cheerful as he could make it. He passed away the same month, on the dreariest Friday I’ve ever known, after a particularly bad Thursday night that I always will wish I hadn’t left to go home so early on.
There was nothing more heartbreaking than every moment he said he was going to fight his cancer. Nothing more admirable than how he refused to let go, to let it get him down. He was trying to make it easier for us – without ever letting us know. And he did.
There are not too many days that go by when I don’t think of some of the last few things I spoke to him and what we were going to do next week, how he was going to be in higher spirits when I saw him next and that my mint nailpolish was a nice ‘bright’ colour. It’s the little things we remember.
I’ve heard so much about how to be grateful for how little he suffered, for the rich a life he had. But anyone who’s ever lost anyone knows that’s not easy to do. Closer to impossible.
Every year we got a birthday card from him, with money and a one rupee coin; his unmistakable handwriting scrawled on the front of the envelope. I hardly realised that my 22nd birthday card would be the last I’d ever get.
So there you go. That’s about as raw as I’ll ever be. Unless I find a way to say everything I really want to, in the way I really want to, which I don’t think I ever will. But after all this time, this is a good start.
My grandfather was an exemplary man. And as is the case with all exemplary men – it’s never easy to explain how, or why. Or how much he meant, to how many people. But, I’m sure wherever he is, he knows.
Rhea Dhanbhoora has been writing since childhood, has published a book of poems (Poetry Through Time, published by English Edition in 2003) and is currently a Literature student, writing features as part of a full-time job. She can’t imagine a life without writing and one day hopes to be able to live and breathe off the words, preferably in an idyllic country setting somewhere. Food, music, reading and travel are high up there on the list of things she loves reading and writing about. Writing to her is, like life itself, an adventure – a journey to find her place, to define and redefine who she is over and over again and to live and learn through the process.