I'll See You When I Get There

Chittazhi Kamala Nair - My beloved grandmother

On the night that my grandmother fell, far away in Mumbai, I went to bed sullen, despite having run a wonderful half-marathon after two years that morning. I won’t claim to have had premonitions of my grandma’s illness, at least not that evening. After a few previous visits to Kerala, I had told my wife of those portents that my grandmother might pass away soon. Earlier this year, a certain bout of illness had caused her limbs to go numb and had confined her to bed. With my brother-in-law’s wedding coming up, we were all worried. My mother used to sound apprehensive when I used to call her.

Then I went to Kerala in March, a month before the wedding. As usual, I reached home early morning after riding on the overnight bus from Bangalore. My parents were at the door, but I kept looking into the dining area where the feeble light of dawn was slowly spreading on the floor. My grandmother’s room lay beyond the dining area. I was afraid I’d have to see her lying motionless in bed. But within the next few seconds, out she skittered, walking bent but without strain and without even a walking cane! My heart brightened, just like the unfolding morning. I threw my arm around her and she smiled brightly, as the morning sunlight flooded into the house. My grandmother not only attended the wedding, she also sat in the front row at the Sangeet ceremony and enjoyed the performances and the party that followed. After that, I forgot about the premonitions. I never thought her end would come so suddenly. Unfortunately, I never saw her alive after that. Perhaps, it was not in my good karma to do so.

She passed away four days after the fall. Like aftershocks of an earthquake, she suffered several strokes after the first one that Sunday night which caused her to fall in the bathroom. She was taken to the hospital then. She never returned home.  

Home. Words have a different meaning at different times and situations. For most of us, “home” is not just a brick-and-concrete structure, a villa or an apartment, a hovel or a palace. It is an emotion, a bond often stronger than the ties of blood. (Or is it the ties of blood that define home?) My grandmother lived in Mumbai for the most part of her life and, I can safely say, she loved it there. At least her Khar and Santacruz days, she relished. But her heart always belonged to Cheruthuruthy, the little town on the shores of the Bharathapuzha river. 

The house she grew up in, now a museum

The house she grew up in - now a government-owned museum dedicated to the Great Poet Vallathol Narayana Menon – the cousins, uncles and aunts, the great poet and her grandfather himself, the glass-paned vestibule on the top floor of the house – fondly called the ‘chillumuri’ – the endless laughter that resonated during vacations, the bath-trips to the river that she dreaded – she could not swim – and the Kathakali and Bharathanatyam performances at the Kalamandalam; Cheruthuruthy was what home meant to her. All she had to do, wherever she was, was to shut her eyes, and immediately, she used to get teleported to this home of hers, long after home ceased to exist.

She was cremated on the shores of the Bharathapuzha. As the flames consumed the pyre, the smoke rose and drifted towards the Vallathol Samadhi on the other side of the river. The bright sun hid for a moment and thunder gurgled, but it didn’t rain. It was a sign – how blessed she was, my grandma! – that her soul had transformed into the little girl she once was. She was happily running to her grandparents to sit on their laps.

As we performed the rituals at the river, we met another group that had also, similarly, conducted the funeral of their mother. The pyre was right next to my grandmother’s. We got talking and realised that their mother was my grandmother’s classmate in school! On further enquiries, we got to know that both girls sat next to each other in school. I looked up at the wafting smoke rising from both pyres and smiled. I could imagine her with her friend, in pigtails, giggling and soaring across the river to their school in Cheruthuruthy. 

My grandmother had truly returned home.

PS: My grandmother was the granddaughter of Mahakavi Vallathol Narayana Menon; the eldest daughter of his eldest daughter, Unnimaya. I'm my grandmother's elder daughter Yamuna's eldest son, but it's my sister Sanjana who, with her daughter Aradhya, is part of the four generations of my grandmother's lifetime :)