Sitting around 350 kilometres from the house, it feels just
around the corner: It has not yet quite sunk in that the house will never be
the same again. I’ve read somewhere about how surprising it is that so much
memory is built around things unnoticed at the time. This cannot be truer of
No.20, Narayanappa Layout.
Some people need not do great things to be great, it is what
they didn’t do that makes them so great. My grandmother belonged in this category. She
would remain in the house making amazing vethai kozhambu and rasam, watch
predictable TV serials with great enjoyment , pray at the little tulsi turning
three circles with the unshaken faith , and go about daily business , thinking good
of everything and praying for everyone.
Paati existed in a simpler world of her own, one where words
like cynical and sarcastic had no place in her dictionary, one where a once in
half-a-decade trip to a nearby temple town took care of the word ‘holiday’, one
where relatives were not odd somebodys you saw at a wedding and discussed how
many years it was since you last met, but one where relatives were living
breathing creatures who were part of your daily life in a bigger way than the
internet is for us today.
Which is really saying something, and which is why the
scores of relatives who visited us shared with us genuine stories of Paati,
about how she touched each of their lives in some small way. Her culinary
skills were much talked about- even the third cousins sister-in-law’s neighbour
seemed to have a good word for Paati’s beans kari and keerai – the magic she
did to the spinach to make it so green and so light and yet so very flavoursome
is something that has probably followed her and gone away. Everybody was overcome with good words about
the fragile person who went about her whole life putting others in front of her
and somewhere along the way, forgot to occasionally put herself first.
Paati too had a good word for everyone, she would pity and
empathise with everyone from the helper’s errant son who would occasionally turn
up drunk offering to mend pipes, to an insignificant TV actress who failed to
catch a break, to a random kid troubled with homework. She never judged, and
never gossiped, and never failed to praise even a visiting grand niece’s
off-key singing, declaring it good enough for the radio, not because she
believed in empty praises but because she very wholeheartedly believed everyone
had something great in them and wanted everyone to come up in life. She wouldn’t
have distinguished between an Olympic medal and an inter-school lemon-and-spoon
race victory, and in her own sweetly naive way, this helped her keep her sanity
in this world, one so unfit for someone so pure.
Paati may not have won great races or invented great things,
but in a manner her achievement is incredibly rare : a person against whom not
a single soul ever had a bad word in her whole life. Somebody who anyone she
has never known will always, always look up to as one of the most selfless
people they have ever known. Someone to keep in mind when the world seems to
tell you the wrong path is the right path. Someone to remind you that having a
good heart is still, still pretty worthwhile!
( In continuation to the previous post http://nobodysignificant.blogspot.in/2012/07/mosaic-tiles-and-mismatched-curtains_19.html incedentally written around the same time last year)
