A meet with my Great Grandmother

     The corridor was long, stretched infinitely on either side. The ceiling, the floor, and the walls were painted bright white except for the red doors on the walls, resembling the corridor of a hotel room. I knocked on the door, whose nameplate read ‘Debaki Rani Acharya’. My heart filled with nervousness and excitement. A woman in her late twenties opened the door. She greeted me with a smile and asked me to come in.

    My presumptions of the size of the room diminished as I stepped in. Like magic, the scenery completely changed. I was standing in front of a cottage.  Everything appeared familiar as I looked around. It was my village, just not the way I remembered it. The house was the predecessor of the one I grew up in. A few mango plants, each not more than a man’s height, were planted near the fences. My earliest memory remembers them, fully grown, seventy-eighty years in the future. In the summers, my sister and I used to be woken up early by grandfather.  We would go to the garden to collect the mangoes.

     She spread out a mat and went inside the kitchen to bring some lychees and berries for me. We sat in the open space inside the house, called Agana in traditional Odia households. The house had mud walls and a two-layered ceiling, the first one made with bamboo and mud mortar (called Atu), and the second one (the roof) thatched with paddy stalk and bamboo. There were four rooms (two bedrooms, a worship room, and a kitchen) surrounding the Agana. 

    She was beautiful in a red saree. Her long hair was knitted nicely with lily and plumeria flowers fixed at places. Her countenance, especially the eyebrows and the nose, reminded me of my mother. Her raptures of meeting me were evident in her expressions. Her eyes glowed like an innocent kid.

    “What did Ani (my mother, her grandchild) call you?”- “Guddu”. She repeated my name and smiled. “Eat the berries. They are from our garden.” I took a bite. Though long forgotten, I was familiar with the taste. I had many questions. I did not know how and which one to ask. I knew who she was. But, I had never met her. So I was a little unsure if I could ask her. For her, she was content looking at me, observing and admiring every little detail of my being.

    After an interval of silence, when I had finished half of my berries, she asked, “How are they?” - “They are sweet. I had a lot of them when I was a child. But we never had a Lychee tree.” - “Maybe. You have never seen it. Come, I will show you.” We went out the back door. The cowshed was standing where we had our stockroom. Three children (two girls and a boy) were playing in front of it with a calf. The girls were a little older than the boy, who was not more than five, and none of them older than ten. They were shouting and running behind it. The innocent animal was running even faster, confused by the tumult. She shouted at the eldest, “Bharati. Don’t upset Kumuri (apparently the calf had a name). Leave her alone.” Then she turned and told me, “Are you able to recognize your grandfather?” I looked at the little boy, who was upset that his mother and sister did not allow him to play with Kumuri. Not everyone is lucky to see his grandfather as a kid.

I was familiar with many trees in our garden. We spent some time in the garden. We brought some brinjals, cucumbers, and ladies’-fingers on our way home. Then she started the preparation for lunch. I offered to help but she laughingly denied that men did not cook in the household. When I told her, I often assist my wife in cooking, she was surprised and pointed out that my wife was lucky.

- “Actually, thakur-maa (great grandmother in my dialect), I was lucky to have her. She made my life much easier. She took care of my parents and kids, parallelly managing her job as a teacher. Had little complaints.”

- “How many kids do you have?”

- “Two. Manisha, my daughter, is in medical college. She is going to be a doctor. My son Manish is in his tenth standard.”

- “Are you concerned about them?”

- “Manisha will do good in her life. She has the dispositions of her mother. I am a little concerned about my son. I am confident, Mira (my wife) will take care of them.”

We chatted a lot about our lives. She told me about her parents, how she came into our family when she was only twelve years old. She told me about many funny incidents of my grandfather. I asked her why she chose this time as heaven. “This is the time when all my children are with me. I will lose my second daughter to Cholera two years from now. My elder daughter will be married soon after. My son will go to Kolkata in search of livelihood. I would see him once a year if I am lucky, constantly worried about his well-being.”

We all had our lunch together. The food was tasty. The children were shy with a stranger among them. They did not like me arriving empty-handed in their house as they were used to relatives bringing them sweets when they came to their home. My grandfather was sitting beside me. He was hesitant. But thakur-maa forced him. Seventy years from now this kid, when he would turn into an old man, would wait hours to have lunch with me, if I was out playing with friends or a little late from school. The food was tasty. Grandma paid me special attention, asked me if I liked every single item. The overloaded affection may stem from the fact that  I was technically the youngest in the room. She had her lunch after we all had ours.

Post lunch, the children went for their afternoon nap. We talked about many things. I had a hard time explaining my job (software engineer) and finally gave up. She enquired a lot about my mother. I was surprised she had not met her here and then a little concerned about where she was. She assured me she had never met anyone. I was the first one she was meeting in the afterlife.

- “When can I meet you again?”

- “Probably never. You will find your heaven from your life like I found mine. You will reflect on your life’s every right and wrongdoings. You will prepare yourself for the next one.”

When the children woke up, I played with them a little. I told them a story that my grandfather had told me several times when I was a child. They loved it. I taught him how to shake hands.

I bid them all farewell in the dusk and left in search of my heaven.

Postscript: The narrator of the story is dead. He meets his great grandmother in heaven.