The last link

It’s been quite some time since I last wrote. It was not as if things did not happen or I wasn’t occasionally inspired by places, people and incidents – I was.

Like one of the last links of the lineage of which I am the fourth generation broke. My grandmother’s aunt passed away. She was 90. No body felt sad that she had passed away, come on, the woman was 90. She was way past her time. I even had my doubts whether I really wanted to go and pay her my last respects. All my recent memories of her comprised of her lying like a vegetable in a bed in corner. She had become a dead weight that my granny had to lug around, simply because there was no other option. I didn’t want to go. But I did.
I went there and found a very small gathering of people; some of them I knew and some were alien to me. I walked in and saw a tiny bundle wrapped in pure white cloth. I saw this ebony brown body all of less than 4 ½ foot in length, looking deceptively light with slightly disfigured teeth. I still did not feel the loss of this person.
Let me tell you something about her – she was 90, widowed at a very young age, mother of 3 children – all of whom died at infancy, totally alone, led a slave like life at the mercy of her elder sister – my great grandmother, left out of any kind of inheritance at the time of partitioning, brought home by my grandmother with whom she lived everafter. She had brought up 3 generation of our family including me, my mother, my granny and countless other “relatives”. She had a kind, caring heart – one that always was concerned about the welfare of others – no mater who they were. She was especially close with the workers – the men and women who worked in our house and farms. She may be felt a kind of affinity towards them, she understood their life and she would go out of her way to help them. It was recollected by someone in the tiny gathering there on the fateful day that there was probably no worker in that village who had not been given at least one times meal by her. It was time to take the body away and we were told to touch her feet and say our last prayers for her soul.
I walked ahead, my heart still like stone, not even a tear. I bent down on one knee and touched her feet and then…. Then it was as if a dam had broken. I started crying, not silently sobbing or sniffing like the others in the room. I was crying. In that span of less than 60 seconds I saw my entire life with her flash before my eyes. All those times she had played with me, fed me, told me countless bedtime stories, put me to bed, tried to fulfill every demand of mine, reminded me to carry coconuts and bananas with me whenever I left, kept saying that she wanted to live to see me getting married. I saw all this and much more and I could not believe that I would not see this person again. This was the person to whom I had said goodbye less than a week before and said “ see u next time”. There was to be no next time. She was gone and she was never coming back. I was literally clinging to her legs as if to keep her back in this world. Some one gently pulled me up and I kept sobbing. My granny was next. I have never seen my granny cry – and that’s a lot considering the kind of life she has had. But that day – she cried. This woman had been my granny’s constant companion for more than 2 decades and granny had actually seen the life go out of her as she breathed her last. May be we were the only 2 people in that room for whom this woman meant so much. Both me and my granny – both genrations apart, teary eyed, silently said our last prayers for our lost ancestor. The men of the family came and wrapped the little body and finally covered her face. This was it.

She was gone..