It sounds kinda stupid when I type it out, but ever since I spotted a few white strands in my hair some months ago, the thought of finite nature of life visits me often. Perhaps it is also because I am experiencing my parents approach retirement. Of course, it’s my father’s retirement after all and I can’t even fathom what must be going on in his head. But when you belong to a unit of humans, alterations in one individual’s life do impact the others too in some way or the other, practically or emotionally. I am now finally forced to think about something that I would have never wanted to – the ageing of my parents. The ageing of a human. The mortality of my own self.
I was very close to my grandparents, especially my grandmother. She comes as close to the answer I would give if someone asked me who my role model was. Now that she is no longer here, in this world at least, I think of her differently than how I observed her during our lifetime. I saw her growing old physically, but her spirit somehow remained as agile as ever. These things of spirit, energy and will for life do come in the picture big time when you talk of ageing. When you think about it in a stark sense, once you are “quite old” and don’t have a “reason” to follow a routine, have a daily purpose such as an employment, or possibly don’t have many people around you because your young children are living their own lives or some of your friends are already dead, it might seem that you are basically passing each day waiting for death’s embrace. You hope there is a better world on the other side waiting for you, which will somehow be a cumulative pay-off of whatever good you did in this life. It would somehow allow your spirit to continue but in a better and newer chance to “life”. I have stopped making sense.
On a weird note, when I think of my grandparents, I am instantly reminded of two trees – one in our front yard and one in the backyard of our old house. The Cyprus tree in the front, which at one point was supporting the pumpkin vine and it looked like pumpkin growing on a Cyprus. And then there was the Papaya tree in the backyard, from which I had eaten the first papaya of my life and decided not all fruits in the world are tasty.
I just finished watching this beautiful documentary of a man approaching his 100th birthday and his wife reciting phrases and phrases of Icelandic poetry and songs that she somehow remembers. I saw a lot of my grandparents in this couple. My grandfather passed away in 2005, but I remember he wasn’t as high spirited about life by the end. My grandmother made a different choice to approach things though. It was remarkable how she managed to keep herself busy throughout the day. To be fair, my grandfather didn’t keep best of health by age 95 when he left us. But perhaps that’s why my grandma could maintain a decent health for a long enough time, because she maintained her spirit of life, her will for staying alive.
The couple in this mesmerizing Icelandic documentary “Half Elf” go about their day on their own. The grandpa, Trausti, cooks and eats his own meals, sings as he walks around, and goes often to check on how his coffin is coming about. The grandma, Hulda, makes a case for not throwing away their piles of books, recites poetry, and cleans up after grandpa. They play cards, visit a friend, and have the type and style of conversations you can have only when you have known each other for a lifetime. It reminded me of my grandparents, who prayed together in the morning for around 2 hours, read the Gita (my grandpa in Nastaliq and grandma in Devnagari), sang bhajans, and played cards too. My grandparents lived with us for the most part, and my grandmother practically raised me – especially for the parts when I was younger and my parents had their jobs or relational formalities to attend to. It pains me to realize that I don’t remember vivid details of how my grandfather spent his day. Whatever I can remember from when I was 10 years old is him reading, eating softened food timely, playing cards, going on walks and watching cricket sometimes. Perhaps watching the news, my memory fails me. My grandmother however still visits me in my dreams.
Against the backyard papaya, I retain vivid images of my grandmother feeding me flying morsels of singing food as a toddler. As I grew older, she would call me randomly in the middle of her Gita reading sessions, asking me to read aloud a phrase that she thought is relevant to my life, explain me the meaning of it, and sending me off to continue with my thing. Most of her days began with tricking the family already getting late for school (us siblings as students and my parents as teachers) by dashing first into the bathroom because otherwise she would get late for her pooja. After a 2-hour pooja and blessing everyone, she would cook. Either breakfast or lunch, depending on the agreement between her and my mom. After a post-lunch nap, you could find her either reading the Gita or any random Hindi book from my father’s book collection. Subjects ranging from Buddha, Ramayan, Mahabharat, to my Hindi textbook, acupuncture, nutritional benefits of various fruits, and Kashmiri stories. She would sometimes make the evening tea, do the dishes, keep dried dishes back in their place, get dried clothes down from the terrace, fold them, even do some cleaning, cut and wash vegetables for dinner – anything and everything around the house. My mom insisted many times for her not go about doing so much, especially as she was getting older and weaker. But that was her way of keeping herself active and busy, she always said. “If I feel weak or tired, I just won’t do it, but for now I want to”, she often reassured. She reiterated often how she never wanted to be anyone’s burden and wanted to be self-sufficient till her last breath. That’s what she prayed for every day. But she also taught me to pray for oneself the last. Ask for yourself only after asking for everyone else. During the exam season, she asked for good marks for everyone’s grandkids, and then humbly in the end some good wishes for her grandkids too. My Nani does the same; not sure where this sentiment comes from but it is definitely an interesting perspective. The kind of thing that stays with you. She was the one who taught me to bow down whenever I passed by a temple, mosque, church, any place of worship. She was the first person who spoke to me about what it truly meant when my teacher wrote “God is one” on the blackboard as the thought for the day. She told us tales of hard times in her youth – as a girl in old India, as someone who often kept unwell, as a woman in a joint family, as a displaced Kashmiri, but somehow all her talk sessions ended with how we all should pursue happiness in life. Her voice saying “Khosh gatchi rozun” (one should be always happy) echoes often in my ears.
Looking at my parents approaching retirement I wonder how they would like to spend their days. What would I have done if I was retired from employment and my children lived thousands of kilometers away from me only to visit once a year? Do I want to really think about the fact that I can have a defined count of the number of these visits if we continue with the present arrangement? The white strands in my hair want to ask me how I want to fill the rest of my days on this planet. I could never have imagined to own a laptop when I was 10 years old, sitting inside my grandfather’s pheran. Now I watch Trausti and Hulda, and wonder if the papaya tree in my old home is still standing. And how one feels when your body feels weak constantly, your hands shiver, your ears don’t fully work, and you live in the fear of seriously injuring yourself in a trivial tripping over the carpet. When you reminisce of tighter skin, fuller head and dancing selves. And think of all that you did and all that you could have done.
Oh well, I just remembered; the termite had eaten the stump, and we had to cut the papaya tree down.
Wishing good health n happy retirement to parents