A Pretty Pleat...

Hymns, chants, sacred invocations: My ears pick up the melodious aubade of my grandmother—primitive and pastoral. Myriad birds twitter and squawk outside, playing their part in the florid melodic concerto. Leaving my bed, I shuffle towards the kitchen of our village house (they call it haveli). It was ancient, rural, warm, in exactly the same form as my great-grandfather built it; large, high-ceilinged, wooden shelves stacked with shining brass utensils, the brick-hearth coated with clay and husk with an enormous chimney over it. Once, having faced a volley of arguments by her family against her ‘prehistoric’ kitchen, frustratedly grandma had said, “I know all of you consider my kitchen a wrinkle on the face of this beautiful house. But I love it the way it is. Change it after I am dead and gone”. That concluded the issue once and for all.
  
     My nose picks up an array of aromas – sandalwood incense, wet earth, ground spices, herbal tea and a distinct body aroma which is unmistakably grandma’s. Up at the crack of dawn while the rest of the family slumbers, her old bones go about their chores with a religious zeal. Bathing in cold water, washing the kitchen, feeding the cows, invoking the gods before coating her earthen hearth with cow dung and only then starting the fire, watering her tulsi shrub in the courtyard – and all the while singing Vedic hymns. She smiles at me; her wrinkled face lighting up, the round vermillion spot on her forehead rising up a wee bit. One by one the family members awaken and congregate in her kitchen for their share of the hot herbal tea. There, sitting on low wooden stools, sipping spiced tea, they all discuss their respective work for the day; the cacophony of voices sounding like a veritable melee. Yesterday, the family congregated in the ‘ancient’ kitchen for the final time. Grandma died. And with her died the spirit of the house. Isn’t it sad how, out of sheer ignorance, we sometimes mistake a pretty pleat for a wrinkle.

God Bless you grandma… I will forever regret the fact that I did not spend as much time with you as much I was supposed to or maybe it was not in my share, your love and affection. An incorrigible loss.