spreading her branches out and upwards, supporting life, lending shade.
She is sustenance.
Today I feel them -
Stop All The Clocks by Auden
and Because I Could Not Stop for Death by Emily Dickenson.
Life doesn't stop thougj, does it?
I wish to be drenched in rain now,
drenched in the rain that is my grandmothers love.
She was not a sensible grandmother.
No. She was a fun-loving
life-embracing grandmother,
who relished chocolate ice-cream, pepper chicken, and chilli crab.
Her fried fish, so thin so crisp,
I can see it, and yearn to taste it,
though I've been vegetarian for 5 years now.
She would spend above her means and
borrow to buy gifts
for all whom her love touched,
Her love extended like the rays of the sun.
She would order podi for me and thattai for my son and
karivadagam for my husband.
She knew each of us and our favourites,
her children's and their families,
her grandchildren's and their families.
The lines on her face a map of her life's journey:
As a young child, pampered till the age of 14,
her father sending her treasures from Singapore, earned from their properties along Market Street and in Burma;
Then as a young bride at 15,
married to a man ruled by his family
and their unending greed for her wealth;
A young mother at 17,
tending to her baby and the family,
and bearing with verbal, physical and psychological abuse
even as she bore baby after baby, nine in all:
A fiercely independent woman
who left home at 40 with all 9 children,
fearing for her life
and the safely of her children:
Pawning her jewellery to get her daughters married off,
Living with guilt
after her daughter-in-law hung herself
and paying for this guilt for the rest of her life,
supporting her eldest son and his son till the end of her days.
She was no saint,
sometimes playing one kid off another.
Her children vied for her attention, and she, ever the matriarch,
wove a tight tapestry
Her love for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren
was like a diamond, pure and blinding
All of us turned to her pray for us at evey hour of need
from a fear of a miscarriage
to blessings for PSLE exams.
She had a direct line to God, and we went through her, our telephone exchange with Heaven.
She would arrange for a donation to Jesus Calls,
Tulabaram at Guruvayur temple
a coconut offering at Mupathamman temple,
and we'd feel reassured,
for what could go wrong when our dearest Aaya had prayed for us?
She was our anchor
and now we feel adrift.
Still, I remind myself,
her blood runs in me
like an unbroken thread
from her mother to my daughter,
five generations of first daughters.
I see her face in my mother's and daughter's.
We feel her strength in every tree,
her caress in the wind
and we know,
we are so loved.
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