Sunday, March 30, 2014

Topic at Thursday Book Club meeting on 27th Mar 2014 was to write on an incident in my life from the viewpoint of my grandmother. I wrote this . Part fiction, part real, fully borrowed from someone else's life


My throat is parched from all that shouting. My heart is beating in my ears. Thank God my eyes were dry back there. Thank God she didn't see me weak. Although what I really wanted to do was pull my hair, beat my chest and knock some sense into her head.

Oh when, when did my little girl grow up so ? My little Latha, handed over to me to nurture by her tired mother. Allergic, asthmatic and so adorable ! She kept me awake for nights on end while her mother, my daughter, obliviously slept by her side. Could it be her mother's indifference that turned her this way ? Couldn't be. I was a devoted mother, yet my own daughter grew up to be an indifferent parent !

Latha was always different from other kids. I should know, I have ten grandchildren but none as precocious. We shared a special bond, one that came out of a shared love of books, of pappadams, a love that also came of trying to decipher the riddle that was my daughter, her mother.

Perhaps it was natural she should have turned out this way

The first to bring a dog to the house

The first to wear lipstick in the neighbourhood

The first in the city to opt out of Science despite high grades and choose arts

Now the first girl in the family to go abroad to study, to WANT to go abroad to study.

She says she'll be back in five years, but she'll be thirty then. She says she'll treat her body like a temple all the while she is abroad, but what does she know of the smooth talking  scoundrels out there ?  She throws my story back at me, reminding me of how I dared to question the Kaaranavar and demanded to be sent to school !

Why oh why couldn't she be like Jaya and Sudha who married and became mothers dutifully without causing a stir ? Why should Latha, my dearest one, be the one to try me so ?

Oh, there go the cows ! Its time for their feed. They, at least, are predictable .

I'll feed them first.

Then think about how to talk this one out of her misbegotten idea.