Love Has No Labels
Can you containerize love?
I’ve often wondered what makes her so cheerful, oozing some of that to us. My grandaunt lives two kilometers from my parents’ home. Every time I visit her, I come back feeling unexplainably happy, as if there is no problem in life that is strong enough to rattle me.
Could it be the fact that she never gossips or bitches about anyone? Could it be that she is herself always at peace? Or could it just be that I experience her warmth and affection by just being in her presence?
My grandma died in 1998 without advance notice. It’s not that the Reaper offers us one. But sometimes, as it goes for old folks, the writing might be on the wall.
We first try to ignore it as best as possible; the death comes to others, not to us. Then we try to scrub the writing as hard as we can with the best possible medical care. But we finally relent only when the writing obstinately clings to it and the reaper comes knocking with his scythe.
But we had none. She was a tired old lady, but nothing too serious. Then she fell sick. But the writing still hadn’t implied a death bed. She was expected to be back home from the hospital within a week.
But as Joan Didion says, “You sit down to dinner, and life as you know it ends.” Just as suddenly, her person became a body. She had a cerebral hemorrhage, and she was only 64.
Her sister, my grandaunt, was on the train from the other end of the country to meet her, who she heard was in the hospital. The train journey took 36 hours in those days, from her home to ours.
When she walked into our house, which held a room and a courtyard full of people, welcoming her was her dead sister on a viewing plank. We neither had pigeons nor mobile phones to inform her on the train, and she walked in unprepared and defenseless against the assault of grief.
When my grandma married at 23, her sister was only 7 or 8. She clung to my grandma’s saree, shyly sneaking at the groom, who seemed old enough to be her dad — my grandaunt’s that is, not my grandma’s.
The cute little girl, who walked like a duck and talked like a parakeet, followed my grandma around until it was time for the newlyweds to leave. She visited them often. She spent all her school holidays with them. When they had a son, my dad, she cared for him like her little brother.
With such a large age gap between them, both my grandparents treated her like their own child. When her dad passed away before her marriage, my grandparents gave her away to her future husband.
So, when she heard her sister was in the hospital, she rushed to her supervisor to request a leave of absence.
“We don’t have replacement staff just yet. We can’t approve your leave,” they said.
“I need to leave right away; my sister is in the hospital. If I don’t have leave for emergencies, I’d rather not have that job,” and she submitted her resignation unhesitatingly.
When she boarded that train 36 hours ago, resigning from her job and throwing herself into an abyss of uncertainty, her only hope was meeting her sister, alive and well.
So, what awaited her when she walked into our home, unprepared, was a cruel twist.
With the same unhesitating conviction that made her resign, she plucked her life, which included her retired husband, from 3000 kilometers away and moved closer to us.
My grandpa was an adored son, a pampered younger brother to a horde of sisters, and a revered patriarch in our large family. He was short-tempered and used to having someone at his beck and call. He was so incapable of solitude or independence that my grandma used to pray that he die peacefully before her. She dreaded his misery as a widower.
When we, his kids and grandkids, went to office and school, the loneliness of the long day was insufferable to him. And as her dread would have it, he was indeed miserable.
So every day after lunch, my grandaunt walked 2km under the tropical sun and spent a couple of hours chatting with my grandpa. She helped him turn his loneliness into solitude. She made tea for the both of them at 4 p.m. before returning to her household. There wasn’t a day when she didn’t visit him until he passed away three years later.
My dad and his sisters inconsolably screamed and bawled. They couldn’t bear the heartbreak of losing both their parents within 3 years. Their goodbyes became tear-stained every time they spoke or met in the subsequent months.
My grandaunt quit her job to meet her sick sister, my grandma. She walked every day in the hot sun to keep my grandpa company. And when they were both gone, she treated all four of their kids, her nieces and nephews, as her own. She treated them all as her daughter’s siblings.
She became our matriarch, welcoming us all into her embrace, livening up our gatherings yet again, and making each of us our favorite snacks and sweets as a grandmother would.
We weren’t the only lucky ones to be taken into her fold. When her sister-in-law was left a widow, young and with two little girls, she sent her money every month to assist just a bit. When her aunt, who was without a family of her own, grew old, she took her in, taking care of her until her death.
Whether it’s my husband’s family or my brother’s friends, whether it’s a neighbor or an acquaintance, she welcomes them all to her home, letting them stay with her as long as they wish. And the funny thing is, people take her up on her offer.
They come from far and near to stay with her. Her modest household has so few possessions that haven’t changed much in the last two decades. Even the washing machine and air-conditioner are recent additions. So, what makes people stay with her, without any agenda, and with no regard for material comforts?
When I visit her these days in the evening, her courtyard seems like a salon with her neighbors stopping by incessantly to talk to them. There are no card games or drinks on display; just the sheer joy of a good chat. It’s hard to believe that she was once a stranger to this place, having uprooted herself from another she had called home for a quarter century.
She is the happiest 75-year-old I know, living life without regrets and loving people without inhibitions. She seems to remind us that shared love can only multiply. Amid the celebrations for parental love or in this month of Valentine’s celebrating romantic love, a full spectrum of hers comes to mind, overflowing without obstructions enveloping us all.
