The Rich Granddad

“Life wastes nothing. Over and over again every molecule that has ever been is gathered up by the hand of life to be reshaped into yet another form” Rachel Naomi Remen

The young lad cuddled his grandmother and refused to move away from her. There was a loud noise and chaos in the family, a joint family comprising of two brothers and their families along with their parents had moved into the huge row house on our housing block. The family had several kids and the racket and cheerfulness plunged me back to my childhood.

My eldest sister was blessed with a baby girl when I was in the final year of my graduation. My sister brought this bundle of joy home and we continued living as before with my father posted at Bangalore, and my loving mother in God’s paradise. We siblings now lived with an additional responsibility as my brother-in-law was posted abroad for his work. The little doll was a cynosure of all eyes, but loved my father when he visited us. My father would turn into a child trying to bring out loud guffaw of laughter from her as he chuckled with her. We looked after her, though it was difficult to manage a baby with our studies and my sister’s job.  

Progressively my other older sister got married and moved away, my elder sister joined her husband who left his job to unite with his family. My niece now was an occasional visitor, but my father was a regular one at their home. Having retired from his job he had greater time for his granddaughter. He would take care of her whenever my sister had to go to the office and the child had a holiday. He would play, sing, dance, draw and teach her all that he knew. The little one grew fond of her grandfather. When I was terribly sick after I got married, my sister and brother in law rushed to Mumbai leaving their little daughter with my father. My father took up her responsibility, cooked and cared for her. The child definitely missed her mother yet loved her grandfather. One of those days, when her parents forgot to pay her school fees on time owing to their busy schedules, the little girl was punished, she was made to kneel down in the hot sun a long time after the school assembly. Weird are the ways of functioning of the schools where the child is punished for the faults of the parents. The little girl was in the seventh standard and was recouping from a bout of typhoid, she had attended the school only to appear for an exam…  My  father rushed to the school to pay her fees. He did not forget to give a piece of his mind to the school authorities before leaving.

With time the little girl grew out of school and moved into the college, she was accomplished and now had no time for my father owing to her busy schedule.

My father remained the same, he had those childhood games, wrote poems for her birthday and dressed well to celebrate her birthday as always. She would not offend him, but had definitely outgrown the stage. Slowly, with time a depression set in and he suffered from a nueromuscular degeneration. A Red Cross attender looked after him, yet he loved the visits the girl made. Now she understood her grandfather,  their roles were reversed and it was she who would speak childish talk and make him laugh. He would definitely speak about her when I would call him. He loved his other grandchildren too, yet I wondered why he did not feel so emotional. May be the first ones are the blessed ones or because she was the progeny of his eldest daughter whom he adored.

One of those days, the attender had to leave for his village for a couple of days. My sister took my father to her home and cared for him, he suffered from many ailments and it was difficult managing him with her job. She would go home in the afternoon to feed him during her lunch break with a special permission from the authorities. Her daughter who had completed her graduation now understood her mother’s difficulties and volunteered to take care of him. On one awful day things went wrong, the gas cylinder had to be replaced and there was no spare one. The young girl understood her mother’s plight. She rushed to a nearby food center procured food, heated it in the microwave and fed my father for he needed a timely meal. Responsibilities and functions had certainly changed, she did what he had done as a grandfather for her in her childhood. She tried to make him laugh, but he pretended to laugh as the hollowness in his laughter reflected the irony of life. He kept saying he would not die till he saw her married yet I saw him leave peacefully one afternoon. There amongst we siblings stood a young girl wiping her tears for no one would have loved him more than her. 

The tenderness and adulation for grandparents has always been a sealed one for every grandchild …They remain valuable memoirs throughout their life.

 “Life wastes nothing. Over and over again every molecule that has ever been is gathered up by the hand of life to be reshaped into yet another form” Rachel Naomi Remen