Zen Grandma

Grandma often misplaced her set of dentures. 
Her afternoon meals consisted of fish soup followed with a thin broth of curry poured over boiled rice. After a large burp she would gargle twice in the little basin that stood adjoining the hallway and keep her dentures aside.

Her nap time was for an hour and half. She always lay on her back with her mouth wide open. Before that, her dentures were stacked away at some place safe, of which she had no memory after waking up. While she slept, her open mouth resembled a tiny cave of sorts. As a child, I often wondered what might happen if I released a fly or a mosquito into the plain hollows of her mouth. Will they find their way out easily and in my little mind I used to think they would, as it was a clean passage without any hurdles.

When she wakes up, she searches for her dentures under her pillow. Not finding them there, she flips the cotton duvet over and over as she waits patiently for them to magically fall on to her lap. 
Nowhere in sight, she then roams around the house looking for them covering her mouth with the soft ends of her cotton saree. She empties drawers, looks into bathroom cabinets, under the stairs and at some point I see her gently opening the fridge door to see if she has left them on the rack where the eggs are perched. 

My brother is lazing in his room where the music is blaring so loud that it causes the wind clock on the wall to shake a little. 

Grandma enters his room looking all disoriented. 
What do you want Grams? 

He shouts out loud over the deafening music.

Now you see, my grandmother suffered from an ear ailment when she was only ten. The local doctors had then inserted a long tube into her right ear to drain out all the pus. But the infection kept worsening and in years to follow she couldn’t hear at all from the affected ear.


Grandpa, when he was alive, always mentioned in jocular tones that how Grandma’s parents had tricked him by hiding this fact at the time of their marriage. However, just a day prior to their wedding, Grandma was cheeky enough to fight all odds and had crossed an overgrown rosebush nettled with thorns to meet Grandpa in secret to inform him about her partial deafness.

But by then Grandpa was completely smitten by Grandma and he somehow found this quality of her coming forth and being honest about her ailment truly endearing.


He only said, "My heart will always be able to convey all that you have to hear. 
You won’t always need your ears for that."

That nailed it for Grandma and the marriage took place in all pomposity. In days to follow, Grandpa often came and stood close to Grandma, gently tucking stray strands of her hair behind her good ear and whispered into it, all the secrets, conspiracies happening in the family and about mundane, everyday conversations.
And on lazy Sunday afternoons, Grandpa would twirl the lock of Grandma’s thick hair round and round around his forefinger until it used to snap and produce an even tighter curl. Those days, there was no unnecessary exchange of words needed to profess love for each other. 

Coming back to her dentures, I finally found her sitting on the window ledge with a faraway look, the ends of her saree still covering her mouth. 

Grams! I said softly making a little jangling sound from the tin box that I was carrying.

Can you guess what’s inside this? 

Her expression was soft and for the first time I noticed that her eyebrows were really dark and bushy whereas it was difficult to trace a single strand of black hair from all the whites that gathered on her head.

She opens the case with trembling hands and there’s a look of sheer excitement as her gaze falls on the lost dentures.

The dentures with years of use had a jaded look and had lost its sparkle. Some teeth were chipped at the edges and an incisor had completely gone missing.

Where did you find them? She said in low tones as she quietly pulled it out from the tin case getting ready to wear them when I slowly intervened and slipped another case into her hands, which was wrapped in a pretty pink packing. 

Unable to contain my own excitement, I tore at the packaging. Once the box was opened, there lay nestled in the softest of velvety cushion a brand new set of dentures.
I held the back of both her hands, forming a cup, her skin feeling all papery and light under my touch.

In the centre, the dentures with their pink overtones, gleamed under the evening light.

Bobo! Is this for me? 
Yes Gramps! I whispered softly into her good ear.

She smiled, her eyes clouded with happiness.

My first pay packet was put to good use.

Eternal Sunshine

Something about her felt odd. I couldn't put my finger on it until I noticed her feet. She had worn mismatched shoes. 

One was a dull grey suede with tiny sequins embedded in the front and it had a slightly raised heel.

The other was a worn out flat sandal, with criss-cross straps buckled at the ankle.

Ahh! That explained her tilted walk.

A transparent plastic sheet covered her head perhaps to protect herself from the unpredictable rains. Every now and then wisps of silvery hair managed to escape the sheet and kept fanning her face. 

But what was mystical about the lady was not her bizarre way of dressing or her crooked walk. On a closer look, I noticed that she wore bangles in both her hands, a dozen too many that went all the way up to her forearms.

Not in any set pattern the bangles were a warm, colourful mix of glass, metal, plastic and whatnot. The plastic ones had garish beads studded on them, while the metal ones were a mix of gold and silver. But most part of her arms was adorned with glass bangles ranging in different shades. From a burnished red and orange, to a livid purple. Few, matched the colour of the sky; all in blue hues. A delightful mix of colours simply stood out.

Perhaps, on someone else's hands the bangles might have looked highly outrageous and may have invited mockery but on hers they felt just right. As if they all came together and produced a fantastic piece of art that so enhanced and dazzled both her hands.

As she kept dragging her feet along, she managed to arouse some queer stares from people on the street on her quirky appearance and strange way of dressing. 

With her chin up, the slightly tilted walk, wearing all her finery, hair in a bun and the bangles jangling in the background, her look was marred at so many counts.

But despite all odds she still carried an aura of wholesomeness around her that couldn't go unnoticed.

She seemed content in her own world.

*******

In his fifties, he looked older than his age which felt exaggerated because of the shock of curly white hair he carried atop his head. Sunken eyes and droopy eyelids, he stood at the edge of a footpath with his toes sticking out from his oversized slippers. His arms folded behind, he stood there watching the stream of people going up and down the stairs. Some of them sprinting, trashing empty tea cups into the nearby bin while on their way to take a metro to unknown destinations, maybe ones he had never visited himself. 

Moments passed by and I notice him peering down at the ground below. What had caught his fascination was a bright red packet of half-eaten biscuits. Quickly taking stock of his surroundings, he removes one foot from his slipper and manages to delicately entwine the biscuit wrapper between both his toes. In a fraction of a second I see him holding the biscuit packet in both his hands and he is hungrily devouring at it's contents. Traces of crumbs are stuck on his upper lip but he is not to be bothered as there is a childlike excitement written all over his face.

My imagination stretches far and beyond. And for a moment, 

I think what if the bohemian lady, the one with her shiny bangles whom I had seen earlier in the day crosses path with this old man whom I am watching now.

Will the old man offer his biscuits to her?

Will she accept it, her bangles jangling in the background as she bites into the biscuit?

Will time stop still for them?