Ba(Grandpa)

It's been long since I wrote anything, between days and months what losses I incurred last year are hard to summarise. I lost my grandfathers, yes both of them. You know the feeling when your favourite story book gets stolen and you have no way to buy another copy since you are a kid with no money and the book had been brought risking a fortune. You sulk, you wail, you cry but deep down you already know whatever you have lost can never be brought back. I went through such feeling, I feel I lost a huge part of myself with these two people. I can't bring them back to fill the dust filled corners of my life where they had their presence nor can I be that butterfly chasing girl anyday, she too has left with them.

My grandfather from my maternal side was a man of few words. I remember my early school vacations when the favourite place on Earth for me used to be my maternal home. I remember those five rupees wale bus rides that took me to mama's ghor. The place would be filled with warmth of baa (grandpa) and amoi (grandma). Baa was a teacher. He would ride his bicycle wearing a white dhoti and kurta to school and be back almost at the same time everyday. I don't remember hearing him complain about any food he was served with. He was a peace loving man and liked to be around his people. My grandparents had the sweetest married life. Baa was still at school when he married amoi, a girl half his age. They were happily married for around seventy years until he left this year. He could share his childhood, his youth and his mellowing years with amoi. What can be more rewarding than that. He left  last March after amoi had fed him his regular breakfast. A peaceful death he had. Amoi lights a diya every morning for him and talks to his photograph like he were around. They have taught me the true meaning of love which  thrives even in absence of one's loved one.

My grandfather from my paternal side left last November at the age of ninety two. Ba for me was the most important person on Earth. I can go on writing about him and yet I wouldn't be able to justify what he was to me. He was a walking library. His room smelled of books: radical dog eared paper backs to yellowing hardcovers. I have grown listening to the stories he had in store for bed time. Right from feeding me the best of everything to taking care of silliest of things like trimming my nails, he happily played my guardian angel. I remember him underlining newspaper articles each morning so that I could read once I reached home from school. He would read out poems to me and talk about his university days at Allahabad. He was a strict disciplinarian but he mended all rules for me. Without him life would never be the same but I would carry him forever in my heart.

Without my grandparents I would never have been the person I am today and they would always be fondly remembered.