Grandmother, the guiding star

MOVING houses is a humungous task — I’m sure this statement resonates with every police spouse. We have all done this many times during our significant other’s careers. It is a major disruption to everything familiar, the home and its entire ecosystem of schools, market, parlour, tailor, dry cleaner, domestic help… the list goes on.

By now, we all would have our pet peeves of moving. My own is the loss of institutional memory of what is kept where, something which is very unsettling to a slave of routine and an organisation freak such as me. But I’m sharing what a delightful collateral benefit I got from it.

In the midst of yet another move, amid all that packing and unpacking, I came upon my grandmother’s letter to me, lying forgotten in the pile of random papers. What a magical sight to behold — the letter from December 1992. The paper was crumbling, but the writing was proud and formidable, unmistakably the person that she was. This letter was written when I was doing my training, and was away from home for the first time. She wrote that I should take care of my food, get adequate rest and try to visit Lucknow and that she is so proud of me. Don’t little girls need to hear these words even now, to know that they are much loved and valued, that they can do anything?

My grandmother, Tara, was a person far ahead of her times, a true liberal, spunky enough to challenge every myth and superstition by doing exactly the opposite of what was implored to be avoided. She was born in Bombay (Mumbai) in a liberal Saraswat Brahmin family in the 1910s. She moved to Lucknow, where my grandfather was a professor in the English department at Lucknow University, and lived her life in that city thereafter, but manifesting the values of Mumbai.

This chance discovery of her letter brought back my childhood’s earliest but intense memories. It was my grandmother who was always around the most, and she also strongly complimented my parents in my upbringing. During my IAS aspirant days, she was up at 4 every morning, just to prepare my tea and softly start my long, demanding day. I am what I am today because she believed in me.

When you think of the line, give your child wings to fly but also roots to stay grounded, that’s exactly what she was doing all along. I got to realise this much later in life. When I shared this letter with my cousins and those who knew her, they all had wonderful things to say. Dad’s close friend told me that she treated him and my father the same. My cousin said she immediately recognised her handwriting, because she remembers seeing the letters to her mother. My brother said, “What a beautiful handwriting, and so articulate, straight from the heart.” Someone said she was very liberal.

Every person needs one safe space, one’s own anchor and rock. I never said it to her, but now I write this — she was indeed ‘Tara’, a star for all, and for me she was my guiding light, my source of stability and my inspiration. With my star watching over me, I continue to turn to what she taught me, in moments both good and bad.