GENERATIONS APART

This is how my grandma was while granddad was alive

My parents were born into large families. In any household, there were at least 15 members. Visiting relatives often stayed for weeks or months. In those days, it was very difficult to manage expenditure, as the source of income was just one, and the commitments were many.

Therefore, no family member got to eat any food stuff all by themselves. When visitors bought mangoes, it cut into small portions, and all the family members got only four or five small pieces.

Children were not given priority. Most of them took curd rice and pickle to school, for lunch.

For dinner too, they had rice, while the elders had iddlies or dosa. Small portions were distributed to the eager children. These items were difficult to prepare, as the dough was ground manually. By the time I was born, our family had become nuclear. 

Since my parents had suffered endless sharing, they gave us the best they could.  Whenever they bought any eatable there was always enough and more. We always got full biscuit packets and full chocolate bars. We were not used to eating in small bit and pieces.

My paternal grandmother came from Delhi to visit us. She was 70 years old; I was six years old. Those days, in Delhi customers used to give flour, vanaspathi and sugar, to bakeries. The bakers would bake delicious biscuits. These were packed, in 5 kg tins. Any visitor from Delhi carried these biscuits to distribute to relatives. 

 My grandmother was a widow. As was the custom of her times, she was shorn, and wore a “pale orange cotton saree”, which was the widow’s uniform.

She finally settled in one corner of a room. Next to her were the steel trunk of clothes, and the biscuit tin. She mostly sat there, and even lay down there in the afternoon and night to sleep.

I was very much keen on eating the biscuits. I went to her with an eagerly out stretched palm. She gave me one biscuit. I ate it excitedly. I asked for one more. It was 9AM. She asked me to come at 4PM, for the next Biscuit. I went to her by 4PM. She gave me half a biscuit. I felt insulted. I was conditioned to eating biscuits in packets.   She was conditioned to give in bits. So it was a clash of upbringing.   With my eyes full of tears I threw the biscuit on her face, and said , “ I do not need your biscuits, grandma. You eat all of them.”

I ran wailing to my mother. My mother comforted me, and said, “Do not worry, I will take care. You need not go to her anymore.”

Every time, my grandma went to the washroom, my mom took 2 to 4 biscuits from the tin and silently gave them to me. I went to the next room and ate them with satisfaction.

My grandma could not understand why I never troubled her anymore for the biscuits. I fact she even begged me to have some. I refused nonchalantly, telling her to keep her biscuits.  

When she left for Delhi, she told my dad, that she had never seen such a stubborn child like me. Poor old lady, little did she know that my mom and I were accomplices in the heist.