The Grandmother I Never Had

archives of memory

My dad’s mom’s brother and his wife - his mama and mami - have been visiting our home since my childhood. All of us, my mom, my brother, and I, called them mama and mami endearingly, even though they are the generation of my grandparents. Mamaji passed a few years ago. Mamiji, now 84 years of age, visited our home today, while I happen to be here. She said, in her characteristic style, that it might be the last time she’s visiting us - she’s in frail health, needs support while walking, and she thinks she’s seen whatever life had to offer her.

I have grown to be a more silent adult ever since University happened, especially around family and at home. I still speak a lot at college, with my friends, and my therapist but usually I am a quiet - let me say self-indulgently, contemplative - person. I didn’t speak much today, I was listening to mamiji speak, but I was listening to her speak fondly, without being distracted by my phone, without feeling like I needed to escape and do something more useful. There’s a family friend of my parents staying with us at home — I told him that mamiji is one of my favourite relatives of all time. That is why I could listen to her.

She spoke of bygone times. She spoke, in particular, about her sister-in-law, my paternal grandmother. I never really say my grandma, she passed away shortly before I was born. I have only seen her pictures and heard stories about her, mostly from my mom (her bahu) and mamiji. There was nothing new mamiji spoke about today. I’ve grown up listening to the same stories and anecdotes. She would recount them everytime she would visit us. Moreover, the individual content of the stories makes little difference. I would most probably forget them in a week or so. It is the common theme in the stories and the way of their telling and retelling that has stayed with me over the years.

Mamiji spoke about how her sister-in-law, my grandmother, my mom’s mother-in-law, suffered, and suffered silently at the hand of her in-laws. My grandmother, I come to know through the channel of my mamiji’s memory, could not stand up for herself and spent her life serving others. She was of ill health but devoted her energy and time to bringing up not only her own children but the children of her husband’s (my grandfather’s) siblings, her nephews and nieces. She would often be taken to Delhi, where her husband’s richly married sister lived, and would stay at their house cleaning, doing small chores. She would often not eat for an entire day because no one offered her. And she did not stand up for herself, even if that meant taking food from the kitchen to feed herself. Mamiji lamented, with tears in her eyes, that my grandmother died too soon. She did not have it in her karam to see her son’s (my dad’s) prosperity, his big hospital and home, his wonderful wife and children (yes, me). She only lived through sorrow and passed on to the other world.

What is it about these stories that draws me in, everytime mamiji recounts them? There must be something powerful because it is not often that my generation is able to stop picking up their phones every two minutes to scroll through the same feed and timeline. Well, the first is her absolute honesty and no holds barred approach to her retellings. My mamiji speaks her mind without regard to societal convention laying bare the mistreatment my grandmother suffered at the hands of my grandfather, even her own younger son. Never mind that my grandfather and the younger son in question (my uncle) are no more. She doesn’t hold herself back for fear of speaking ill of the dead. She does not disrespect them either. After all, it is not about them that she speaks. Or at least what I hear. When she speaks, I listen to a clear, lucid, demystified picture of a woman’s suffering in her marital home and the lost love and happiness she never received. I am sure my mamiji has not read the feminists - the Simone de Beauvoir or the Butlers and the Krenshaws. Forget that, in the same breath as she speaks of my grandmother’s suffering, she laments today’s girls who drink alcohol like their male counterparts, a view my generation—me included — would take great offence at. I am not trying to paint her a feminist or a revolutionary. In fact, I asked her today why she never stood up for my grandmother, why she never criticised my grandfather. Her answer was simple: they were scared. As my grandmother, she also suffered silently. And yet, my mamiji speaks to me powerfully, even if only as an archive of memory that did not let my grandmother’s suffering die with her, that brings alive her suffering—and many more like her—everytime my mamiji speaks. To be a quiet archive of memory, that opens itself up decades later to whoever cares to listen, is no small feat of resistance.

And the other thing which endears me to her is her joie de vivre. Even as she speaks of suffering and oppression, my mother and I laugh—laugh heartily—at my mamiji’s stories. She speaks unabashedly, with gestures and expressions, in crude Punjabi that does not lend itself to translation. Her stories are not simply about my grandmother’s victimhood but about the absolute foolishness of those around her who never paused to notice my grandmother. She speaks of incidents when my grandfather and other members of my paternal family would get upset (the Punjabi term is “russ jana”) at family weddings over trivial reasons — someone did not offer them a seat, someone did not involve them in a ceremony. Her stories makes light of male ego. By placing in contrast my grandmother’s immense suffering and acute loneliness in her marital house with her husband’s dramatic reactions to trivial occurrences, she pokes at the empty pretentiousness of family pride. When she makes a snark remark about my grandfather, my mom and I laugh heartily, and she says, matter-of-factly, “I am telling you the truth.”

Lastly, my mamiji’s retelling of stories embodies a wonderful inter-generational solidarity among women. My grandmother was my mamiji’s sister-in-law, her nanad. If you have watched any Hindi family serial growing up or followed closely your family gossip, you know that the nanad is the object of much resentment for the incoming daughter-in-law. The bhabhi-nanad relationship is not meant to be one of endearment and solidarity. And yet, here my mamiji speaks of my grandmother almost like a sister. In fact, I just stood up from my laptop to confirm from my mom whether they were in fact sisters. They were not. But who could tell the difference? Add to this the relationship between my grandmother and mom—you know this one—the quintessential saas-bahu relationship preordained to be one of conflict, jealousy, a fight for control. Yet, my mom tells me that my grandmother loved her as a daughter, perhaps because my mom was the only one in the family who cared to smile at my grandmother. In her stories, my mamiji corroborates this. She sits with my mother, holds her hand, sometimes caresses my mother’s arms, and tells her she was the only one who cared. I feel a little sense of pride, although that’s besides the point. What is more interesting is that my mamiji chooses to tell these stories to my mother. I cannot recall her telling these same stories to my dad—those would perhaps hurt him, listening about his father in that way. My mom, one generation down, unrelated by blood, becomes the vessel into which my mamiji empties herself. The archive of memory changes it hands. And I—I sit there, silently, smiling, listening to her speak. Alas, my mother had no daughter, but what of that. We are the generation of the Butlers and the bell hooks—I am happy to do the work of a daughter and unlearn some of my own masculine training. The berating of the men in the family does me good, I relish it with a strange excitement. Perhaps I romanticise her, perhaps I read too much, but I stay and listen. And when she gets up to leave—and maybe she is right, this might as well be the last time I see her—I touch her feet, give her a hug, and tell her: “No matter my grandmother didn’t get to see happiness and her grandchildren’s success, you are doing it on her behalf.” And in my mamiji, I see a grandmother I never had.

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