On dimensioning time

“Were you aware, perhaps in a sacred moment of intoxication, that an evil guard imprisons us by the winding of clocks?”

 A close friend of mine was hospitalized for depression and related conditions which warranted close medical observation and indeed restraint for he was convinced there was nothing wrong and consequently given to violent objection to ‘treatment’. This was in 1985.  I believe in August or September.  I spent a month and a half in the Psychiatric Ward of the General Hospital, Colombo with my friend. Nights.

He was convinced that he had acquired special powers.  He once blinked and said ‘nuwara archchi merenava hathai visi pahata’ (‘My grandmother in Kandy will die at 7.25). It was 7.10 pm.  He was claiming that he had willed her death. As the minutes passed, it was clear he was beginning to doubt his powers.  He instructed me to go to his house and bring back his brother’s watch, a digital contraption, where time could be stopped. Well, not ‘time’ but its indication on a display screen.  My friend was playing with time in the most innocent manner. He was devastated when 7.25 pm came and went. He broke down and cried.    

For years I thought time, despite its ‘capture’ for display purposes in a circular frame, was of linear orientation.  It just went straight ahead, it seemed.  Towards death, I might add. 

I was intrigued by the ‘international date line’ when Mrs. Palliyaguru, my Grade 4 class teacher told us about it.  I managed to grasp the logic of how different places can have different times, but was still thrown a bit when I encountered ‘daylight saving time’ in the USA.  It is all relative, now I understand.  I know now that time travel is not impossible.  We can go back in history courtesy memory and far into the future thanks to imagination.  And since each individuals remember things in particular ways at particular moments and also imagine things in ways that are distinct, conceptions of ‘time’ can vary from one person to the next.

Some people divide life into childhood, adolescence and youth; some into childhood, middle age and old age; some into childhood, bachelorhood, married life.  Other dissections are possible of course. 

Sometimes time passes very slowly, too slowly in fact, and that’s a product of anxiety or anticipation. Sometimes the good times pass by very fast. Too fast.  There are years we will never forget, moments too. Then there are years that are eminently forgettable and indeed duly forgotten. Moments too.

It is not just individuals.  Communities, groups and countries can have different time-notions.  An American of the USA, for example, might collapse time and distance, viz ‘it’s 3 hours from here’.  The driver of an intercity coach would speak of distance not in miles or kilometers but the number of audio cassettes that can be played from A to B: ‘cassette piece pahaka dura’ (a distance of 5 cassettes). Or CDs. 

Governments have 5 year plans.  Some have 10 year plans.  We are told to plant rice if we want to plan for a year, plant trees to plan for decades and to teach the people if we want to plan for a century. 

What all this says is that ‘time’ is more complex that it seems.  All this is a long foreword to a simple observation that won’t take too many words.  I believe that the vast majority of people in this country, while they plan an execute with deliberate or instinctive reference to lifetime, are nevertheless deeply conscious of the plural, i.e. lifetimes.  The time-frame is not measurable in the number of cassettes, hours, miles etc., but is sansaaric in dimension.  Deep down, I believe this is why we are a laidback society. We are not in a hurry.  The average Westerner is appalled by what he/she perceives to be scandalous slowness, which is immediately (and understandably) labeled ‘sloth’. 

Are we slothful?  Well, I don’t know.  I think it is about what it important to the particular individual or collective.  Is ‘life’ an aggregation of meetings? Is ‘living’ directly related to size of bank balance, companies/territories acquired etc?  Is ‘living’ amenable to capture in photographs and/or videos?  Is life, on the other hand, about seeing, hearing, breathing, touching, tasting and synthesizing in real time and real space and remembering without the aid of recording device? 

I don’t think we can conclude either way. This much is true, though; things that are proposed and implemented have a better chance of proceeding smoothly (meaning, with greater acceptance and therefore less convulsion) if they are tuned to the pace-ethos of the particular community. 

I am thinking of the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution, i.e that horribly anti-democratic piece of legislation and process of legislating following the Indo-Lanka Accord.  That was totally oblivious and dismissive of ‘OUR CHOSEN PACE’.  Passed. Resulted in 60,000 deaths. Did not work. 

These things are akin to stuffing one’s mouth with food.  If it’s too much you gag on the food. Or vomit it out.  It depends also on the type of food. Certain foods cause allergies to certain bodies. True for individuals. True for countries.  You can force-feed.  The body suffers.  Can die. Or even revolt and grip by the throat the force-feeder and strangle him/her to death. 

Things happen. Things are happening. There’s a ‘pace’ involved.  Right now, I believe, in substance and pace, there’s a mismatch.  Not healthy.  Certain things cannot be stopped with a watch that can ‘stop’.  No, it is not about time passing. Time does pass. Moves. Let’s say ‘forward’. Nations don’t necessary move in concert, in the same direction.  They are entities that can go back, and indeed self-destruct to levels that forbid reconstruction.  

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Celebrating grandparents

My late mother, crowned by my daughter before the little one
fell asleep in the softest bed she could find.

[These are family days.  This is a family week. That's what it has turned out to be.  The following was written many years ago and appeared in 'The Island' of May 5, 2002, when my older daughter was just over a year old and the younger was yet unborn.  The two aththammas or grandmothers, mine and hers, are no more, but I do wonder sometimes if this is true.]

Whenever my fourteen month old daughter feels she is not going to get her own way, she goes all over the house, tearfully asking, "Aththamma ko?" My family lives in Anuradhapura. My child’s Aththamma, grandmother, is in Colombo. She is still too young to understand geographical dislocation. 




She probably knows instinctively, however, that nothing denies love. Maybe someday she will understand also that barricades and prisons are only obstacles of a kind and cannot hold back everything.

Parents bring up kids. They worry about issues of discipline. They are scared that too much love would spoil the child. Grandparents, on the other hand, are not burdened by these concerns. Perhaps they know that "too much love" is a ridiculous construct.

I spent a significant part of my early childhood in Kurunegala, in the spacious house of my maternal grandparents. My mother, being the eldest in a family of six, was Akka to everyone. And in those initial, formative, imitative years, confusing maternity, I too had called her Akka. Her mother, naturally, became Amma.

I remember holidays in Kurunegala. There were mornings where we consumed for breakfast a world created anew. Fresh discoveries awaited us, ready to pour magic into our sensibilities. There were raw mangoes with chillie and salt, the daily ritual of combing the ground underneath the Veralu tree, whittling Albesia sticks for wickets or as the basic building material for play houses, catching and releasing Lady Bird beetles and grasshoppers, roasted Jak seeds, smashing Kottamba to get at the delicious kernal, hastily eaten lunches and afternoon "naps" where sleep would be resolutely resisted, cricket, the Mihira Paththaraya, watching the rain and the kakkuttas (small crabs) it called forth, highly decorated paper boats, fireflies and night sounds. And surrounding all this, our grandparents showering love.

My maternal grandparents.  Aththamma
is carrying my sister, my older brother
standing (taller) next to me.

My grandfather, even at the age of eighty, would get up early and listen to pirith. I remember listening to the recorded chanting, anticipating the deshabhimani songs that followed. Aththa would take off with a mammoty around 6.30 collecting cowdung from wherever the cattle were tied for the night, diligently fertilizing his coconut trees. He insisted that even at that age, he had to earn his meals.

Evenings arrived with the Lama Sangrahaya of the SLBC and that childhood-defining song which went like this: "Manakal hada vil kalambana pipi nivahal mal; ratata pipunu mal api vemu punchi kekulu mal" (translatable as 'we are the flowers that grace the nation'). What my grandfather enjoyed most was the skit put together by Samuel, Annesley and Bertie.

There were nights when we put together "concerts", made up of poetry recitals, songs and plays. We drew up colourful souvenirs and tickets (perforated with a pin so that we could actually tear off the tabs) for the show. How they must have suffered, I have often thought. And yet, as they sat through the entire performance, wildly applauding us, they never betrayed the boredom that must have consumed them.

Aththa would chant from the Maha Piritha every night and sometimes we read along with him. He was a story-teller. He was also losing his sight and would pour over the Daily News with a magnifying glass. Later, he got us to read the headlines of each news story and if he found it interesting, would make us read the entire piece. That exercise must have helped us acquire a fascination for the written word, not to mention events happening all over the world.

Aththamma, every now and then, speaks of her ancestors, their nobility and their courage. There was a time when "armed" with the now obviously inadequate instruments of materialistic propositions, I dismissed out of hand history, heritage and cultural concerns. I remember sometimes in the late eighties writing a nisadesa for her. I sent it to my father and he wrote back, "this is unfair".

It was, however, a time when violent death was the name of the birth certificate life had given us, It was a time of abduction, torture and brutal killings. Events had turned our childhood landscapes into a battlefield. A cemetery, in fact. My generation were willing or unwilling soldiers, conscripted to "fight" an unarmed battle. Maybe it was just the arrogance of youthfulness. Maybe it was a complaint against the older generation for creating these monsters that now tormented us. In any event, I shouldn’t have directed those frustrations at that sweet and dignified lady. So when I wrote that it was not the time to talk about the pelapatha, I was wrong. And cruel. I didn’t send her that poem and today I am relieved.

"Lineage" is not just about bragging rights. To her, the pelapatha was a proxy for a different time. It was an entry point to examine, celebrate and learn from a history. like all grandmothers, she was a teacher. She taught tenderness, love, compassion and the will to survive adversity.

The years passed and now she is my only surviving grandparent. She’s eighty eight years old. Whenever I visit her, I tell her the most outrageous stories to make her laugh. And each time I take her leave by worshipping her, her voice breaks and tears well in those soft eyes that watched over me as I learned to see. I don’t have to ask her why. I just say the most preposterous thing that comes to mind, put a smile on her face and leave. When the age of recollection comes, when memories become your best friends, the tomorrows often arrive into that rich thought-world accompanied by sadness. Not everyone manages inevitability with fortitude.

We visited her last week. Time, naturally has carved its signature of decay on Aththamma’s beautiful face. Time has failed to erase one fragment of her sense of dignity. Her charm and her most winsome of smiles, as always, softly took me back to that time when poetry first came to me. That is, as a celebration of the fully lived day.

She told my wife for probably the hundredth time, this story:

"You know Duwa, when this fellow was small, one night he got up suddenly, woken by the croaking of frogs, and said, ‘Amma, eka mokada Amma? Eka Yakada?’ ('Who was that? Was it the devil?')and broke into peals of laughter. The affection in her heart spilled out of her kind eyes without control. We smiled.

She was sitting with her great grandchild on her lap. She said suddenly, "Come, I want to tell you something." I sat beside her and she sang this song:

"When you played the organ, and I sang the Rosary,

Life was even sweeter, than the mellow melody;

Although your lips were silent, your eyes said you love me,

when you played the organ and I sang the Rosary."

I love teasing her, so I asked, "Did you sing that to Aththa ('Grandfather')?" "Palayang kolla yanna," she rebuked me and started laughing.

All of us have grandfather stories. Grandmother stories too. I remember, a few months before my paternal grandmother died, my father giving me a piece of advice. "The greatest gift you can give your parents is to help them look after their parents," he said.

"Looking after" them, I have realised, is not just about helping them get around, making sure they take their medication on time, that they eat well and have enough rest. Caring is also about helping them recollect, re-live and rejoice; taking their hand and letting them help take you to places, events, times and people they cherish. It is about helping them convince themselves that mornings are endless whenever they suffer the delusion that they are in the twilight of their lives. It involves a resolve to wipe away the tears that such journeys bring to their eyes, not with a handkerchief, but with the things they’ve nurtured in you over the years: love and a sensitivity to the human condition.

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Notes for a father-poem

'The sky does not become less private although it belongs to everyone else' -- Gamini Seneviratne

Maybe this is a week for remembrances.  Although not exactly planned it so happens that certain things arrive in clusters.  Last morning and the whole of yesterday I was thinking of a friend’s father.  B.S. Goonewardena is the father of my closest school friend, Kanishka.  I met him a few days ago and a couple of things he said made me want to write about him.  In fact I had decided that I would write about him today.   

A few minutes ago, though, having read my earlier post, about love, doors and door-less love, which was in a way a tribute to mothers and motherhood, an appreciative friend sent a long thank-you note, followed by this after-thought: ‘It would be nice to read a nice article about your dad too someday. I am sure you have written and I haven't seen it. But if you have one please share on fb or something. Just a small request.’

Dad?  No, he was, is and always will be Appachchi.  ‘Dad’ reminds me of a Bud Light ad of the nineties where ‘Bud light Johnny’ on a fishing trip with his father and brother, turns to the old man and tries to catch his father’s attention in the manner of a 12 year old asking for pocket money.

‘Dad…,’ he starts.  Then he gets all emotional and tongue-tied (for reasons that quickly become apparent): ‘Dad….you are my dad…’ he goes (that’s news!).  ‘Dad…you are my dad….and I love you man,’ he blurts out with scripted voice-break.  The old man is not impressed: ‘you are not getting my Bud Light, Johnny!’  

He was not and is not and will never be ‘dad’, with or without Bud Light or any other kind of drink, alcoholic or otherwise.  He was a workaholic.  Still is.  When he retired from public service he was the last ‘CCS man’.  Some admired him, many respected, quite a few feared him and some despised him.  He made people uncomfortable just by being; being himself, being committed to his work and being honest.  

It didn’t make things easy for us at home.  He came home late and tired.  It was wonderful when he made us laugh or offered comfort whenever we needed it.  For the most part, though, life revolved around our mother.  The moments of tenderness were rare or perhaps they disappeared as would rain drops in an ocean, such were the dimensions of maternal waters.  It was as though he subscribed to some parental logic of overall giving and restraint.  

Maybe he ‘gave’ in other ways.  He taught me chess.  Having coached chess myself, I realize now that even while playing ‘friendly’ games, he was teaching, encouraging, giving confidence and giving eyes to see the finer points and the poetry that can unfold over the 64 squares.  We once played a 24=game match (over several weeks).  I am sure I was a stronger player at the time, but not as strong as the margin of victory indicated.  He helped analyse adjourned games, even though his older son was a far superior analyst.

I remember one particularly traumatic day in 1977.  This was when I took part in the Novices Tournament. It was my first individual tournament.  I lost a game to an older boy from Ananda College, Ravi Rajasinghe.  I was almost in tears, I can’t remember why.  He came to pick me up from the venue, the Borella YMBA.  He didn’t say much.  He was taking me to a concert by ‘Ustad’ Podiappuhamy in Wellawatte.  I had never heard Raagadhaari music or what is referred to as ‘North Indian Classical Music’ and had forgotten that he had tickets for the performance.  ‘You must have been excited about going to the concert,’ he said softly.  I was not.  It made me feel better, though.    

He never told me the meaning of a word.  ‘Look it up in the dictionary!’ he always said.  I would do so and learn several more words each time I did.  I thought he was being lazy, then, but now I know how much love there was in that suggestion.  That was how he was.  Opened windows. Cleared paths.  Encouraged us to explore.

He watched and watched over too, venturing gently whenever he felt he was needed to calm, commiserate and lift spirits.  And he taught, in many ways.  I remember countless evenings when he talking about all kinds of subjects, using occasion and a rapt (trapped) audience to deviate from point and detail the lives and histories of characters who were marginal to the story.  He was slow and measured in his speech, which made the whole experience even more torturous.

‘This is my way of telling a story!’ he would say if I complained.  ‘You have to tell it in a way that keeps the listener’s attentions,’ I have often retorted.  Looking back, I realize that those conversations or rather monologues were an important part of my education.  History, politics, literature, philosophy, chess and a number of other subjects were ‘taught’ and thankfully without assignments and exams to contend with. 

He loved to elaborate to the point of exasperation (I wanted to get away and just chit-chat with my siblings), and yet whenever a clear, subject-related question was put to him, he explained with utmost clarity and economy.  I am yet to encounter an explication of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as lucid and compelling as the one he delivered one evening in the matter of just half an hour. No one explained Marx’s Labour Theory of Value as brilliantly as he did one day, when trying to make me understand how capitalism works (for the capitalists, that is). 

As the years went on, we clashed, as fathers and sons are wont to do.  I was always a little boy and worse, the younger son.  He was presumptuous I thought. Prescriptive. Infuriatingly so, for someone in his late teens and early twenties.  I argued. Ranted.  Left in a huff.  It got better as time went on, but we still argue about all kinds of things, even as we agree on a wide range of issues. 

He is 73 now and hasn’t changed at all. He is still a voracious reader.  He still writes. Still insists on long, elaborate explanations and narratives.  Still prescribes.  Is still presumptuous.  The difference is that he has to make up or feels he has to make up for the absence of his wife, our mother.  He tries.  He falls short or so he must feel.  He doesn’t realize that he is all the love there is and all the love that is needed.  He is a biography in which a thousand biographies reside. He is not made for capture, but only occasional expressions of gratitude as warranted by the need to make sure there is no embarrassment.  

‘The sky does not become less private although it belongs to everyone,’ he once wrote.  He could do that well and does it all the time; he collapses vast and elaborate philosophies into a few words.  He is a poet. 

T.M. Jayaratne claimed ‘Piya senehasata kau-gee liyaunaa madi’ (not enough verses have been written about a father’s love).   I am not a poet. 

‘You are in your second childhood,’ I said one day when he had infuriated me over something.  ‘Children are innocent,’ he said softly.

 

Yes.  A child. My father, my appachchi.

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Because life never surrenders...

Gioconda Belli, in her memoir of love and war, an autobiography described as "a passionate, lyrical, tough-minded account of an extraordinary life in art, revolution and love", quotes an anonymous Vietnamese poet:

“We fill the craters left by the bombs

And once again we sing

And once again we sow

Because life never surrenders.”

What are "craters", what are "bombs"? What is our song, what is it that we sow? What does it mean never to surrender? What are these "wars" described by the falling of bombs and the making of craters?

In the "Vietnam" of this anonymous poet, there could have been no prizes for the answers. People died in their thousands. The Vietnamese knew about biological warfare long before the term became an easy alibi to obliterate nations in the name of "restoring" democracy. Back then it had a name: Napalm. They knew about craters, because bombs fell like torrential rains. Vietnam survived. Vietnam survived because the people had not lost their voices and all the bombing, gunfire, napalm and other death-bringing mechanisms failed to erase their memory of song. They survived because they never surrendered.

Gioconda's story is also a song. It is a song that echoes the sentiment of the Vietnamese poet. The same song, a different land. Nicaragua. There too, people refused to surrender, there too they continued to sow hope even though their ears, hearts and sensibilities were relentlessly lashed with the rattle of gunfire from mercenaries and the death cries of those who loved their country.

Gioconda Belli saw all this first hand, she saw her comrades die. She saw courage and humanity, defeat and triumph. She saw and made a revolution. And saw it defeated. She continues to sing and to sow the seeds on an earth that might perhaps yield a different tomorrow. Under a different sky. Maybe in a land she has never seen. That is the magic of such sowing.

But craters and bombs, seeds and sowing, melodies and remembrance, hope and intransigence...are these words and sentiments the private property of armed struggle or collective resistance?

The bombs do drop on sleeping villages, the bullets run through the breasts of children. Young men plant the seeds of rebellion. Those who refuse to surrender, they die. Or triumph. Or, they give life even in death to those who come after. Like Augusto Cesar Sandino whose ragtag army of peasant soldiers forced the United States of America to terminate their "intervention" in 1933. He was murdered by Uncle Sam's creature, Anastasio Somoza Garzia the following year, only to be give birth to the Sandinistas in the seventies, who fought and overthrew his son, ridding Nicaragua of the Somoza dynasty almost half a century later.

But I know that it is not only those wearing military fatigues that fight, it is not only the young radicals who plant seeds and more than all this, that the bombs and guns and napalm that really hurt are not those manufactured by arms merchants. No, the most pernicious weapons of mass destruction are those that attack our spirit, those that are designed to erase our memory, those that choke our voices and kill our song, and those that prevent us from sowing the regenerative seeds of ideas, resistance and dignity.

All the craters of this world fascinated with war are not found in the city plaza, the jungle hideout and the village bombed by mistake. The most violent craters are those found in our minds and our hearts. When we choose to look away, we do so because our eyes have been relieved of sight. When we refuse to question tyranny and injustice, we do so because poisonous gases of ideology have benumbed our sensibilities. When we refuse to water lands that have been demarcated "barren", it is because we have accepted surrender as a "pragmatic" choice.

It is not about "a people" or "a collective" alone. It is also about self, about the "I" and the "me". "Where are the rest?" is not a question that someone who values dignity should ever ask. The correct query is this: "Where am I?" If that is asked, invariably, one would also ask, "who am I?", "what am I?" and "what would I become should I forget to sing, should I refuse to sow, should I resolve to surrender?"

It is, and of this I am convinced, a matter of being able to go home and sleep well, knowing well that the day was spent honourably, knowing well that all the strength was expended in the fight, regardless of the outcome. 

"The underground" is not a jungle hideout, it is at the core of one's heart. "The resistance" is not a collective, it is a region of resolve that exists within. The seed that needs to be sowed must be received by a fertile earth or an earth made fertile. That earth is also resident in our being. And the hand that must gently plant the seed is not a hand, but a conscious decision to rediscover all these things that make up who we are.

The multitude never comes, and certainly not when called. The multitude arrives only because decent human beings arrive. They sing because someone does the unthinkable of singing at the scene of carnage. They sow because a crazy farmer defies the given logic of an earth's infertility. They fight because a madman says, "I will not surrender". They triumph because some random woman stands up and says, "I know none of you have the strength to speak the truth of what you see and I hold no grudge; I raise my voice regardless."

Gioconda Belli said that what decided the matter of becoming a revolutionary or not for her was a certain statement made by Camilo Ortega: "I am doing this because my parents didn't do it and because I don't want to leave it to my daughter to do." That clinched it for her. As always it is the little thing that transforms a quiescent life into a live, vibrant concerto of engaging and giving.

It is late, and I have to go home to my wife and child. At this point, all images, all metaphors and the heroic narratives cease. I have one thought, just one: my little girl. Yes, her smile and her searching eyes.

[Courtesy 'The Island' of August 31, 2003]

[Courtesy 'The Island' of August 31, 2003]

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A final note on love, doors and door-less love

This is about a continuing conversation sparked by a random comment I made about eyes, their transparency and issues of trust.  The spark did not erupt into flames but rather chose to transform into embers glowing on the topic of love, requited and otherwise, doors that are kept open and those that are slammed shut.  My friend and partner in the crime of love-reflection, Rasika Jayakody made an observation: ‘Can a slammed door stifle love? I don’t know. Slammed doors an test patience and resilience, but not love.  Love cannot be tested and detested’.  

There were lots of comments prompted by his assertions and in the midst of it all, I interjected the following, in general agreement:

‘No impediment is too formidable.  Doors and walls, made of wood or brick or iron: they become porous when love grazes them. Decency lies in knowing where to go and where not to.  Love does not intrude.’

Somewhere in the thread there was a question about victims, which in turn provoked the following contention: ‘But are we really victims?  Can there be victims and victimization?  Does love have the eyes to see villainy and if indeed it does recognize villainy, isn't that the point where love dies?’

Unconditionality is an easy claim but the unwritten, unsaid, underlying whisper that is drowned in the shout is a thing called expectation, the need for love to be requited.  Except in the love of a mother for her child, perhaps.  Rasika put it thus:  

‘This unconditional love is somewhat similar to a mother’s love which is explained in Buddhism as “appamana love” (endless love) which has no limit. When an infant is hungry, the mother would notice iteven with a very slight glimpse and that sight itself will turn her blood into milk.  When the child is facing danger, she will have no second thoughts about risking her own life and protecting him. His smiles will make her smile and his tears will make her cry and there will be no ulterior motives behind it. Even if a son stabs his mother to death; she will accept it with a smile and forgive him. She will not hate him.’

Such love, he claimed, ‘has no boundaries and restrictions and doesn’t depend on doors; whether the doors are open or closed, love will remain intact: it cannot be touched, harmed and stifled, but it can be felt.’

A few weeks ago, I got an email from my sister.  She and I exchange children’s stories; our children, mostly.  This was a child tale but with a double-thread running through it relating to mothers and mothering.  My sister lives in the USA and commemorates our late mother’s death anniversary and birthday is her own special way. This year she had decided, along with her three daughters, Duranya, Hasadri and Kisara to pick bulbs to plant on what would have been our mother’s 75^th birthday, the 17^th of November.  

She reports: ‘Hasadri picked one that we "had to get," because she felt it was like Ammi. "It has a bright color but it isn't one of those BOOM colors. It is so pretty but it is still sort of contained and orderly. Just like her." 

She sent a link to the flower.  I have seen it but never knew its name.  Alliums, they are called; nangi’s kids teach me something new all the time.  There was a description too: ‘Densest flower, deepest hue:  A colorful naturalizer. These wonderful spheres, packed with hundreds of tiny flowers, will enhance your summer garden. Excellent for cutting and lovely in dried arrangements.’

My mother was not ‘excellent for cutting’ and she didn’t need to be part of dried arrangements to be lovely.  Like all mothers.  But Hasadri, my beautiful 10 year old niece, so much like her grandmother, could not have failed to notice her and herself, I believe.  She, like her grandmother, is not a ‘BOOM person’.  Pretty, incredibly.   And yet contained and orderly.  Just like the flower. 

Ammi, 'Madam' to all her students who were sons and daughters loved as much we we ere

Her observations made me think that perhaps we could bracket ‘grandchild’ (in the general, of course) with ‘mother’ in the matter of ‘unconditionality’.  I remember how my mother once got annoyed with my daughter, who is a few days older than Hasadri.  I can’t remember what it was all about, but Ammi was so annoyed that her agitation did not subside for hours.  That evening, when she came home, the little girl ran to her, laughing, thrilled to see her grandmother.  That’s unconditional.   The logic could of course be extended to ‘grandmother’ or ‘grandparent’.  Speaking strictly for myself, I can’t remember anything about my grandmothers and grandfather except ‘love’.  No door, no walls, nothing could stop their love or my love for them.

I would not describe my mother the way her grandchildren would and do.  Maybe my love was conditional.  I can’t help feeling, though, that Hasadri was spot on.  And I think it is some unconditional element that gave her the eyes to see and the words to describe my mother in ways that neither my sister nor I would have.  Ever. 

And of my mother, I remember among other things, something that her favourite student, Arjuna Parakrama said at her funeral: ‘she was incredibly proud of her three children’.  After she died, and as nangi eloquently described in a note ofremembrance two years ago, we found that she had carefully saved every little piece of paper that had anything to do with her children, especially notes that my sister, her daughter, had written from the time she started to write.  She must have been immensely proud when nangi’s debut novel, ‘A Disobedient Girl’, came out, not too long before she left us. 

Mothers.  They are the last word in love. And the first too.  They don’t speak the language of doors.  They don’t engage in heart-reflection. They are heart. Through and through.  And that, my friends, is all there is (for me) to say about doors and love. 

 

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