She is the stuff a party revolves itself around. Not because she is loud, which she is, but because of how captivating her stories are, how radiant her laughter is and because of her ability to make one laugh at the most mundane things. She is the center of gravity of our world. My favorite sight is that of her sitting on the kitchen counter making snacks while telling us a story or making them up as she goes. In the stories men fall on the road bag of potatoes first, the grandmother takes the child to a forest, and everyone wins. Suddenly, the kitchen becomes the most populated room of the house. People, unknowingly, levitate towards her. Even the furniture, I have noticed, starts facing her.
She watched Garam Masala in a theater with me and made friends with a college gang I was too shy to talk to. She made them laugh more than Paresh Rawal could. She tells me she had to quit school in 4th grade, which taught her enough English to use Whatsapp and Facebook properly. She asks the right questions: did you eat? was it good? do you sleep enough? are you happy? She compliments my hair first.
Today she laughed her way into a hospital saying, “No sane human, for the sake of her sanity, should climb the stairs of a hospital or a court” and came out on a wheelchair, giggling, embarrassed of the assistance. Today, I fed her a meal for the first time. Then we made envelopes, each marked ‘before breakfast’, ‘after lunch’, ‘7 pm’, ‘after dinner’ & put Primodil, Ezitocin, Fuck that Sorbitrate in them.
If I ever get to travel in time, I’d meet her when she was a child swimming in the river next to her house; see how she managed to fool all her siblings into working more than their share. I’d witness first hand the pranks she made famous. When I go there, I will not eat the paan she offers me, I have been told it makes the inside of your mouth charcoal black. When I meet her I will tell her of this little girl she made in the future. I will tell her of the tiny green saree she will stitch, the plaits she will plait. That the corner of her saree helped me navigate the world, I will tell her, she makes it though, she wins in the end, fuck Sorbitrate or not.