The Grandmother
Her navagunavela is something I easily
explain to my friends now. She used to narrate the Buddhist version of
the Apocalypse - I have written essays on the subject. I carry her
legacy - she knew that.
Sachitra MAHENDRA
Even after three days, her body has hardly lost its solemnity.
Grandmother takes a rest in the coffin bed with her Navagunavela, a
chain of clay pellets, cupped in her hands. The Navagunavela she often
held close so dearly.
 Faint mumbling of her daughters reaches my tired ears in the backdrop
of the gloomy silence reigning the air. They are in the other end of the
hall. I looked at my wristwatch which read 1.15 am. The entire ancestral
house is open, with anybody but my aunts and mother hardly awake. I
cannot spot anyone serving coffee - something I really look for now.
I should check out what is going on in the kitchen. But I am frozen.
I cannot move.
Granny used to tell me the times she counted the navagunavela. It
should have been thousands and thousands of times, but even then she was
not happy. She taught me how to pass the pellets of navagunavela
contemplating the nine exalted qualities of the Buddha. The Buddha did
not sin, even in privacy - this is the first quality arahan, and pass
the first pellet. Our family get-togethers made such a hustle and bustle
- she was still focused on her meditation, self-possessed, silent and
undisturbed.
I am tired. I had to stay up the past few days for an exam. Am I
dozing off? I look at her and the navagunavela. I need to own this
sacred thing, though I bought one when she was alive. It is the emblem
of inspiration - I realize now - that she passed down to me.
Talking to her was not boring. I wonder if it became boring when I
grew up an adult. We talked about religion and my grandfather. She used
to visit us every two months or so when I was a child. I could not wait
to get back home from school to listen to her tales. She kept on telling
the same thing over and over again, but I loved them as a child. Did I
lose interest gradually? I don’t know. Honestly.
It’s not sorrow that engulfs me. Something else, I think, but I can’t
discern that. May be I do not dig into my soul genuinely. Her needs were
not many. She used to be perched in one place for hours, gather and
share her knowledge. I would have been with her more often as an adult.
I rarely visited my relatives, for I had hardly anything to talk. My
parents would visit relatives without me, because I am too busy - may
have been snobbish - to meet dull people. But that made granny miss my
company. Now I know I missed her company too.
I ache to listen to those repetitive tales about religion and my
grandfather. Why did our relationship slowly crumble down, just because
I became a man? Age made me leave school, think of higher studies, a job
and then many more. Ageing made her visits lesser, taking care of weak
health and confined to her own home looked after by her children.
Her navagunavela is something I easily explain to my friends now. She
used to narrate the Buddhist version of the Apocalypse - I have written
essays on the subject. I carry her legacy - she knew that.
I am still fond of living with childhood memories of grandmother. I
was one of the few kids who used to hang around her a lot. When she is
in a calm mood, I go to her.
She takes my hand begins her talk. “So how is your homework, son?”
And then she shifts into the talk of religions putting the Navagunavela
aside for a moment. I take it
from her. She once again explains its work role.
Nobody is serving coffee, it seems. They must be tired, or perhaps
exhausted. I stretch out my hands. I need to go to bed. Haven’t I slept
already now and then? I do not know when I was awake or asleep; I walk
out with my memories, both idyllic and mournful at times.
I hear her daughters speaking in a low key. That mingles with what I
have heard already.
“The day before my wedding, mother wanted to have a talk alone. I
wondered what she was up to. She wanted me to change one precept since
the wedding day. That is from non-celibacy to sexual misconduct.” I
could hear her sob and her sisters soothe her - she may be my mother, or
may be not.
The third of the five Buddhist precepts is staying away from any kind
of sexual misbehaviour and to be content with your legal partner. But in
higher precepts, the third precept is to abhor any kind of sexual
behaviour. We observed, I remember, the precept that is to abstain from
sexual misbehaviour as schoolboys - this was funny, because we had to be
celibate anyway before marriage. The voices of my aunts fade in and out
like a montage. And it dies down at length.
Here lies my grandmother - I whisper as if in a soliloquy - it’s you
grandmother, who led an amusing life. You never said a lie - you had
your own strategies to slip away from difficult situations. You followed
all five precepts with bravery I always envy. You could give a mindful
audience to pirith chanting one whole night, when the rest of us were
asleep or occupied with something else.
You are the only grandparent I had seen in my life. And you are the
most virtuous woman I have ever seen. I want to mourn your death. I want
to weep and let my feelings free. But I cannot. I cannot escape those
feelings of repentance and sorrow.
It’s my age and your ageing that made the gap between us. I know I am
too late to realize that.
I need to go to that place where you used to be. It has turned a
solitary spot. Nobody dares go there, perhaps for the fear of ghosts. I
know you will never be a ghost. It’s still here - the small chair that
little I sat on. It’s too small, yet brings me back the happy times we
were together.
“This is how you pass the pellets…”
“You know there will be a torential rain in another 2,500 years. That
is called murugasan varusava. Virtuous people will survive but evil
people will get caught in that. So you have to do more and more merits.”
“This was one whole bare land, when your grandfather brought me here.
He was so interested in cultivating this, and he was prematurely retired
for that purpose alone. All the villagers respected him.”
“I have written all lands to my children. I am relieved from
everything. I can die free. I can concentrate on what I read until
then.”
“I cannot read for long hours, son. My eyes get strained. Can you
remember what I told you about murugasan varusava?”
“Don’t bring me books, son, I can’t read now. My eyes are feeble. But
still I have my navagunavela with me. I never get enough contemplating
the Buddha’s qualities.
“I will go on like this… I am happy but I don’t know how to explain
it. You will come to feel it when you grow up more matured, I know.”
Grandma, now I can rest my heart on that enchanting beauty of the
life you led. We can resume our conversations for no one is out there to
intrude on. I never knew we had that sweet bond till the death did part
us. |
