The grand mom I never met

I have never met my father’s parents. His father died when I was 6 months old (I am the only grandchild he ever saw) and his mother died young. We have a black and white photo of my grandparents at home and she was a beautiful and stylish lady considering that she might have died in the late 1950s. In the photo you see here, she is wearing a velvet blouse, which was fashionable those days - so my father told me. She was not just a photo on the wall for us. She was ‘Achamma’ and we knew her so well through this photo and a lot of stories told by my father. There was this photo of my father as a two year old wearing a top knitted by his mother. He would always say that she was very creative.

I have never seen my father talking about his mother without his eyes becoming moist. He lost her when he was perhaps still in school. I cannot really imagine how it might have been for him. She died in child birth. My father was fast asleep at home when this happened. In his sleep he dreamt of his mother. She was calling him. She said, “Mone (son), I have made Neyyappam (a sweet made of rice flour and jaggery) for you. Wake up now”. He woke up from his sleep only to hear his uncles, his mother’s brothers, whispering, “How are we going to tell this to the boy?” They didn’t have to; he knew the worst had happened. The baby was still born and she too drifted off soon, sadly for my father, his three younger brothers and three sisters, the eldest barely 13.

Many people who knew her have told me that she was very beautiful. I greedily ask a lot of questions about her to people who had the chance to know her. I still do, but now I have more questions to ask. My father died when I was 22 and never had the chance to know my husband or kids. I now ask, “How was my father when he was little?” I asked this question to an elderly ayah, who was with my father’s family. She had also stayed in my house for a month to help me take care of my new born daughter. While bathing my daughter, she would remember some incidents involving my father. She told me he was very naughty.

Now my kids have a lot of questions for me about their Appuppan (maternal grandfather). Memories are real treasures we pass on to the future generations…