Nani-Nana (excerpts from my journal entries)

“Speaking of love without the actual words, I remember coming downstairs around 5 PM every evening to find my grandparents sharing tea at the dining table as per their daily routine a few years ago. Chai for Nani, and coffee for Nana. My grandmother needed dentures by this point but hated them and never wore them unless a photograph was about to be taken; she would not even wear them to eat and therefore stuck to softer foods. My grandfather would pour out a bowl of chivda (Indian trail mix, if you will) for my grandmother, and then painstakingly discard every single peanut in the bowl into a separate pile that he would consume later on her behalf. I have never seen my grandparents verbally express their contentment with each other, never heard them say ‘I love you’, but… they don’t need really need the words. They say it everyday through the little things they do together and for each other.”

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23 December, 2021

Nana passed away yesterday. We’re in Indore now to be with Nani and extended family, to mourn Nana’s death and celebrate his life. I feel more okay at the moment. It was scary seeing him like that. It was scarier seeing everyone who loved him seeing him like that. When I first heard the news, all I could think about was how Baba must be feeling, and how he would put those feelings aside to take care of everyone else first, even though Nana was his father. Baba will be strong for everybody, but I hoped he would let himself feel what he needed to feel. And I started crying, and then Baba came up the stairs to hug me and comfort me, without realizing that his need to do that, to put my needs before his own, was the reason I was crying in the first place.

Once everyone had paid their respects, before they took Nana away for the funeral, my uncle announced that there was one last thing that needed to be done, an important letter that had to be shared. Then, my cousin took out the card that I’d made for my grandparents for their anniversary last year, and read the above piece out loud to the crowd. And I started bawling, because I did not see that coming. I’ve been thinking about that letter all day, about how pure what Nani-Nana had was, about how Nani needs to be protected from her own routine, because it can never be the same again. Every time she sits down for a cup of chai and realizes she must take out the biscuit box and arrange her toast and Parle-G by herself, that simple action will remind her of him. The rest of us never really got a chance to take care of Nani, because the two of them made the most doting couple we’ve ever seen, my mum says. Now, it’s our turn to look after her.

Everyone keeps talking about how Nana was so quintessentially Nana until the very end. He went for a walk that morning, taking his usual route. Read his newspaper. Did chores around the house. He died suddenly, unexpectedly. Knowing him, it was the best way for him to go. We all would have liked one last goodbye, though. He was 90 years old. He spent several months in Bangalore with my family this year while I was at Tufts. He met everyone he could during Diwali and Dussehra and was just so content to be among the people he loved. He made sure he saw everyone before he left us, so he left everyone with their hearts full. I just wish he’d waited for me.

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24 December, 2021

I’m feeling okay right now, but I know this is the kind of thing that’ll keep hitting me and hurting. I’m upset that I did not see Nana this whole year. And I know I’m being selfish, but I’m upset that I will not get to spend as much time with Baba as I’d hoped, because it’s been a year since I saw him and I’ve missed him so much. I hope Nani comes back to Bangalore with him.

Last night, I was holding Nani in the middle of the night, and she said she needed to use the bathroom. She walked to the living room, saying she wanted to see him first. Nana lay in an ice box. She looked at him and said “Arre, what are you doing? How can you be sleeping… I’m struggling to fall asleep here.” My whole chest hurt. When she lay down, complaining about a headache, I gave her a forehead massage the way she taught me in middle school, telling her that I use the same technique to comfort my cats and soothe my friends’ headaches all the way at Tufts, too. She seemed secretly proud to know that her method had spread overseas and lived in the memories of people who had never met her.

At night, I sleep next to Nani, and we face each other. She puts one palm on my pillow under my face and cups my cheek, and I hold her other hand. She jokes about how I sneak under her blanket and hold her tummy in the middle of the night like I did when I was little. I rub her arms when she cries quietly in the morning because she isn’t waking up next to her husband. She won’t, ever again. And I won’t get to hear Nana’s voice again. Have him ask me excessive details about my travel itinerary. Have him run through approximately three questions during a call and then bark “Okay” and abruptly end the call before I can even say “Bye”. Won’t hear him say “Sampawntaak!” Or bring snacks we say we like when he goes grocery-shopping, even during COVID, even when Mumma tells him not to go for his own safety. Or ask me to see my college textbooks when he visits, because he was always so curious about what I was studying. In some ways, it still hasn’t hit me, but I don’t know what could be more real than seeing his still body lying on the pyre. Nana was such a force of nature. The Indore house was full yesterday, full of family and friends and neighbors, and yet, the house felt quiet, because he wasn’t there. That buzz wasn’t there. The little Nana tornado, constantly moving from one thing to another, from one room to the next, making rounds and showing up absolutely everywhere, was missing.

Today Nani and Baba talked about Nana in the past tense, about the sweaters he wore while praying and on his walks, his socks that were drying on the clothesline, with an almost casual tone. Nani’s ancient Samsung phone just rang and it’s the same ringtone, the one I associate so strongly with Nana’s “Hullo! Namaskaaar!” that would interrupt my online lectures when we were all home last summer because of COVID. Mose chhal kiye jaaye, haay re haay re haay, dekho sai.nyaa beimaan. We were always so amused by that choice in ringtone. I keep thinking about how Nana and I had a huge fight that summer. I’d been trying to convince Nana to get a smartphone, because it would be so much easier for him to use than his ancient button phone, but he refused to accept that it was a good idea. Eventually, he said he thought there was no point in learning how to use a smartphone, not at his age, and insinuated that he was probably going to die soon anyway, so he was going to stick to his old ways. I got mad at him for saying that, for almost using his impending death as a weapon to win the argument. Because I didn’t want to think about how his argument had a hint of validity to it. I didn’t want to see it from his perspective and acknowledge what it meant I would some day lose. I locked myself in my room and cried for an hour and he banged on my door, apologizing, telling me — no, begging me — to come out and try to understand. I refused. I wish I’d listened. The rest of the summer just… happened, and I honestly don’t even remember most of it, and shit, I wish I did because those were my last few memories with Nana and I didn’t even know it yet.

Aaji-Papaji don’t know yet. They don’t know we’re in Indore. Papaji was the one we’d been worried about, the one who’s been in the hospital. I’ve been terrified and simultaneously in denial and either ways I want to go visit them once before I leave. I want to hug Papaji and wish him “Good morning!” in the evening and bake a chocolate cake with Aaji. I want to record a video of Nani’s Burnol bedtime story that all of her grandkids grew up with. I wish I had recordings of Nana’s Shivaji stories.

It feels really stupid to have to worry about my projects, to take my incomplete coursework seriously, when there is so much grief around and within me. It is just so meaningless. Or at least, it should be. It feels wrong for it to not be meaningless right now, and yet, I worked on my projects for four hours today, Ishaan attended his FIITJEE classes in the evening, and Apoorva Tai and Deepali vahini had office calls and work today. We’re just supposed to go on. Just keep on keeping on. Somehow, Nani seems to recognize and accept that better than I do. She is so strong. She is radiant in even her exhaustion. Any hint of weakness from her 88 year old body is overshadowed by the sheer strength and determination radiating from her core. We heard her murmuring prayers while bathing yesterday. When she stepped out, her brows were raised tight with a sense of calm and confidence. She flipped her shoulder-length hair and dried it with quick jerks of her towel. She looked at her own reflection in the mirror and fixed her saree with so much grace. And then she joined us for a cup of chai at the dining table. I love her so much. I admire her so much. I am so lucky to forever have parts of her in my blood.

There is no break from sadness. There will always be something new and difficult. And I know that the flip side is true too, that there will always be something new and good, too. Something to be happy about. But that doesn’t change what has happened.

I don’t want to end this one on a positive note. Not yet.

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That evening, I came downstairs to find Nani sitting on the couch, surrounded by her other grandkids. Mumma was holding her phone up to record a video, ready to capture Nani’s extended version of the classic Kolaba Marathi story on video. The fact that they all had the same idea independently of me warmed my heart. I joined them, and Nani began her story, rushing through the original plot. In brief, it was about a fox who stole berries from a woman’s tree, and then had the audacity to spit out the seeds and poop on her porch. Frustrated, the woman puts out a red hot pan on her porch, and the fox, curious and excited about this new addition, decides to sit and poop right on the pan. Naturally, it causes second degree burns on his behind, teaching him a lesson for stealing.

As always, Nani tweaked the plot of her extended version to something we’d never heard before, despite the tradition’s 30 year long career. The fox heads back home and begs his disgruntled wife to put some Burnol (burn cream) on his behind. When we were little, on noticing that we still hadn’t fallen asleep, Nani would draw out the story, always adding some beautifully ridiculous element to these events, like the fox having to borrow the Burnol from a neighbor in the middle of the night, or the wife kicking the fox out of the house, or the fox’s three children judging him for stealing and promising not to turn out like him. We narrated back to her these other variations from memory, until we were all clutching our stomachs, falling over, and in tears from laughter. I think we’re going to be fine. Because the story still gave us so much joy, despite all the sadness we’d felt all day. And it will even thirty years from now, when she won’t be around, when we’ll have only each other to hear the story from as we reminisce about our childhoods. The love that we gave and received across time will not fade away from those moments and will help us carry our grief.

So buck up. Smile. Charm. Off we go. We’ll be okay.

Fighting Trunchbull

Flashback that inspired a part of my Common Application’s Personal Essay (which I have been thinking about a fair amount lately, as it is a) part of the reason I have physically been where I currently am for over 7 months, and b) rather relevant to the trains of thought that leave my brain station past midnight):

Once upon a time, I called a friend of mine. Crying hard, somewhat distressed.

There’s an owl perched on the railing of my balcony, I said.

“Okay, and…?”

I want to be that owl. But I cannot be that owl, ever. I just really want to be that owl.

Excerpts from said Personal Essay:

An Inarticulate Ramble

(but this time in America)

Walking down a residence hall corridor at 3:33 AM is definitely a weird experience (btw why do we say “walking down a hallway?” you literally stay at the same level. what is English). I should be studying for my Psychology exam that’s worth 25% of my grade; I should be making notes especially since Jennifer needs them, too. Four whole days before an exam? Maitreyi is preparing a full four days before her exam? This has never happened before, simply because no one has relied on her to make notes for a chapter before. There’s the loophole in her extreme procrastination – it will transform into not too terrible procrastination if someone else needs her to work. Why would I rather do healthy, useful things for other people than for myself, why will I literally not get lunch if it is not a meal I have plans to get with someone else (i.e., I will only go to a dining hall if someone is relying on me to show up, because who cares about, you know, feeding myself so I continue to live well), why will I stop myself from engaging in Unhealthy Behavior just so I don’t feel hypocritical when I encourage others to stop?

Anyway, my phone died and I’d needed to pee for a while but felt lazy and Pearson Revel signed me out of the textbook while I was mid-sentence and there’s a pack of Coffee Nut m&ms lying on the top of the dresser in this fake, tiny, second-floor Houston study room and I’m mad at Pearson and super tempted to try those m&ms but 1) I don’t know who left them there, and 2) I’ve never tried that flavour before; it sounds interesting, and 3) what if Mystery Apathetic@Chocolate wants the m&ms back, 4) I don’t really care about point (3) but what if I dislike the flavour and am stuck with it being in my mouth for a whole bunch of time until I can get breakfast? should I eat ahhhh

I couldn’t make that decision just then, and since I’d finally found something I wanted to do less than walk all the way to the washroom, I decided to go pee to avoid making that decision. On my (short, but it felt long, it’s late, my concept of time is skewed) walk to the washroom, I really noticed and appreciated just how weird and particular the aroma of residence hall corridors is. Sometimes they smell like various perfumes, sometimes like carpet and shoes, sometimes like what I think is alcohol, not that I can be sure bc my experience with it is very limited and I am just terrified of it. Other times, like Thursday nights and Friday evenings, it’s weed, and every other day, it’s a combination of remnants of all of these. Outside my Indian mumma-friend’s room, it smells Indian it’s like chai but maybe I make that up in my head out of expectation of what is to come when I step in. On some mornings, when I get out of the washroom after having brushed my teeth, the bit of corridor right outside my room smells like black coffee and that’s how I know my roommate has woken up. Either ways, it’s so strange that these smells that were totally unfamiliar to me three months ago now smell like Home(?)(am I ready to call this place that yet, I do not know).

In the washroom, I realized I liked tucking my shirt into my jeans. I like how it makes me feel but also it makes me uncomfortable to do that when I’m not super loving my body, so I decided I would prevent my not loving my body by leaving the m&ms alone. I remember that when I was still in school, a boy on my school bus made fun of another for having visible “stretch marks.” I didn’t know what they were, and a friend explained them to me; basically, they usually happen when a person’s weight changes and some of the skin doesn’t know what to do with itself anymore. She said the boy had lost weight. I remember genuinely not understanding what was so bad about having stretch marks! Why are they considered yucky, when they’re sometimes proof that someone worked hard to feel healthier and better about themselves? I wanted stretch marks. I was happy to see them the first time they became really prominent on my hips after I refrained from eating junk food and exercised regularly for four months in Grade 12. I felt good; they were a sign that I was right in thinking that I was finally being healthy.

When do you know that you’re starting to feel at home somewhere? Is it when, in the map if your mind’s eye, you’ve started replacing unfamiliar building entrances with people’s faces? And their carpets and blankets, shoe racks, and wall decor. Is it when your French professor knows you well enough to email you specifically before Thanksgiving break, telling you to “try to sleep a ton during break! :)” and is it when you start having opinions on kinds of cereal that aren’t sold in India? Three months ago I felt dangerously adrift, but now I feel only moderately adrift. I mean, I did finally use the Belgian waffle machine, and the terrifying toaster to make myself my first bagel with cream cheese, and the panini press to make my friend a grilled cheese. I studied in the Study Rooms of residence halls other than mine, pretended to study at one of the libraries once, and stood beside and talked to my friend while she spread out sheets under the pretty tree outside our Hall with her books and laptop out to study (super cute, and super movie-like, have always wanted to do). There’s a hundred things I haven’t done yet, of course, but I imagine each will bring this strange place a bit closer to Home in my heart. I imagine each habit and preference I acquire, like getting the apple spice cake with maple buttercream frosting on Tuesday nights, and the other side of my floor, will cement it.

I love the people here. I hate that they don’t know Indian slang, so I can’t say jugaad, or mug up, or bunk, or thappad, around them and expect even a semblance of cognizance on their faces. I hardly pronounce “dance,” and “class,” and “answer” the right way anymore and the new way feels ugly and rude in my mouth but I have no choice if I want to be quickly understood. They try sometimes to say my name right, and most of them really want to be able but struggle. No one really uses nicknames; everyone mostly just avoids having to use my name. Only one friend in my life really uses a nickname to refer to me often, to the point where I call myself it in my head. I miss him very much, and I’m mad that I cannot be in his actual physical presence right now, especially since it’s nearly 5 AM and I am awake and I used to fall asleep within 7 seconds when sitting next to him on the way to school. Anyway, the people here are excited for me to try new American snacks and worried for me to experience the Actual Cold New England Weather. They are happy to invite me to their homes during Thanksgiving break and more than willing to explain weird concepts like cold salads to me. They will run to me from blocks away if I feel like I can’t breathe and am terrified I’ll die, and they’ll let me cry for hours about real chai and food with actual flavour and my best friends from back home and my cat and my idiot amazing brother, and they’ll kick me out of my bed at 3:30 PM when I’m being an idiot, and they’ll bring me cheese puffs and other favourite foods, and they’ll make me exercise with them. There is very, very little I wouldn’t do for these people and I need them to know this. I’m so grateful for them and how much easier they made this transition for me.

I’m not entirely sure how I got here from talking mostly about Coffee Nut m&ms, but the mind goes where it wants, I guess. Where it wants to go right now is to sleep. Earlier today, I told my best friend that if one could marry concepts, I would marry sleep, and I will forever stand by that 400%. I have so much more to say, but I’m thinking thoughts at too ridiculously fast a pace at the moment, and it’s impossible to capture a lot of it. It’s also nearly 5:30 AM and I’ve begun to make a terrifying number of spelling errors while typing (except for those red-underlined words like flavour and favourite, WordPress, I refuse to abandon British spellings), so I will try to go to bed, despite having to be awake in another four hours anyway.

Good night, and thank you for being here.

PS – God bless the time difference between East Coast and India (who would’ve thought I’d ever think this) because how else would I not be completely and totally alone at these odd hours

One Year

Some time in October last year, the Maitreyi I was decided to start writing a blog (she was acing her language classes in school and was getting to be a little cocky and decided that her writing should be read by more than just her English and French teachers). She wanted everything to be perfect. On narrowing her site options down to WordPress and Blogger, she quickly realized WordPress was far easier to use (I say quickly, but really, the idiot spent a week trying to adjust header images and font sizes till she finally managed to achieve them on WordPress; she was hopeless with gadgets). She was proud of her blog name (caprice: the tendency to change, by the way) and her chosen colours were pleasant enough.

About two weeks later and exactly one year ago, she published her first post.

A tiny celebration now, please (brace yourselves for some numbers), because I made it to 17 posts, over a 100 followers in all, nearly 3000 page views from about 25 different countries, 1500 visitors, 180 likes, 210 comments and several new blogger friends in a year (you may start clapping now). I owe people who bothered commenting on my posts for encouraging me to write in the beginning enough that I was almost always itching to publish another post (and hence, the 40 drafts that still wait). I’m also going to take this opportunity to apologize to the three bloggers who’ve nominated me for my first few challenges ever. I’m incredibly sorry I’m months late and I feel horrible about it and I promise I’ll finish them when I get the time.

Now, I remember there was this day in January earlier this year on which I got super excited about my birthday (which is on November 3, yes). For some reason, I didn’t stop myself from childishly imagining how good a day it would be owing to the fact that I have the best friends in the world and they’d made my 15th a Patronus Memory. I also realized how different I’d probably be. I would’ve gone through my grade 10 board exams (which, laughably, were the biggest, most major set of problems I then thought I’d face in my life; god, we made such a huge deal out of those cute little exams), an entire semester of 11th grade, half a year without some friends I’d made, half a year under a new piano teacher, moving out of the house I’d lived in for the last 9 years and just so many hours and days and people and experiences. In July, after writing my first UT, I decided that my First Semester Examination of Grade 11 would be the largest obstacle I’d ever have to overcome, and that by the end of those two weeks, I would’ve changed as a person (I know that sounds very dramatic, but you’ll only find it annoyingly so if you haven’t written yours yet). And I was right. My eye power has increased, ugh. 

A month or so ago, I came across evidence that proved that Maitreyi from January thought right. You know those personality quizzes people take for fun (when they should really be studying for that really important math test the next day)? A close friend of mine had me take one last year and my results were, according to me, pretty accurate. Extraverted, observant, heart over head, among others. When another friend linked me the same quiz a year later, I didn’t expect my personality to have become all that different, so as the results page loaded, I was prepared only to see those familiar words again. On seeing a diminished Extraverted and expanded Intuitive bar, however, I was convinced that the software had messed up, somehow. How could it be that off?! When I read about that particular personality type, though, I soon found myself nodding vigorously at the screen before me. I’d literally switched extremes, because I remember relating to the type I got a year ago almost as much as I did this one. 

Having lived only nearly 16 years, this change over a single year seemed major. I’d count going from 2015-Maitreyi to 2016-Maitreyi to be pretty significant right now. When I’m 60, though, I will have experienced so much that a silly difference in quiz results over a year as a teenager would be a memory long -forgotten, for there will be others of decidedly greater importance, like moving to a new country, getting married and working a job. Me pre-marriage and other things would have a life quite different from me post them. I would’ve undergone so many changes in personality, albeit minor ones, over the years that I will refer to younger Maitreyis from different decades ago, rather than years in my stories. 

The quiz caused me to really give how we change as people a thought. It threw me off at first, but now I’m glad I realized it early enough that I can almost watch myself as I grow. I’m making that possible through posts on my blog that record and recognize these changes- ones that have taken place, ones that I anticipate, and ones that may never happen at all.

Fin.

Daily Plan (A Necessary Evil)

10th to 11th grade feels like a huge jump already and school hasn’t even started yet. The fact that I’ve decided to go for Medicine doesn’t help.

Suddenly, I’m supposed to plan everything I do and well, actually do it. A Daily Calendar decides for me when I take a shower, study, eat, exercise, study, read, study, write, play the piano, study etc. I know it’s really going to benefit me but I hate how necessary it is because.. I hate it. I hate how it changes so much. There’s scores of sites you can find telling you how you should develop a strict routine and why it’s best to follow it and I agree with them completely, but it can all get a little frustrating sometimes. So while this post will majorly comprise me ranting about my daily plan, know that I still attempt to follow it willingly because I’m aware of its advantages.

Facts.

I don’t keep myself busy enough, I think. And that’s why I think. Over-think.

In between cramming useless dates relevant to an English poet named Lord Byron who went to war and later died of a fever (1824), and calculating how many trees Grades I to XII of some school planted, I do take a break. I look around the same room I’ve been looking at for over 8 years now (okay, not the same, my mum did renovate in 2011) and maybe think things I’ve thought often before and maybe realize the dullest of facts.