Nanima

I found this picture among many old photos my cousin scanned of the family, then couldn't help but write this post.  This is a photograph of my maternal grandmother - my Nani. Most kids are more attached to their Nanis, they are special .... maybe because most of us were born in the maternal homes (or at least the first-borns) or maybe it is the mother-daughter bonding that brings us closer.

I have such fond memories of my childhood with her.  She did some of the things my own mother did not.  From my combing and plaiting her hair to snuggling up to her on her lounging sofa to flipping through pages of her wonderful pictorial encyclopedias and magazines.  This emotional bonding during the summers I spent with her in Bombay as a kid I will always treasure.

She must have been around sixteen when she married. Had six children, her last-born was born at the same time her eldest daughter was having her first baby!  Mother and daughter pregnant together …. she only studied till class 2 (got only a very rudimentary start in school, and then tutored at home till probably class 7 level).  She could read, write and speak good English, aside from Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi. Her style of dressing and her henna-coloured hair styled in a bun when she went out was quite a picture.

She had a mind of a child – fresh, eager to learn, absorb. Mostly self-taught, would read whatever she could lay her hands on….from Gujarati journals to Enid Blyton books for children! She was the one who introduced me to a lending library.

She had green fingers.  Was passionate about gardening, used to keep a huge plant encyclopedia for reference. Exotic fruit trees of Star-fruit, Rose apple, Water apple (a type of jamun), Phalsa (to name a few) were part of her garden. The flower varieties included Magnolias, Gerberas, mauve, pink and blue Hydrangias; Roses and bud Mogras grew in large wooden tubs in her terrace garden.  The Jui, Din Ka Raja and Raat Ki Rani were some of my favourites. Every evening she would make us collect the Jui and Mogras and hand-weave “kajras” for us.  As kids we used to play “four corners” near the Touch-me-nots and bench under the trellis of Alamandas.

To add to this, the lush coconut palms surrounding the house were a good supply of coconut oil and Jhadoos, all made at home under her supervision.

She also loved animals greatly. Her pet parrot "Mittoo" used to have tea with her; he would be brought out perched on a badminton racket and sipped tea from a teaspoon.  Her aquarium was always clean with a variety of fish: Angelfish, Black Guppies, the female segregated to give birth to tiny little black specks.  As kids we were really fascinated by all this.

She didn’t cook much herself but she had recipes handy from her Gujarati recipe book Ghar ni Rani. Tricolour ribbon cake and animal-shaped cookies were our all-time favourites. At tea-time she would dole out a mixture of sukhi bhel in newspaper cones like the street-vendors, her way to discourage us from eating out. My olfactory memory of the aromas from her kitchen are still fresh, and specially the smell of ripening mangoes mostly alphonsos which used to lie in a big Thala under her bed during the Mango season.

She studied homeopathy and would dispense medicine from her well-stocked medicine chest. She’d also help my grand-father with his secret Unani formulas and was a rather good critic of the products he made.

Despite her minimal education, early marriage and home-bound life, she was empowered, very broad-minded, more so than my own mother.

In her last days she seemed to become even more child-like, eating only mashed food, soup and rice, and going back to read Enid Blyton again.

These wonderful memories apart, she remains on my list of favourite persons.