"Why don't you just die?
I didn't realize how cruel it really sounds when I used to say it to my grandmother without contrite. I may have come off as mean, but this was how my kinship with my grandmother looked like.
She is a fragile old lady who is hit hard by numbers. Be it amnesia, aphasia, or anything else, she thinks she has it all.
Never in all these years have we shared an amiable bond, because I always thought she's being fake to disturb everyone in the house and gain attention. She knew what I thought of her.
It was in the middle of March when I returned home due to the standstill caused by Corona. I found my grandmother had a fracture. "It's okay. What's life without woes?" I thought to myself. Maybe she felt the same.
She was still the same. Nagging, crying for a reason, meandering all the time in the house, she didn't seem to tire of it. But I tried to keep calm. One fine evening, I asked my mother "How old must she be?"
I heard grandma's fragile voice say, "Eighty-four. I'm not going to die anytime soon!" and I burst out laughing.
I went to her and asked sheepishly "So, what's the plan?"
"Nothing", she said.
"Why do you do this? Is it deliberate?" I ask, trying to make a conversation.
"I do nothing," she said gruffly.
"I know you, grandma."
Suddenly, she started throwing things around her in a fit of anger.
"Why don't you just die?" I said, aghast by the sudden show of her wrath.
The room fell silent like a graveyard, the silence is broken only by her sobs.
Sobs grew louder and I paid no heed to it. I thought she's faking it again.
Suddenly she came to me and spoke between the sobs "Nahi Marna Mujhe, mujhe aur jeena hai tumlogo ke sath rehna hai, tere sath rehna hai."
"Mere sath?" I asked, not believing what I just heard.
" Haan." she started crying out loud. My indifference, my rage, my prejudices against her vanished the moment she said "Haan." This side of my grandma had eluded me all my life. I had never felt those emotions before... An emotion of remorse, repentance, of pity. An emotion of love.
The emotion of love was the fittest - it had survived. We fight, she still gets to my wit's end. But now I know. This is fugacious. Only love for her is aeonian.
Weird how the most uncomfortable things in your life teach you the most important lessons. Maybe that's why they say, face every situation with just one intention - that of learning.