Kshama Bhyravabhotla
You cast a diminutive but proud shadow on the stones of the driveway as our car peels away from your house in Bengaluru, airport-bound. You won’t cry- you ran out of tears long ago- but you’ll feel the emptiness of the house, the strain of self-sufficiency and your role of caregiver even at this age. I wanted so badly to bring you back to the United States with us, to care for you. But I also know- maybe with a tinge of self-justification- that if anyone can handle this situation with grace, it’s you. I wish I had taken the time to learn about your life when I was younger, because you showed me mementoes of your youth for the first time during this visit. I’ve slowly started to reconcile the real you with the grandmother I knew as a child. And what I see is gritty. Tenacious. Beautiful.
I see the fifteen-year-old child you with a garland around your neck, sitting primly by my grandfather’s side, looking stoically at the photographer as he takes your first picture as a married woman. Having grown up in an Indian village in the 1930s, this is what you were groomed for since childhood. But I see the naivete in your face. Not in the eyes bright with expectations or shy, covert smiles typical of new brides, but in the knowledge that you have no idea how much your marriage will test the boundaries of the identity you’ve developed for yourself.
You tell me about getting used to motherhood (only because I asked)- but carefully, light-heartedly. ‘Raising those four boys took all the energy out of me’ you quip, but I see the true struggle behind those words. The gruelling work of raising four rambunctious boys with no money. The pressure to conceive those four boys in the first place. The stakes of raising children well in a society in which the moral character of a child mostly reflects the worth of the woman (because what is she expected to do except to be a good mother and wife?) The turmoil of moving to America so that my grandfather could find a job after being unemployed for seven years, yet trying to emigrate in the most economically feasible way. How to keep all four boys sheltered and fed, even if they couldn’t all live in the same country. How to make them understand that even across oceans, they were loved and never jettisoned; that the two older boys could join them when they were settled but only, for now, this is how it had to be. Struggling to be brave in a new country where giving up is not an option. Reconciling the guilt of not being with two of your children and settling into that secret space custom-made for every woman- torn in every direction at once.
When I was little, I remember being enthralled by the fact that you worked at Nations Bank, fantasising about you wading through piles of coins at work like Scrooge McDuck. Now I see your inner fire, completely unexpected from an upbringing that prized docility and softness in women. The steely intrepidity it took to plunge into the unrelenting current of this new fast-paced society, forget your insecurities and find work. The courage to adapt and take on a role you never imagined you would play in your wildest dreams, even without a college education. These things have to be done, you say with a nonchalant shrug, but I understand your thirst for excellence, not just skate by at your job, for the sake of your family. I see you returning to work even after the time you were mugged, clutching your purse more tightly to you than usual and gazing around shiftily but soldiering on to do what is necessary at all costs.
I remember the delicate smell of your Pond’s face cream, the empty jars you used to save to hold vermillion, sandalwood powder and paper slips of lottery numbers before you moved back to India.
You would tell me to pick a number (this job always made me feel important) and then shake your head, telling me to ‘find some good numbers.’ I recall your array of contrasting hobbies, from watching The Price is Right to your daily Hindu prayer ritual to the puzzles in the Sunday papers. ‘After your grandfather died I needed something to do’ you say. But you did these things when he was alive as well, and I realise how far apart you two were even in the same house, how love was communicated by unfailing duty to one another and little else. How difficult it must have been to spend your life with an emotionally withdrawn man, training yourself to not need his emotional support or understanding. Better, you think, to silence your most intimate thoughts and deny your fears the dignity of being recognized. Better to swallow the salt of your tears now than allow it to season the rest of your life. Even after his death, you are completely independent. But you’ve lost the ability to express how much your family matters to you, leading to misunderstandings.
My relationship with you is one of unspoken understanding, founded on our similarities. As a small child, I remember you as the first one to really listen to all my imaginings, puerile, plentiful and fleeting as cirrus wisps in a clear summer sky. Now I understand how much you indulged me, having had such little time for idle dreaming yourself. The transition of our relationship from childhood to adolescence, such murky waters even for people living under the same roof, happened across continents for us through five-minute phone conversations. Last year, I saw the initial wariness in your eyes after meeting you for the first time in eight years, the uncertainty as to the kind of woman I’d become. But your unease slipped away as you saw in me the same strength and resilience that defines you. You’ll never tell me explicitly that you’re proud of me, but you don’t need to. I can’t imagine enduring a fraction of the difficulties that you have, but you are an unsung maverick for your generation, a feminist of a different brand. And I hope to grow into my sari and cut the same figure that you do: diminutive, but proud.
