My Grandmother. Circa – At least 35-40 years before I was born.
I have particularly always wondered about women’s clothing in my country, my city before the 70s. Did they only drape a saree? I don’t know. I hear different versions of it.
This specific picture surfaced or rather came to my knowledge at the time of my maternal grandmother’s funeral. Yes, this is my grandmother when she was probably around my age. This was the first and one of the only times she wore a salwar kameez, which she conveniently wore on a trip because “বাড়ীর বউদের শাড়ী পরলে মানায়ে” ( saanskari home makers or women who stay at home look better in sarees) and my maternal uncle clicked this picture on his newly bought camera ( he has always been quite the family photographer and the little of these pictures that exist happened only because of his enthusiasm). She was educated but definitely not as much as she’d like to be. She was married off to my grandfather who was himself a young man newly recruited to our budding banking system.
From the little I have seen (though I am not the most reliable source here because I was born at a time when she was slowly starting to lose her glory to age) and from the stories I have heard from my maternal aunt and my father, she had been the matriarch figure in her days. She didn’t quite have a world outside, but in her home, which she built from scratch, it was her territory. She was the lioness who thought she knew exactly what her children needed and she went with it. But these glorious times are not what I can vouch for. The grandmother I knew, only knew love and compassion.
Being the younger daughter of her youngest child, I have always only just been pampered by her. She was so proud of everything I did. She was proud when I laughed, cried, read a book, fell asleep on my own, anything. She was just proud of me. Of all her granddaughters in fact. When I was young, I used to spend a lot of my vacations with her, most of which were spent just sitting beside her and watching her cook things for me. She made লুচি for breakfast, and there had to be some sweets to go with it. She didn’t much care if I wanted to eat them or not because for her I always looked thinner than the last time. Then she would prepare a delicious meal for lunch. And within hours of having my lunch, she would offer me snacks to munch on or an orange (if it was winter) while we sat on the terrace and she told me stories or asked me questions. Then by the time it was 6 (which is tea-time), she would make a thick strong cup of tea with a frothy creamy layer on top. She would give me 6 biscuits because anything less is nothing at all and with that she would fry me some puff rice or some tell my uncle to get me some snacks from local stalls. Of course all my protests were but in vain and I knew I had to abide by her rules. At around dinner time, she would serve me everything and it was the only time that I wasn’t forced to overeat.
Then she would slowly go upstairs and bathe, even in winter and apply a thick layer of cream or powder depending on the weather and come and lie beside me. After which started my story time. She would tell me one fairy tale after the other. It started with নীল কমল লাল কমল, দুয়ো রানী দুয়ো রানী, and every other দৈত্য দানব tale from ঠাকুমার ঝুলি, very conveniently fitting into the marginal role which life had offered her and she accepted without protests or regrets as did most women her time.
I remember she’d slowly drift into sleep mid story and mostly, I avoided waking her up. I would either count backwards from 500 or make stories in my head moving to sleep to finally realise it is 9 a.m.
I would even sit with her in her ঠাকুর ঘর (altar) while she cleaned and decorated for hours before she finally gave her offerings and prayed. She did everything with a certain poise, with a satisfaction that I can never quite understand. It was as if, this was the best that could have happened to her. She was so satisfied in her chores, in washing, in cleaning, in cooking, in bearing and rearing, in loving, in giving. She never regretted not knowing more, not having studied more. She never expressed any grievances in not having friends, in not having a life outside. She never complained, probably hardly demanded. She was fierce in her own space. She was practical and mature in the decisions she made regarding her home. She was strict with her house help and made sure she got the job done. But she wasn’t ambitious about anything. She didn’t want a lot more than she already had. She always prayed for everybody but herself. All she wanted was good health.
But I cannot look back without wondering why this woman, who had seemingly everything anybody needs, settle. Just simply settle. Was it all her choice? Definitely not. How many women knew the word choice back then? Was it all just conditioning? Maybe. She saw her mother and probably the mother before her so seamlessly fit into these roles, she didn’t know better. Couldn’t do better.
My maternal aunt often tells me, her mother was perfect except she never taught them how to look after themselves; only how to look after others. She taught them sacrifice, sacrifice that could even cost you your dreams because dreams were meant for the males, what can women want apart from a healthy, fertile, fit life with the capacity of looking after her family? I don’t blame her, in fact I look up to her in awe of the person she was, the kindness she exuded, the love she never refused to give.
But she breaks my heart- it breaks my heart to think how she and so many women her age and time and even today go on doing what they are meant to do and not what they want to do. How even today I joke about marriage being a viable option to live my life. No, there is nothing wrong in being married, being a housewife, in wanting kids, in not wanting them, in being anything at all, but the problem is not knowing better. The problem is in how deep rooted it is in our brain. How satisfied we still are with ideas of apparent stability, with the very subtle illusion what we call choice. But is there any really? Yet? I often wonder…
Wimpy Wallflower 