Holy smoke!!!

Just before I came to Hyderabad, my dad had got furious on my taking leave during the mid of september. His reasoning was that no marriage mediator would be ready to strike the chords during the month of September. Got something to do with prayers being held in remembrance of the departed. Its a practice that not many people follow but those who do they do not think of marriage or any event related to it being performed during this period. I had made it in the wrong time.... so much for missing my trip with friends to Leh.
So what! now I was here in Hyderabad. The first week went by dropping and picking my niece from her kindergarten, playing with them and trying to figure out when I could give my online exams. The second week saw me taking my mother to her maternal home in the old city.This was the third time some rituals were being conducted in the name of my grandmother after she expired last May. The last time I had seen her it was in April when I had come on leave and heard from my mother that grandmother was very ill, no one dared to say that she was on deathbed, although every one sensed it, not even under the breath. That was the first time I had seen someone close to the end of life. Her frail body lying limp on the bed unable to rise and support against the wall, sweating profusely and unable to take any solid food. She was wrapped in her thin sarree and wearing an adult nappy. She had lost all control on her body. I had seen all that and still not a drop of tear swelled in my heart. I doubted my own love for her, I felt I had become so cold that someone so close was on deathbed and I didnt fear for her, I didnt cry for her. maybe till then I wasnt able to understand the pain she was going through, the dilemma she was in. The only thought in my mind was if she's breathing her last now let her see my smiling face, but what did I know about the thoughts going in her mind looking at Maa, me, didi and her two daughters. It was not until the moment when my grandmother asked my mother to come close and just in a whisper asked, "Who is he?" She looked at me with tear soaked, questioning eyes, sometimes putting her hands as saying namastey... then it dawned on me, my grandmother could not remember me and that opened the floodgates. I may not have howled in despair or grief but after a long time I cried, for not being around so much as to let my grandmother cognise me in her last days. As the tears rolled down I could feel the dilemma she was in, she knew if someone has been brought in by her own daughter the person is bound to be a close one but she could not relate me to herself. She wanted to be as courteous to me as her position allowed her but she didnt know what to do. Before she closed her eyes forever I had left for Port Blair and been busy at office.
One fine day in May there was a call from Sudhir, my brother, to inform me of the cremation, I could do nothing but pray for my grandmother, and though tears rolled down my cheek thinking of the days when I was a kid playing in her lap and being pampered by her, I smiled wishing if she could see me she could recognise me coz thats the way she had always seen me.