Deep winter. Dehradun. I’m five years old. Papaji, my grandfather, is collecting glowing embers of coal from my
grandmother’s chullah (earthen stove) in the courtyard. He’s using a pair of old iron tongs, no bigger than his large
farmer’s hands, to scoop out walnut-sized pieces, flickering like fireflies, and plops them one by one into his
kangadi (portable earthen heater).
My mother has wrapped a thick knitted scarf around my head to keep me warm. Decades later, I’ll come across
characters from the television series, Southpark, and have a visual reference of what I must have looked like
then—sitting on my haunches, crouched on the smooth cement floor of our vadda veda (large, outdoor courtyard),
watching Papaji’s alchemy.
Once the kangadi holds as much warmth and heat as it can hold in its earthen womb, he puts the tongs down, hooks
the fingers of one hand through the rattan handle of his portable heater and offers his other hand to me.
I like how warm and rough his grip is. Secure.
My four-year-old sister, Seema, runs out of the kitchen and joins us. She’s a fussy eater. She takes a lot longer than
I do to eat dinner.
Seema and I clamber up to Papaji’s diwan—his daybed that turns into our nightly stopover between dinner and
bedtime in winter. He picks up his scratchy, grey kambal (blanket) and holds it high above his head like a
matador’s cape and lets its weight land on us—muffling our shrieks. For a split second we are plunged into
darkness but the very next moment, Papaji’s fingers are tickling both of us so hard we tunnel ourselves deeper into
the kambal-cave. We beg him to stop.
We sound like mustard seeds crackling in hot oil. Splutter. Giggle. Laugh.
“Time for bed.” We hear our mother’s voice as she approaches Papaji’s diwan, carrying a tall glass of hot milk.
Mummy’s wrapped up in her favourite, soft Kashmiri shawl. She’s holding the brass glass with the corners of her
shawl.
Her voice shushes us. Papaji puts his finger to his lips in mock-subservience. With her back to him, Mummy can’t
see what he’s doing. We let go of the laughter we’ve held on to in our tummies. We know we’ll each get a telling-
off, perhaps even a whack, when we finally enter our room.
“How long will you hide behind them?” she’ll scold us and remind us how it’s her duty to wake up before
everyone else in the house to get the house moving.
I don’t understand why she needs to move the house. It’s good as it is. I blame her short temper for her sourness.
Our grandparents’ love is our safety cloak. We take shelter under it whenever we need to escape our mother’s
outbursts.
When we were little, her anger found us first. She called it discipline. We called it torture. And wondered if she
were truly our real mother or a step-one and no one had told us.
Here we are. The three of us. Papaji and his two bachhade (cubs).
Papaji’s shoulders are carrying his tremendously large and heavy blanket like a weight-bearing pole carries the
circumference of a tent. He’s a skinny Buddha, sitting in Siddh asana, tall and firm, with two pink islands for
cheeks glowing in a sea of wrinkles. His arms are holding us close to him.
The kangadi is placed in the nook of his ankles. He shifts and turns it around occasionally to adjust the heat.
The storytelling starts. His voice, his words, his pauses and his laughter spout like a river. Seema and I dissolve. I
am in the story. Look, how little Krishna is stealing butter. I’m warning Krishna to hurry up. But Krishna won’t
listen. I tell him I know how much a slap hurts. He doesn’t listen.
“Puttar, lo khao.” Papaji puts a warm, freshly peeled pine nut on my palm.
I’m back on the diwan.
The pine nuts are sweet and smoky. Papaji is busy peeling the pine nuts he’d buried in his kangadi.
Throughout winter, our kangadi-kambal-kahani* ritual continues. Pine-nuts, chestnuts, and sweet potatoes take
turns to get roasted and gobbled up by impatient fingers and mouths.
Before winter, autumn.
Autumn has descended with a fog this year.
I’m looking at a hair colour packet in the supermarket. I pick up golden chestnut.
My resolve to go grey has been shattered by a Diwali party invitation.
I’m in no mood to go. And yet, I adorn myself with the usual essentials for the annual ritual. Civilized-society
soirées demand, at the very least, touched up roots, a silk sari, jewellery, and an eagerness to nod and smile at inane
conversations.
I pour and mix the colour developer and the colourant in an old chipped bowl, use the brush to whisk vigorously. I
start lathing my roots with golden chestnut goop.
It’s been months since I last touched up, touched upon my roots.
I’ve shut the world out. Shut down. Shut up. This is self-preservation, I tell myself.
What is this inexplicable longing? Earlier, I’d fight it. Resist it. My mother struggled with bi-polar
disorder—perhaps, I’ve inherited it. I’d become over-active for Diwali, Halloween. Fight my instinct to rest, to
hibernate, to slow down as if all this non-doing pointed to being ill.
Not anymore.
Now, in my fifties, I move from room to room, day to day, chore to chore at my pace.
I give myself permission to rest. To be.
One by one, I light the lanterns of longing. I take the flickering flames to the far recesses of my being. They glow
with memory. With warmth. Papaji’s stories, his pink cheeks, his dirty fingernails point me to my earthen case—of
soil—to soil. I gather autumn leaves and marvel at their symphonies of chlorophyll.
*Kahani is story in Hindi
*”Puttar, lo khao” is “Child, eat this” in Hindi