News of a death in Delaware, US, made me feel a great sense of loss. The person in question was 87 years old and her family has had a decades-long link with mine.
She spent her early years in a tiny village in Andhra Pradesh, but a trip to Madras (now Chennai), when she was around ten years old, changed everything. Following some kids to a school one day, she realised that this was what she wanted. Refusing to go back to the village, she stayed on to study. What was amazing was her thirst for knowledge. She developed a love of reading and was soon acquainted with the prose of the Bronte sisters and the poetry of Wordsworth.
In fact, as she lay ill in hospital in Delaware, with parts of her brain slowly giving up after a stroke, she was able to chant from the scriptures without a single mistake and even recalled “a host of golden daffodils”.
As a newly married woman, her husband’s friend from school married against his parents’ wishes and was subsequently disowned. This friend, a Brahmin from the state of Karnataka, brought his bride, who was from the northeastern Indian state of Meghalaya, to their home. The bride was full of apprehension but, soon after she entered their house, she found her most ardent admirers. She learnt how to cook south Indian dishes and endeared herself to her hosts who were amazed by her gentle nature and willingness to change her ways.
The years went by and they kept in touch despite being several thousand miles away and eventually found themselves settling down in the same city. The link was picked up immediately and the children were reintroduced to the friends of their parents who were more family than their blood relatives. In a eulogy delivered by this remarkable woman’s daughter at her funeral, which was attended by two of the children of her parents’ closest friends, she spoke of how fitting it was that her funeral was attended by members of the family her mother chose above all else.
This daughter, an only child who studied at Princeton University where she met her future husband, a British man, called her parents’ friends when she knew she would have a tough time relaying her decision to get married to a foreigner to orthodox relatives. Sure enough, her parents were convinced once their friends spoke to them and asked them to give her their blessing as she was, after all, an only child, and mature enough to know what she wanted.
After the death of her husband, the mother split her time between India, Amsterdam, Houston and Delaware, depending on where her daughter and family were living at the time.
Her culinary skills were second to none and a meal at her home was always looked forward to. Every dish she cooked lingered on the palate and in memory. Every year on her husband’s death anniversary, she returned to India and hosted a lunch for relatives and close friends. Less than a year before she passed away, she was in India. Her joints were stiff with rheumatism, but she insisted on getting up at 4am to prepare the food for the guests, who would stream in later that day. All those who ate there that day said that she certainly hadn’t lost her deft touch with spices and every single item on the menu was a delight to eat.
I will miss your loving voice and concern for all of us, your adopted family. And, most of all, I thank you for the kindness and love you showered on a frightened young bride and her husband (my parents), forsaken by their own so many decades ago. I know that a friendship like yours is rare and I shall treasure the bond and cherish the memories all my life.
