From a Granddaughter

Dearest Granddad,

Jatindra Nath Bhagowati

Perhaps you are a seven year old boy now at somebody else’s home. But if you would have been alive as my grandfather, you would have seen how all your grandchildren are struggling in their lives. Each one of us is fucked up in some way but that’s how life is supposed to be, right? I miss you. I miss a role model. I can’t remember the last time I was inspired to live life. Right now, I am just surviving…occasionally smiling at life’s blessings, and cursing the imperfections for most of the remaining time. In the eight years since your demise, a lot has happened with me. From my first period, to the first boyfriend, first kiss, first major crush to the first genuine relationship. Academically it has all been about numbers that I don’t remember and stories that I tend to forget but personally….personally, I’ve grown. I learn a new lesson every day. Some days are hard for me. I cry myself to sleep and nobody has an idea about it. I am a Gemini; this information wouldn’t make sense to you. In your times, things were simpler. But as a millennial Gemini, I tend to get a lot of mood swings that I cannot handle. I am emotionally dependent on the people around me and it sucks. Sometimes I feel like running back to you and to hear you speak those bombastic English words.

I have no idea how your youth was. I have only known you as a ninety year old man wearing a Khaki Dhoti and a White Kurta but I would like to believe that you were a lot like me. As I write this, your trembling low voice echoes in my ears and the words “Dhunu Maina” spoken in the tenderest manner fill the air around me. I can see you walk towards me with your walking stick and a toothless smile. The few summers and winters spent with you still hold a significant place in my life. The vacuum that shadows the deeply unhappy life of us millennials with fake and seemingly fulfilling Instagram feeds and fucked up personalities is often because of a yearning for something that’s to do with our past. For me, it’s you and the love I smelt when a certain someone promised to love me the way I always wanted to be loved. Things change no matter how hard we try to keep them the same. But when I come to think of it, we are all torn in some way or the other. You too must have had a dark past; you too must have drawn inspiration from things that no longer belonged to you. You too must have longed for what you cannot have. You too must have remembered that special smell of love while on your death bed on 7^th January 2012. The thirteen year old Dhunu Maina you adored is now a grown up girl with mistakes and regrets of her own. You wouldn’t approve of most of her actions now but she still adores you the same way she did when you visited her place some thirteen years ago. She even mimicked you for some time after that! She misses the kind of love she received from you. If only you could be back!

With love,
Dhunu Maina.

(Written on the eighth death anniversary of my dear Kaka. May your soul rest in eternal peace!)