Life and its Intricacies

Isn’t life a funny thing, when you have it isn’t valued much. But when you don’t have it, well can’t really speak for the dead. Who knows how much fun they are having. But hang in there with me, while I explain to you why I am talking about it. Currently my grandmother is not well. She has many problems which have now caused her to become bed ridden. She isn’t eating solids, and has to be helped for multiple things.

The thing about my grandmother, and why it is so difficult for us (our family) to see her this is, she was the life of all our parties. A woman who was widowed at a very young age, when both her sons were not working/earning. She managed to uproot her family from Islamabad to Karachi, just so she could be closer to her family. She was looking for support, where she got none.

She married off two daughters, married one son multiple times (never worked out) and was capable enough of running the whole household herself. From cooking to cleaning to helping her daughters with their children. For as long as I can remember, every gathering for our maternal family was hosted by her and catered by her personally.

I still have not tasted shahi tukre equal to hers just FYI. There is not a gathering where we weren’t not sitting around her laughing with her at her jokes, her funny stories and her jibes at her son in laws (of which she has 5). She was my closest ally as I was growing up. Her liberal way of thinking in terms of how men and women should interact, has embedded into our upbringing when it comes to dealing with the opposite sex.

A woman, who was as involved in her religion as she was in being the life of the party, taught me that life is not as black and white as people around me claim it to be. I that woman could sing, and I mean really sing. She through her life, kept up with Amitabh Bachan’s movies no matter what. She knew all the songs to movies by heart, where we heard her humming the tunes as she worked around the house.

She is where I get my interest in astrology, numerology and the science of stones. I still remember she would sit us down and tell us how we are who we are due to nature and nurture. How because I am a Libra, I will always be someone with grace (which I still refuse to believe, that I have grace). Or how because my mother is a Capricorn, she will always be good with money. Not only this, how my Chinese star sign is that of a Horse. Grace again, however, people who know me will know that’s poppycock.

My Nani in my opinion is the best role model I could have growing up. And she was a mean bridge player. Believe it or not her husband used to take her along, when he used to go for his weekly games, and proceeded to teach her how to play. She taught us the value of having a man who trusts you and helps you grow without fear of the woman becoming too good for him.

She taught me through her stories of how her husband used to make gajre for the women in the neighborhood from scratch, that women should learn to trust their men also. That no marriage is capable of being successful until both the husband and the wife trust each other explicitly. Of how a woman should learn to let her husband grow and how the husband should let the wife grow. She taught me that no matter what you do, never ever undermine your man, because he is after all your man. She also taught me how fragile the ego of a man is.

In our day and time, there are many nuclear families. I highly support them and am glad that men are finally able to take a stand for their women. I learnt all this from my grandmother, and had we been in a nuclear family at that time, I wouldn’t have learnt all of this.

However, she is now not well. She is completely fine with not being alive. And that is what scares me, that is what raises the question that how can someone give up on seeing their loved ones around them. How is it that someone who has made her children and their children her life, can give up on not seeing them around her. It is scary and crippling, when you realize your love, your support isn’t enough for someone to stay and hang on a little while longer.