The Wants of Childhood

 

    

    

    I've been thinking about my grandmother a lot lately. Well, she's always been a steady undercurrent in my mind, along with my dad but occasionally the stream of remembrance gets stronger.

    She was the same age as my child -  a little toddler - in the 1920s. Her father, my maternal great-grandfather, had passed away unexpectedly in the plague of the erstwhile Madras Presidency in 1920. Her mother was so shocked by news of what I can only imagine to be a hale and hearty husband suddenly dying, she went into early labor and my grandmother was born with cyanosis, a bluish tint to the skin.

    

    She never met her father.

  

    One time, as a toddler of 3 or 4 years, she asked her paternal grandmother about the large portrait hanging in the private, residential area of her 7-bastioned fort called Saat Burj ki Gari. On learning that the person in the portrait was her father, she demanded he be brought out of the picture right then and there. She cried, as all toddlers do, with anger and impulsive shaking of the fists to have her dad be brought to her - out of that image and into her world.

    My mother narrated this story to me as we were reminiscing my grandmother's life. She cried for a long time that day, unconsolable for the most part.

    She wanted her daddy.

    It makes me so sad to think about it. A toddler wanting her father and not in a developmentally mature age to understand death. A lot of information about her father was lost to time, grief and silence. She grew up knowing very little about him. The rare occasion she brought him up in conversations with us, a wistful veil immediately fell over her face as she would stare longingly at the empty space in front of her while describing what little she knew. It had been known he was well-read, literate in Urdu and English, uncommon for his time. He was also set to inherit his father's legacy and rulership of a domain passed down generationally. 

    It was a cruel blow dealt by fate. There was also enough intrigue in my grandmother's family to not question the circumstances of my great-grandfather's passing. He was the only one in his company that perished to the plague when they traveled there. Some people stood to benefit from his passing. Maybe I'll put that story in a book soon. 

    There she was, a child just learning the world around her and wanting, like her peers, a father. And crying her little heart out for him to come out from the portrait. I wonder what my great-grandfather did or felt, looking down from above at that scene. 

    I have the heart of a mother now and I understand that child's want. I send so much love back to her in that moment.