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Can I Tell You A Story?

 

“Can I tell you a story, puttu?” my grandmother asked me, while I was busy typing away on my laptop. I instantly felt bad that I hadn't even talked to her properly after coming home for the weekend, it was already Sunday evening. After at least four assurances that she wasn’t disturbing my studies or work, she went back to the 1950s, when she was in college. She’d gone there, but didn’t fit in. On the first day, everyone her own age kept calling her “akka” – she was disheartened. She left without paying her fee, not meaning to coming back to the college. On the way back though, she’d noticed an announcement that said that a girl child with no father, no property, and some other conditions, could claim some 1000 rupees or so. She’d immediately gone and registered for it.

When she came back home to her single mother who really wanted her to pursue graduation, and told her she hadn’t paid the fee at the college ‘cause she didn’t fit in, she was instructed plainly to go back the next day and pay the fee. Poor her, what could she do except go back?

And after a month, she claimed the money she’d registered for. When she came back home, she found her mom hurt. One of the calves that they were grooming was tied loosely. Its escaped out of its stand, and the calf had stepped on her mother’s foot while running to drink milk from its mother. And so the 1000 rupees my grandmother had claimed from the government policy, went to her mother’s injury expenses. And that was the story, so mundane yet so refreshing - of the times when life was simple with cows in your backyard, and money was something that would come one day and would not on the other.

It's funny how I used to hear so many bed-time stories from my grandmother. And then slowly I grew up, and I’d heard all the stories she had to offer. There was a point where I begged her to imagine new bed time stories to tell me, but there was only so much she can make up. And then now, I’ve grown up, and no longer go to bed with her. I no longer even live with her -  stuffed away in my room far away from her in Bangalore. More than funny, it is sad how times change, and even sadder that our elders, who practically raised us at one point, now ask our permission to tell the same stories we begged for. The longing for company, just someone to talk to, at that age seems scary at one level. So I guess they were right:  Maatram Ondre Maaradadhu.

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