Narayani

She was always found pottering about the old garden and seemed ancient and changeless. It seemed to me that she was there even before the building was built. So when she decided to sell her house and leave the house for good in 2010 the jack-fruit tree in her garden was so overwhelmed that she yielded 23 jack-fruits in a single season and astonished all the onlookers at the bounty. She distributed all the fruits to people who had been kind to her and left as soon as she gave away her last jack-fruit. The tree itself died from its tip down the middle and few knew what ailed her. It was a strange sight as the lower branches were green though it stopped yielding any fruit. A few years later when we tried to pull down the top half it had to be sawed off as it was tougher than we imagined and the woodcutter threatened to climb down if we did not double his wage as he panted. This year many years later a single fruit was borne all knobbed and strange.  

How green was her garden- never mind how unkempt it was. In that small patch was a little Kerala and had all the trees of a Kerala backyard, mango, coconut, guava, jackfruit, plantain, and an inedible custard apple apart from all kinds of shrubbery tulsi, mehendi, pumpkin and gherkin creepers, curry leaves, hibiscus, rose, and at some point even screw pine. It was a most mysterious garden when we were children. She would tell me that the eggs i threw down in distaste when mom was not watching grew up into egg plants and one morning i did see egg shells on a strange looking plant. She would tell my mother the days i drained my milk glass into her garden or drop all kinds of objects with buttery fingers some of which never came back. She had children who seemed to my childish eyes, some surly adults, some very quiet. She hosed her garden each day and the plants seemed to love her solitary presence. She was all alone for several years though her garden was filled with children in the early years that used some pretext to break in. Being on the ground floor her window panes bore the brunt of many a cricket ball. She was always grey never moved out of the house for as long as i remember, with her errands run by her children when they were there or outsiders willing to lend a hand. I was perched at my vantage point on the first floor just above her wondering about her and her garden. 

She had been through much grief and suffering for a long time; rivalled only by that in the Book of Job. It was her husband to whose efforts we remain indebted to for the building we lived in and three generations down we yet enjoy the fruits of his efforts. He was resourceful enough to get the government housing department to sanction an additional building at Bandra east. We all shifted from distant quarters in Goregaon in scattered chawls in 1966; a motley south-Indian group with little in common except their staple mounds of rice. Her husband died early plunging the large family into an uncertain future. For she had I think six children Rajan, Madan, Babu, Jayanti, Shyamu and  Jayshree and if it were not for her supreme resourcefulness and obduracy it would have been almost impossible for them to continue there. She asked the residents to help pool some cash for her children but it was not sustainable. She was almost unlettered and could not seek work but eked out her way and educated all her children.  She battled odds with such tenacity that even her worst critics would simply stand in awe of her perseverance; for she was not always gentle when she was younger. Each of her children left her home after they were married except Jayashree who remained a spinster, a school teacher. Her eldest son died soon after his marriage and though she bore the pain of being a widow at an early age asked her eldest daughter in law and grand children to leave. In 2003 Jayshree too died and her second son had a debilitating muscular condition; as though death took away the head and tail and gnawed all through her long life at her defences. Few of her children kept visiting her. She remained pained in her splendid isolation after Jayashree's death though she never lost her composure and her gravitas with her large frame. The day prior to Jayashree’s death my father dreamt that she came to invite him for her wedding dressed in finery. Two months after she died my father too passed away, probably visiting her pandal in the great beyond. Her open veranda was like the 'pyol' of a south Indian tiled roof home where passers by would sit chat and depart. Several were the differences among her children some who stopped talking to her or visiting her. Some squabbled about whose responsibility it was to look after. Being a Nair woman it was a matriarchal and matrilineal family and she willed that her apartment be given to her youngest and single daughter. Towards that end she fought with her children to give up claims to the house, which pained her and persisted long after they were gone. After Jayashree’s death the claimants returned with a vengeance. 

She graced our home when her apartment was flooded in 2005 and sat silently with her granddaughter and the several others who chattered all around her. In 2009 she was diagnosed for skin cancer and had her foot amputated (and i still recollect the horror when Jayanti her eldest daughter asked me to deliver the foot section in a clear glass bottle to another hospital for biopsy). Her feet had borne such burden. Finally in 2010 her children pressured her to sell her little estate where she reigned supreme as matriarch of the trees and critters that populated her garden. She sold the property and distributed the proceeds to her children and took a small flat in a distant suburb next to Jayanti. We were very sad as we thought she would outlast us all as she somehow remained like a constant amidst all the change we saw around the building. I did not see her go as we were away at our village and i was grateful for the slip as i would have been pained to see this gracious woman depart. 

Yet when we returned we saw the trees sad, the jack-fruit tree inconsolable. One of her mango trees died mysteriously in 2011 as did a guava tree. The new buyers stopped caring for the garden though they would harvest its produce and many of the plants died. I tried to forget her and maybe once a year or two would call her or receive her call. She would say I wanted to hear your voice. I had not heard from her for more than a year. Today i heard that she is no more. The mighty tree had fallen. The tenants of her erstwhile home have vacated and i wonder what her trees know. Her name was Narayani- one who bears Man.