Monday, June 22, 2009
“If she is that good why don’t you talk to her parents?”
My grandmother, progressive matriarch that she was, trying to goad another sensible woman my mother, into arranging a match for a grandson who seemed destined never to settle down. They are always well meaning our parents, and that is so endearing is it not? Well-meaning and poorly informed. I had known this girl since she had been in school in the younger one’s class. The fact that she was a little older to him ensured that he was immediately assigned the role of a brother. “All my brothers are good-looking” so…..
For various reasons, I was not accorded that status till it became very necessary to do that a few years later. The year our parents started hinting at a possible marriage.
She was extremely beautiful in a very conventional Punjabi way. Even in school with her hair primly tied up in plaits, ribboned and battened down, her skirt modestly hiding her alabaster skin and the shape of her legs, and the starched and crisp blouse enclosing all that was woman about her, one could not but help notice the allure that she exuded.
And I was thinking about my grandmother’s query to my mother this time when I met her in Delhi…
…when I met her this time in Delhi, I realized why we would never be in an intimate relationship ever. Her legs were aching due to some newfound knee-trouble. The back of her calf she complained was cramping and she had to periodically jerk and throw her legs even as she writhed in pain. An hour of massaging helped, but only just. ‘I have strong legs’, she had remarked once and then in characteristic self-deprecation joked about running away from me if anyone made a pass ‘ as fast as her fat legs would carry me!’ That was her a mix of martyrdom and Madonna, a concatenation of self-realization and self-flagellation. That visit to Delhi was instrumental in helping me reaffirm how much I loved her and always would…and how far apart we had travelled from the other.
“Would you like that”, this time she asked me directly and I retorted with, “Dadi, she is as beautiful as a goddess aur devi ki pooja ki jaati hai ~ shaadi nahin kiya jaata. Goddesses are meant to be worshipped ~ not loved.”
This time in Delhi seeing her as after all these years and noticing how beautiful she had grown to be, I realized why I had said what I did to my grandmother.
You just had to see her feet to confirm that!
My grandmother, progressive matriarch that she was, trying to goad another sensible woman my mother, into arranging a match for a grandson who seemed destined never to settle down. They are always well meaning our parents, and that is so endearing is it not? Well-meaning and poorly informed. I had known this girl since she had been in school in the younger one’s class. The fact that she was a little older to him ensured that he was immediately assigned the role of a brother. “All my brothers are good-looking” so…..
For various reasons, I was not accorded that status till it became very necessary to do that a few years later. The year our parents started hinting at a possible marriage.
She was extremely beautiful in a very conventional Punjabi way. Even in school with her hair primly tied up in plaits, ribboned and battened down, her skirt modestly hiding her alabaster skin and the shape of her legs, and the starched and crisp blouse enclosing all that was woman about her, one could not but help notice the allure that she exuded.
And I was thinking about my grandmother’s query to my mother this time when I met her in Delhi…
…when I met her this time in Delhi, I realized why we would never be in an intimate relationship ever. Her legs were aching due to some newfound knee-trouble. The back of her calf she complained was cramping and she had to periodically jerk and throw her legs even as she writhed in pain. An hour of massaging helped, but only just. ‘I have strong legs’, she had remarked once and then in characteristic self-deprecation joked about running away from me if anyone made a pass ‘ as fast as her fat legs would carry me!’ That was her a mix of martyrdom and Madonna, a concatenation of self-realization and self-flagellation. That visit to Delhi was instrumental in helping me reaffirm how much I loved her and always would…and how far apart we had travelled from the other.
“Would you like that”, this time she asked me directly and I retorted with, “Dadi, she is as beautiful as a goddess aur devi ki pooja ki jaati hai ~ shaadi nahin kiya jaata. Goddesses are meant to be worshipped ~ not loved.”
This time in Delhi seeing her as after all these years and noticing how beautiful she had grown to be, I realized why I had said what I did to my grandmother.
You just had to see her feet to confirm that!
Labels: Goddess, worship - and a prayer
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