[vc_row el_class=”mobile-padding extract-padding”][vc_column width=”2\/3″ offset=”vc_col-lg-offset-2″][vc_column_text]”The Remains of the\u00a0Feast”<\/p>\n
The room still smells of her. Not as she did when she was dying, an overripe smell that clung to everything that had touched her, sheets, saris, hands. The room now smells like a pressed, faded rose. A dry elusive smell. Burnt, a candle put out.<\/p>\n
We were not exactly room-mates, but we shared two rooms, one corner of the old ancestral house, all my 20-year-old life.<\/p>\n
She was Rukmini, my great-grandmother. She was 90 when she died last month, outliving by 10 years her only son and daughter-in-law. I don\u2019t know how she felt then, but later she seemed to find something slightly hilarious about it all. That she, an ignorant village-bred woman who signed the papers my father brought her with a thumbprint, should survive; while they, city-bred, ambitious, should collapse of weak hearts and arthritic knees at the first sign of old age.<\/p>\n
Her sense of humour was always quaint. It could also be embarrassing. She would sit in her corner, her round plump face reddening, giggling like a little girl. I knew better than to ask her why; I was a teenager by then. But some uninitiated friend would be unable to resist and would ask her why she was laughing. This, I knew, would send her into uncontrollable peals. The tears would flow down her cheeks and finally, catching her breath, still weak with laughter, she would confess.<\/p>\n
She could fart exactly like a train whistling its way out of the stations and it gave her as much joy as a child would get when she saw, or heard, a train.<\/p>\n
She was cheerful and never sick. But she was also undeniably old, and so it was not a great surprise to us when she suddenly took to lying in bed all day a few weeks before her ninetieth birthday.<\/p>\n
She had been lying in bed for close to two months, ignoring concern, advice, scolding and then she suddenly gave up. She agreed to see a doctor.<\/p>\n
The young doctor came out of her room, his face puzzled and angry. My father begged him to sit down and drink a cup of coffee.<\/p>\n
\u2018She will need all kinds of tests,\u2019 he announced. \u2018How long has she had that lump on her neck? Have you had it checked?\u2019<\/p>\n
My father shifted uneasily in his cane chair. He is a cadaverous-looking man, prone to nervousness and sweating. He keeps a big jar of antacids on his office desk. He has a nine-to-five accountant\u2019s job in a government-owned company, the kind that never fires its employees.<\/p>\n
My father pulled out the small towel he uses in place of a handkerchief. Wiping his forehead, he mumbled: \u2018You know how these old women are. Impossible to argue with them.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018The neck,\u2019 the doctor said, more gently. I could see he pitied my father.<\/p>\n
\u2018I think it was examined once, long ago. My father was alive then. There was supposed to have been an operation, I think. But you know what they thought in those days. An operation meant unnatural death. All the relatives came over to scare her, advise her with horror stories. So she said no. You know how it is. And she was already a widow then, my father was the head of the household. How could he, a 14-year-old boy, take the responsibility?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Well,\u2019 said the doctor. He shrugged his shoulders. \u2018Let me know when you want me to admit her in my nursing home. But I suppose it\u2019s better to let her die at home.\u2019<\/p>\n
When the doctor left, we looked at each other, the three of us, like shifty accomplices. My mother, practical as always, broke the silence and said, \u2018Let\u2019s not tell her anything. Why worry her?\u2019<\/p>\n
But when I went into her room that night, my great-grandmother had a sly look on her face. \u2018Come here, Ratna,\u2019 she said. \u2018Come here, my darling, my little gem.\u2019<\/p>\n
I went, my heart quaking at the thought of telling her.<\/p>\n
She held my hand and kissed each finger, her half-closed eyes almost flirtatious. \u2018Tell me something, Ratna,\u2019 she began in a wheedling voice.<\/p>\n
\u2018I don\u2019t know, I don\u2019t know anything about it,\u2019 I said quickly.<\/p>\n
\u2018Of course you do.\u2019 She was surprised, a little annoyed. \u2018Those small cakes you got from the Christian shop that day. Do they have eggs in them?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Do they?\u2019 she persisted. \u2018Will you,\u2019 and her eyes narrowed with cunning, \u2018will you get one for me?\u2019<\/p>\n
So we began a strange partnership, my great-grandmother and I. I smuggled cakes and ice-cream, biscuits and samosas, made by non-Brahmin hands, into a vegetarian invalid\u2019s room. To the deathbed of a Brahmin widow who had never eaten anything but pure home-cooked food for almost a century.<\/p>\n
Our secret was safe for about a week. Then she became bold. She was bored with cakes, she said. They gave her heartburn. She became a little more adventurous every day. Her cravings were various and unpredictable. Laughable and always urgent.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m thirsty,\u2019 she moaned, when my mother asked her if she wanted anything. \u2018No, no I don\u2019t want water, I don\u2019t want juice.\u2019 She stopped the moaning and looked at my mother\u2019s patient exasperated face. \u2018I\u2019ll tell you what I want,\u2019 she whined. \u2018Get me a glass of that brown drink Ratna bought in the bottle. The kind that bubbles and makes a popping sound when you open the bottle. The one with the fizzy noise as you pour it out.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018A Coca-Cola?\u2019 said my mother, shocked. \u2018Don\u2019t be silly, it will make you sick.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018I don\u2019t care what it is called. I want it.\u2019<\/p>\n
So she got it and my mother poured out a small glass, tight-lipped and gave it to her without a word. She was always a dutiful granddaughter-in-law.<\/p>\n
\u2018Ah,\u2019 sighed my great-grandmother, propped up against her pillows, the steel tumbler lifted high over her lips. The lump on her neck moved in little gurgles as she drank. Then she burped a loud contented burp and asked, as if she had just thought of it, \u2018Do you think there is something in it? You, know, alcohol?\u2019<\/p>\n
A month later, we had got used to her new unexpected inappropriate demands. She had tasted, by now, lemon tarts, garlic, three types of aerated drinks, fruit cake laced with brandy, bhel-puri from the fly-infested bazaar nearby.<\/p>\n
\u2018There\u2019s going to be trouble,\u2019 my mother kept muttering under her breath. \u2018She\u2019s losing her mind, she is going to be a lot of trouble.\u2019<\/p>\n
And she was right of course.<\/p>\n
My grandmother was in the nursing home for 10 whole days. My mother and I took turns sitting by her, sleeping on the floor by the hospital cot.<\/p>\n
The day she died, she kept searching the room with her eyes. Her arms were held down by the tubes and needles, criss-cross, in-out. Her hands clenched and unclenched with the effort and she whispered, like a miracle: \u2018Ratna\u2019.<\/p>\n
My mother and I rushed to her bedside. The muscles on her face twitched. Then she pulled one arm free of the tubes in a sudden crazy spurt of strength and the IV pole crashed to the floor:<\/p>\n
\u2018Bring me a red sari,\u2019 she screamed. \u2018A red one with a big wide border of gold.\u2019 And her voice cracked. \u2018Bring me peanuts with chilli powder from the corner shop. Onion and green chilli bondas deep-fried in oil.\u2019<\/p>\n
When we brought the body home \u2013 I am not yet a doctor and already I can call her that \u2013 I looked at the stiff cold body that I was seeing naked for the first time. She was asleep at last, quiet at last. I had learnt, in the last month or two, to expect the unexpected from her. I waited in case she changed her mind and sat up, remembering one more taboo food to be tasted.<\/p>\n
But she lay still, the wads of cotton in her nostrils and ears shutting us out. Shutting out her belated ardour.<\/p>\n
I ran to my cupboard and brought her the brightest reddest sari I could find; last year\u2019s Divali sari, my first silk. I unfolded it, ignoring my mother\u2019s eyes which were turning aghast. I covered her naked body lovingly. The red silk glittered like her childish laughter.<\/p>\n
\u2018Have you gone mad?\u2019 my mother whispered furiously. \u2018She was a sick old woman, she didn\u2019t know what she was saying.\u2019 She rolled up the sari and flung it aside, as if it had been polluted.<\/p>\n
They burnt her in a pale brown sari, in widow\u2019s weeds. The prayer beads I had never seen her touch encircled the bulging obscene neck.<\/p>\n
She has left me behind with nothing but a smell. I haunt the dirtiest bakeries and tea-stalls I can find every evening. I search for her, my sweet great-grandmother, in plate after plate of stale confections, in needle-sharp green chillies deep-fried in rancid oil. I plot her revenge for her. I give myself diarrhoea for a week.<\/p>\n
Then I open all the windows and her cupboard and air the rooms. I tear her dirty grey saris to shreds. I line the shelves of her empty cupboard with my thick, newly-bought gloss-jacketed texts. They stand straight and solid, row after row of armed soldiers. They fill up the small cupboard in minutes.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row el_class=”mobile-padding”][vc_column width=”3\/6″ offset=”vc_col-lg-offset-2 vc_col-md-offset-2 vc_col-xs-8″ el_class=”border-top”][vc_column_text]From<\/em>\u00a0The Art of Dying<\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/6″ el_class=”border-top” offset=”vc_col-xs-4″][vc_column_text]Buy<\/a>[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"