//Love that never halts//

Im on my period.
Period pain was breaking walls inside my stomach.
The fan was at full speed and yet the room felt vacuumed with heat.
All I wanted to do was lie down flat and play something soft, like dil hi toh hai or the journey song.
It was 7:10 and we had to meditate, and I had no energy to sit up straight and concentrate.
I wanted to let go, and all the rooms were occupied, so I could not lie down in the bedroom or the hall.
I came to my room, the bulb had been flickering for an hour and was giving me a headache.
So I sat in darkness, complete darkness.
I rested my head on the lap of my drafting table, it was too much discomfort as her edges are sharp.
With the constant movement to find that right comfortable position, I played songs that are close to my heart. The faint sound of om in the background, my family meditating.
I put pressure on my temples as I slept because my head was aching a lot.
As soon as the meditation ended, I heard my dad call someone from the transport department from his office.
He was asking if there was any bus going towards an area a few kilometres away so that my granny could be dropped off.
In the evening, as she sat in the balcony with her thoughts alone, she had felt giddiness and she looked rather tired than usual.
And they had planned that she could go to my uncle's place as my father has night shifts and it would be difficult for my mother alone to handle if something went wrong at night.
And suddenly the thought that my grandmother was about to leave made me feel empty.
I sat wondering how our days had taken shape in this lockdown.
So much free time and yet I never sat with her to listen to stories, but once upon a time I did.
Her routine was fixed now,
She would wake up early morning, freshen up, have breakfast and at sharp 11:30, she would watch the news, then read some pages of an old storybook
Lunch.
Then she would rest for some time and then watch sa re ga ma pa on the tab, all old episodes.
My sister had diligently taken up this job of setting up the news and the shows for gran.
And two-three days back, my granny was constantly asking me to adjust the volume or change episodes and I had done it all with a tinge of reluctance.
And right now, at this moment I felt like my granny stumbling on the volume button to alter the screams in my head, screams of realization that said, "How could you be so rude?"
My mind shifted focus to the days when I had been annoyed with my grandfather and had yelled at times even.
I've yelled at gran too.
And it's as if,
Their love just simply compounds with every yell.
I felt pathetic.
After dinner, I could not keep it in me anymore.
I sat beside her and broke down, just hugged her and cried my heart out.
I looked into her eye and said I am sorry and pleaded her to stay back tomorrow.
The thing is I got a bad dream many months ago, and every time my grandmother is going somewhere and tells me a bye, my heart drops to my stomach.
I hate telling her a bye.
I sat beside her and just let the thought seep in that she has given me the best gifts ever.
She taught me numbers before I even learnt letters.
She always split all the change in her purse into two parts, one for me and the other for my sister.
We always go to my favourite bookstore, we buy books.
And she was the one who bought Becoming by Michelle Obama.
That book has been the best book I've read all my life, and it has a part of me.
Maybe if it was any other normal day, I would not have reacted so much.
But today was a mess.
Although it was a mess that I cleaned up with my tears.
After having cried for so long, and letting go of all the guilt I had for being rude and heaping all the love that she hid in every book she bought,
I looked into her eye and told her I loved her.
I told her how sorry I felt,
And she started laughing.
Because all this while, when I'd been impatient and rude, she saw traits of her first son in me.
My uncle.
And that gave her undefined happiness.
There was a comfortable silence throughout, it was just me and my gran.
She told me,
She has seven children and she keeps moving around to all their places but this, right here is her home, a home she returns to.
My grandmother is the kindest soul I know and she tries to teach me a lot of things.
Numbers, the reading habit, patience, storytelling, discipline.
But the most important one is to constantly love, even when the world forgets to.
~Vajj©

Picture credits: Delphine, Pinterest.