"I often picture myself living on a mountain top, in the most stormy country (not the coldest) in the world. Is there such a place? If there is, I shall go to it someday and turn my heart into pictures and poems."

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This excerpt is from one of Kahlil Gibran's letters, dated 1st March, 1914. I have always hunted for a reason for three things in this world: how in the same world, in the same year, here wasGibran writing this, and there was the First World War about to begin; how my grandparents loved each other like they were seventeen, and how Maa finds the will to send me good-morning messages on WhatsApp at exactly nine every day with images of unknown children.

 

Maa does not realize that the space in my smartphone is limited, like the pyres in this city during the pandemic. She messaged me last week, "Look, Pakhi, I found your old diary while cleaning the cupboard. It had these words by Agha Shahid Ali, 'It rains as I write this. Mad heart, be brave.' Oh, and I learned to make your favourite Chinese food yesterday. Come home and see, I make it better than those restaurants that burn craters in your pockets." Strangely, as I read this, I terribly missed her Kanda Poha. Maa learned it from my Nani and guards the recipe with all her life.

 

Nani still lives in the hills, makes her own food and experiments with her spices now and then. After my grandfather passed away, we urged her to stay back in Kolkata. But she would not listen. That's the thing about Nani; she always knew what she wanted. Her old age, husband's death, and more medical bills, nothing could change her mind. She went back to her home in Darjeeling. The day before she left, I asked her, 'Why won't you stay, Nani?'

 

She smiled at me, "As long as that home lives, that bed gets made every night, the kettle is washed every morning, your grandfather lives. I cannot abandon him after all these years. I married him when I was eighteen. He was transferred to Darjeeling two years after our marriage. I was pregnant with your Baba at that time. I made my home there from scratch."

 

'But weren't you lonely there? Nana must've been at work in the library during the day.'

 

"Yes, he was. And I was lonely. For almost a year. When your Baba was two years old, I started making sweaters. I'd knit these sweaters every afternoon, taking sips of chai and bites of onion fritters in between. At the end of the month, I gave them away to a local store that sold them to tourists."

 

'And how did you spend that money?'

 

"I would buy movie tickets for myself and your Nana. I'd surprise him. He would be back from the library, take off his coat, wash his face and sit on the armchair. The old brown one, in our living room in Darjeeling, you remember? He'd sit there, and the first thing he asked was, 'How was your day, Monimala?' Just then, I'd walk up to him and say, "Was thinking of going to the movies." He would ask, 'Oh, but the ticket?' Back in those days, there was only one movie hall nearby, and the ticket queue was quite long in the evening. You had to stand for half an hour. The easier way was to collect your ticket in the morning. I would smile like a child, flash the two tiny tickets, and his face would cheer up. All the day's tiredness would just be wiped off his face at once. When he fell very sick during his last days, I asked him, "Why would you be surprised every time I'd tell you about the tickets? You must've been able to guess after a few times. And your face would glow up, so I knew you weren't pretending to be surprised." He touched my palms and gently said to me, 'Moni, I wasn't pretending. But my face would glow up, not for the tickets. I knew you got them beforehand. But when you flashed them before my eyes, your eyes would light up and looking at you then, my heart would be the happiest. That's the secret of the glow.' I could only break into a smile."

 

Movie tickets and my grandparents went a long way. My grandparents met in a Bombay movie hall with soft yellow lights, a wide screen and the magic of Gulzar. The curfews were early, and the pocket money came late. However, amidst staring at the screen, there were glimpses, grinning, stolen kisses and Kanda Poha in a steel tiffin box. After fifty years now, ten years since Nana's death, all those movie tickets, some torn and some faded, sleep safely inside Nani's almirah. She opens her almirah once in a while, runs her wrinkled palms over the frail paper, breaking into a strange smile. Nani told me once that she does this to remember the touch of those old tickets.

 

'But why do you have to remember them? You can just open your almirah and take out the tickets when you want to.'

 

"Well, old people go through strange things sometimes, my child. The thing is, our sense of touch diminishes with age, and we all lose touch receptors slowly over the course of life. I will, you will, your Maa and Baba, everyone will. When they're old, very old. Don't worry, it's a long time from now," she laughed.

 

'Is it really true, Nani? I never thought I could lose my sense of touch.'

 

"Sometimes, you think that there is this one thing that you can never lose. You know it so well that you don't ever question it or think about it. You're used to its presence. And then, one day, it's just gone."

 

'Will I ever lose you, Nani? I don't want to live in a world where you aren't there. I don't think I can...'

 

Recalling this old conversation soaked in my childhood naivety, it hit me that it has been almost a year since I have visited Nani and watched 'Aandhi' with her. 'Aandhi' was my grandparents' comfort movie. An hour before the local channel would play 'Aandhi', Nana would wipe the TV screen, and Nani would chop onions and potatoes for Kanda Poha in the kitchen. I could strangely recall the smell of the spray of Colin, mustard and green chillies all at once. Meanwhile, my own palms reeked of sanitiser as my fingers swiped my six-inch plastic screen to find a message from Maa. Touch was a distant memory now, and I finally realized the urgency in Nani's palms; trying to grab all that she could, trying to remember, to save, to hold on to, to live. I understood Nani's hunger to remember, I understood Nani's loneliness.

 

It was thirty-three minutes past nine, and there was no good-morning message from Maa. An hour ago, I had read in the newspaper about a man from Kolkata who sang 'Tera Mujhse Hai Pehle Ka Nata Koi' through a video call to his dying mother in the COVID ward. I read about a girl who jumped into the burning pyre of her father because she was not allowed to touch his

body after the virus took his life. I left Maa fourteen angry messages and ten phone calls. Suddenly, my phone vibrated.

 

"What happened? I was watering your Gulmohar tree. Good morning, my Pakhi."

 

'Nothing, Maa. Good morning.'

 

"Someone is turning into her annoying mother. Half an hour late, and I get flooded with all these Texts?"

 

I broke into tears and whispered to myself, "Mad heart, be brave, mad heart, be brave."

 

'The lockdown here ends tomorrow. I'm coming home, Maa. I'm trying this week. I have to get the tickets.'

 

"Ah, at last! Come soon. What do you want to eat? I'll make some Kanda Poha for you." This is the mother I grew up watching. I grew up watching her cook for everyone, but no one ever asked her, "What do you want to eat today?" Her kitchen reminds me of a poem where a lamp-seller sells lamps throughout the day and returns to a home of pitch darkness.

 

After booking a ticket to Kolkata, I wrote down Nani's Kanda Poha recipe; whatever bits I couldrecollect. When I returned home, I made Maa a plate of Kanda Poha, and as I squeezed a lemon on it, she gently squeezed my palms. My mother, my tired mother, with the hunger of a hundred years, sat at the table. I buried my teary face in her soft cotton saree and asked, 'Maa, was the salt okay?'

AUTHOR NOTE

Sohangni Roy is currently pursuing her MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Hyderabad. She approaches memory as something lived through the body and time; blooming, withering, and returning in unexpected ways. Her prose engages with nostalgia not merely as comfort but as ache, distance, and quiet recognition, tracing the conscious act of carrying the past into the present.