My Grandmother,My Bamma

Sunday our family went to visit my Bamma (dad's mother).She is in her 90's and quite active.She lives on the ground floor of our uncles home and refuses to move in domestic help.Her philosophy is that she cannot mend old ways and let "people of that caste" come in and stay with her.I used to get angry at this when i was a teenager.However, as i come to 31 i realize that she has been brought up that way and it is not necessary she change her ways.She takes good care of the driver and his family,talks to the vegetable vendor,gives loads of tea to the domestic help.She is happy with that and they are happy with that.They live in harmony and do not cross lines.

While I was there,I wanted to borrow some books from my uncles vast collection.So I went up to look at those books.My cousin was helping me find one book called "Baristar Parvatisam"
(If anyone who knows how to read Telugu ever read this book,they would know why i got 3 people to search that book for me)in the end we could not locate that book.However, my eyes fell on a thin book in the corner and i grabbed it.This is what i was not searching for!

It was a book written by my Bamma.She wrote that book in 1998 and distributed it to all of us.I lost my copy and never bothered to get another one.I just took it for granted that I will get it one day and forgot about it.I wanted to have that book so bad and this was a sign,as all the prints of that book were out.My bamma is old and not in the most healthy state and if there is one legacy that we got from her , it is writing and arts.She writes in Telugu and she writes about what matters to her heart and mind.she does not bother to think twice when asking an honest question nor she is embarrassed when you ask her one.

I remember when I introduced her to my husband and boyfriend at that time "do you know how to cook?".she had asked him.He was not taken aback as I told him about Bamma.She said "my granddaughter is not used to cooking and someone should know how to cook in the family,so it better be you".

I heard it from my thatha (grandfather) that Sundays were Bamma days.She used to leave her 7 boys in his care and go to a book mela or a movie or to theater with her friends.This was 60 years ago in a telugu brahmin family and a woman doing this was considered to be an outcast.She could not care less and told her husband that if you work from office,i work at home and i too need a break.

That is my Bamma,there is so much to learn from her and so much fun to be around her.I hope and wish my second baby who is growing inside me now gets to meet her and she smiles her toothless smile at the baby :)