FADING TWILIGHT

The news was a wake up call. Grandfather had yet another attack. Dad and mom rushed to Lucknow to be by his side while I was limited to bits and pieces of news over long distance calls. At the age of eighty five it was his third heart attack. The news changed all our lives all of a sudden. Specially my parents. Dad seemed to have caught on to the fact that his parents were no more a silent permanent fixture in his life, giving him long distance blessings and love. The next thing we all knew was that my grandparents were brought back home to stay with us permanently, much to my grandmothers protests.
She roams restlessly around the house these days, trying to find bits and pieces of work to pass her time. Arranging and rearranging utensils in the kitchen, presiding over my mothers cooking, on a constant mission to feed and fatten up the entire family. "Put more ghee... how can you cook without ghee!" As for grandfather, he is the silent bystander. adjusting to a new place, new environments and an oblivion hovering over his mind. We go out for walks in the evenings. Each day he sees new things and walks through unfamiliar spaces. Each day we take the same road.
Through my grandparents eyes I see two aspects of old age. One, of a restlessness, which comes about when after a lifetime of working you suddenly reaalise there is nothing more left to do other than continue living. Second, is when life is a mere oblivion. when memories keep fading away and then come back at times in a burst of recognition only to fade away again. I am scared... dead scared of the day he does not recognise me anymore.
I sometimes see this old man, sitting beside the phone booth across the main gate. Dressed in pristine white dhoti kurta and a nehru cap perched atop his head, he seems to be mumbling away to himself. As if talking to some imaginary friend beside him. My imagination runs wild. I try and retrace his life in my mind. Perhaps he is a revolutionary, trapped in time, still crusading for the independence of the country... perhaps planning the next satyagrah with his comrades. Or maybe he is just sitting there in his attire as a mark of an era when one could overthrow an empire just by silently sitting at a place dressed in handspun white thread. Whoever he might be, he seems endearing. He symbolises an age when nothing else matters except memories and the play of mind. To me it seems to be an age when you stop caring for the world around you and build a world within you. When consciousness fades in and fades out and life seems to be an endless roll of film which flashes trailers of films which you have seen but then don’t quite remember the story of. A strange paradox. Something which all the worked up minds of today would want but none would really like to have it. Grandmother’s restlessness to do something even when there is nothing to do, grandfather’s aimless wanderings, the old man’s nonstop chatter to no one in particular... Who would not want to have nothing to do in their life, who wouldn’t enjoy to wander aimlessly once in a while or talk nonstop without bothering about anyone around. But when you couple that with a loneliness, physical dependency and a mind that turns alien within moments... the idea does not seem desirable anymore. Yet these people live with not just the idea but the experience itself. They know that the twilight has nothing but memories and fading ones at that. Yet they go on, silently and patiently. Demanding or desiring nothing from us, but welcoming love from those around them. As for me , I am just grateful to hear the gentle tap tap of grandfather’s walking stick advancing towards me, for its time to reach out into the fading twilight and fish for memories with him once again.