A Late Farewell

I can't recall much about my grandfather except that he was a placid, soft-spoken man who'd never grown an inch past his seventieth birthday. Which was odd because I'd grown in leaps and bounds since he was seventy. Genes, I concluded. Since my father was a sinewy, barrel-chested brute whose cartoonish persona can only be likened to Captain Haddock, it seemed natural to me that I'd grow into a veritable Obelix. Someone like grandfather (affectionately called Dadu), however,  who was not fortunate enough to share the same genepool, would have to work harder to grow tall. Like do chin-ups. Or drink Horlicks.

Dadu drank Horlicks like it was his religion. Once in the morning, once after lunch and another cup with bread for dinner. Grandmother (Didu) told me it was Dadu's Horlicks everytime I came gamboling into the kitchen looking for some special delight to lick so no one else would touch it. She knew I'd keep my distance. Dadu's Horlicks was a transparent concoction that rang with a faintly cloying sweetness that convinced me that the horrible folk at Horlicks got a kick out of agonizing the aged. But it was for his own good, I reckoned. After all, why wouldn't anyone want to grow tall and strong?

There was a game on one afternoon as I cautiously climbed the stairs to Dadu's room on the second floor of our Chetla house. He led an isolated existence for the most part, visited occasionally by a couple of lizards that inhabited the nooks behind the old photo-frames he hung up on the pallid walls. My brother was with him. He wasn't old and ape-like back then. He was just older and with features more simian than the average 9 year old. They had spread out the musty old mattress (Dadu kept it rolled up in the corner for reasons that could either have to do with sunning it out or warding off evil spirits) and were lazily engrossed in an odd game where men viciously swung at a pocked white ball with hooked wooden sticks. 'Hockey', I learned the game was called a few days later at school. It was not until years later that I learned what their wan expressions and slits of mild sunlight reflected off pockets of dust-caked glass made for. 'Halcyon' is how I describe such days now.

It was a similar halcyon day in the Chetla house when the ground seemed somewhat less stable. A tad more sloping with the walls more wobbly. The air had a musty thickness, the way it gets when there's too much sundust swirling around. Incense wept smoke in the corner as an invisible aura of mopey heaviness weighed our hearts down. There was a train of continuous sobs punctuated by the sharp sucking-ins of doleful breath. If our lives were a collection of words on a powerpoint presentation, that particular slide would be titled 'Funereal'.

Ever since then the images never quite fit together to form anything when I try to remember Dadu. A white-flecked moustache here. A serene upright figure with folded knees on the floor practising Yoga. A pair of hollowed eyes. Nostrils packed with cotton. A tinge of guilt. I ought not to have disturbed him with the clickety-clack of the plastic ball last week when mother said I shouldn't. I ought to have known him better. I ought to have hugged him when I left for home the last time I met him.

My brother was quite the hockey player in school, I hear.

The faint smile on your lips is 'Bittersweet'.