Warmest, truest embrace that melts hearts
It was an ordinary wooden box, disintegrated from one side but it held all the magic for me.
It was my grandfather’s legacy to me; Scrabble. It’s what he taught me and I learnt how to make words and to make sentences and then he helped me with how to use them. As I was growing up, he would walk with me in the evening when he would come to visit us from one of his world tours, trying to make agriculture a viable option for farmers. Nanaji would give me an alphabet and tell me that they had to be longer than three, then five words and so forth. My love affair with words took seed.
It’s been lifelong and I’m mid way in mine. Words and his presence have made my life what it is. It’s been two years since he went away and I still haven’t come to terms with him going away. I don’t go and visit the memories ever. It’s too painful to even open that box and to come to terms with him not being a phone call away. Even now, I want to just call up and discuss the Iran-us tensions, the repercussions of the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens and the one that we don’t act upon, climate change. I’ve stopped being crazy about cricket matches, my shouting or insane drivel. He was my sanity, the one who loved me unconditionally, without any demands.
It’s the security and the love that they shower upon you is what you miss as suddenly the rug is pulled under your feet and you’re left unprotected. Everyone will have some demand, some box that you didn’t tick, and some box that you’d didn’t fit, he was the only one who thought I was fine as I was.
In his silent way, he gave me the love for history books, the power of the written word, ethics and the values of life, and why taking a higher ground is better. I miss the conversations on politics and his amazing memory from where he could cull facts and figures and his mathematical ability to calculate in any unit.
A stickler for time and principles, he revolutionised a whole generation of farmers. Forever trying to make Punjab a better place, he lived with the spirit of Punjabiat and the silent knowledge of the Gurbani and what it meant to be a Sikh. His intelligence, knowledge was beyond measure and I feel honoured to have seen glimpses of his vastness. But what I wish to capture once more is to just talk to him and hug him and embrace him as the greatest loss is mine.
Death is not the greatest loss of life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.
How do you carry on? Time doesn’t heal, it keeps the hurt alive. A severe winter is upon us and all he would have talked about would have been the temperature and the repercussions on the farm cycle in the long run and how we are headed to an ice age as the planet is spinning slower.
Love a little longer, love a little harder, call your grandparents, they’re waiting for that bell and give a hug often. This embrace is the truest of all. And embrace is seven-letter word.
DEATH IS NOT THE GREATEST LOSS OF LIFE. THE GREATEST LOSS IS WHAT DIES INSIDE US WHILE WE LIVE