Grateful for a grandfather, good for his age

My grandfather is 96 years old. He’s good for his age, as is the common refrain. When he sees his 18-month-old great grand daughter, he lowers his head as much as he can to get closer to her vantage point, smiles and coos: “Hello, my friend! hello, my friend…” Every time he repeats it, the emphasis remains constant. The kid smiles back, sometimes she gurgles. I used the Boomerang app on my phone to record these exchanges between my niece and a favourite person, and put them on the family WhatsApp group. A crawler and an old ship fleetingly inhabiting the same space, the intersection of a generational Venn diagram.

My grandfather is able to walk aided with a walker. The walker succeeded the walking stick, which was done away with around his 92nd birthday, after his wife succumbed to a fall in the bathroom. She used to worry about his memory and vent that the man, this husband of hers, is losing it, getting lost driving home in the same colony. He used to love cars, driving, being on the road, doing Srinagar to Cape Comorin on diesel engines in a matter of weeks. That was then.

He has no major ailments now, apart from that memory that She warned us about, and apart from the onset of mild incontinence.

He used to call Her The Commander. He is not a grouch. He’s mild. And funny. I love how funny he is. And determined, selectively. He will put his foot down on certain dignity-questioning matters. No adult diapers for him.

He looked at me and said, like old times, “Monkey… monkeys do this. Are you a monkey?”

My grandfather has a healthy appetite. It’s possible that the satiety part of his physical being has blunted. And he no longer knows for certain when he is full. At the breakfast table this morning, he insisted he had had only one parantha (Indian flat bread), when sources in the kitchen confirmed that he had, indeed, had two. A third parantha was brought to him.

My grandfather loves food. One of his daughters, mother of mine, constantly struggles with a choice: let him eat what he wants to eat “at this age” or control his portions so that his weight doesn’t go off the charts? She does a good balancing act. One moment a militant nag, the other a doting daughter. She sometimes will give him an extra piece of mithai (Indian sweets) when others in the family aren’t looking, because, you know, let him be, let him enjoy. How much time is there, how much time? If my aunt sees this spurt of irrational generosity of my mithai rationing mother, words are heard. “Don’t na, R, it’s not good for him, I’ve told you so often”.

How will we be with our parents in a couple of decades? There are lessons being gleaned.

When I am in Delhi, as is the case for a few more days, I try and be around him as much as I can. We no longer have the conversations we used to. That memory of his. But we savour the moments of clarity when they arise in this person with a cap on his head (to stave off the chill). And I like it when he is his old self, resorting to familiar phrases, and in-jokes.

The other day, at the dining table (again), at lunch, I had opened a bottle of mint-amla chutney and drew my nose closer to the bottle to get a whiff and calculate freshness quotient, and he looked at me, seated there at the head of the table and said, like old times, “Monkey… monkeys do this. Are you a monkey?”