A Museum of Sweet Memories
Photo: Karan Madhok
Personal Essay: ‘I think I indeed am born in the family of angry, rebellious people who love as strongly as they can. Our loved ones carve paths for each other; or else, how can we ever find where the trail starts and ends?’
My first encounter with love was when I spoke my first word. My aunt’s name, ‘K.’. Her name, like sugar on my tongue, dissolved so quickly that I said it again and again. It was easy, it was filled with pride, it was perfect. I learnt years later that it had been my first word, when she recalled the stories of childhood with a nostalgic, quivering voice. Then, she would laugh afterwards, her voice slowly fading until it came to a halt.
I had always seen love being given so freely; and yet, I was almost proud of myself for being worthy of it. The idea of a deserving or undeserving love never once crossed my mind. I firmly believed that one has no other way to exist—to love and be loved.
I think now I know why some sounds feel like a dense pack of energy, stuffed in such little space to make their way through the air, slashing through like a knife. The only remnants of sound, thus, is what stays in our hearts. The only memory that keeps rising and falling like waves is the faint realization that even when years pass, and all of this becomes a ghostly remembrance, her name and my voice will stay together. The earth will never stop spinning, even when we are gone, but my first tryst with language will stay, just like that first moment of me claiming my presence in this world. I whispered a name. K. And it took me where the sentences lie untouched, as I gathered everything with my broken voice. I was ready to speak, and ever so gently I did it with my aunt’s name.
As I grew up, looking at the world in colors, and not finding any difference between red and violet, it was my other aunt, P., who first held a painting brush in her childhood, rebelled for it. I would see her eyes glued on canvas as she played with colors that I didn’t know the names of. All the kids (me, my sister, my cousin) sat around her, looking in awe and surprise. She was a god to us, and in those moments, we wanted to become her. How must it feel—we wondered—to have that autonomy over something created solely for us?
P. was the fiercest of all my aunts, spoke English which sounded foreign to our ears, and stood with a posture of pride. I often thought about becoming like her in all the little ways. The way she held paintbrushes, and the way she turned a simple piece of fabric into art. I had started convincing myself that adulthood was something to wait for. She did it effortlessly, with every stroke of color. And we—all her little spectators—tried to mimic her with our own rangila colors, holding brushes like she did. We weren’t good, but we still felt invincible. We were no older than ten, eleven—wasn’t it wonderful for us to believe that, we too, were heroes? Indeed, we were. And then some of us stayed like that.
The earth will never stop spinning, even when we are gone, but my first tryst with language will stay just like that first moment of me claiming my presence in this world. I whispered a name.
But, a few years later, I drifted away from colors to words. They were easier than looking at the world through this dichotomy that existed within me. I was always inclined towards black, unlike P. who would choose the most beautiful shades of blue and violet and silver and red. Words were good veil for hiding this part of me. I could write the saddest sentence and not worry about how it would look to other people. With colors, people could easily see what I was not comfortable accepting: I was always a sad child.
As I grew up, these words stayed in my throat, hungry and angry. I was angry at my mother for giving birth to my little sister. So, I did what a little kid at that age must: I acted on my anger, and I stopped speaking to my mother.
It was perhaps then when I understood that love wasn’t linear. It didn’t keep on growing or diminishing with time. All it did was take detours. My love reached my aunt N. as she waited peacefully for the mornings. I didn’t know how to tell her that I was hungry, and plead for food, as if she was bound to give it to me. I did believe that the world revolved around me for a while. She would bring me a cup of tea (I have loved morning tea since my childhood) and a roti, and I felt how a daughter was supposed to feel. Filled with love. All I could do to return her love was smile back.
Endearments are just sounds which take shape for a specific person. While she called me ‘Gaffu’, for me, N. was my “Amma.” A word for mother. A word I certainly didn’t know the meaning of, but just felt right. After all, what was motherhood if not this? She was my mother, and she understood a rebellious child’s attempt at being loved. And she gave it all to me.
Growing up wasn’t that easy. What could a little girl expect from this world if not friendship? Wasn’t it the best way to tell someone that they weren’t alone? My youngest aunt R. did that for me and all the kids around. She was the funnier one. She made us all laugh. She still had some ways to grow up herself, too, but I often wondered what camaraderie an adult finds in a child?
I wasn’t giving her my time; I was reinventing the meaning of hours and seconds. I was re-watching the sea take shape, and it wasn’t all water. I was growing up with her, and she was with me.
Even though our friendship sometime stayed in the backdrop, it was R. who taught me about the silences between the periods of no conversations. As a kid, I was comfortable with any love language as long as I knew I was loved. I could hug her without holding my breath, without any what ifs. She would tell me stories until I fell asleep, we watched movies on Doordarshan together, stayed up late to watch horror shows. Aap Beeti was one of our favourites. She was never afraid to accept happiness as it came her way. There were no bad omens about being too happy, just unadulterated emotions as they came, and we faced it all.
Years sailed so smoothly with her by our side, and soon, I started looking forward to adulthood. I knew I would understand her better if I grew up faster. She was our “Billi Mausi”. She made us believe that laughter was how a big family confessed their love. When I think of it now, I realize we were laughing all the time. She became my best friend, someone I could call and talk to for hours. Isn’t that love? I sometimes don’t believe in the narrative of how giving someone their time is a love language. I wasn’t giving her my time; I was reinventing the meaning of hours and seconds. I was re-watching the sea take shape, and it wasn’t all water. I was growing up with her, and she was with me.
Perhaps my vanity in our friendship lasted way too long. Perhaps some people never change and they end up changing the fabric of time around us. I was a child, then a teenager, and when I entered my twenties, she was still there, not in the backdrop, but beside me, holding my hand, just how she would hold the hands of her little baby.
Her world changed when she became a mother. And it will keep changing for me, too, but I think the only way inheritance works is by giving the same love to people who never stopped loving us. I think I am ready to be a big sister to her daughter. I think I am ready to give back.
But time is a cunning magician. Even as people change, I can see that love can stay the same. Sometimes, memories of people are reminders that we can never go back in time. Sometimes, I desperately want to. And sometimes I’m just angry. But what does one do with all the potential love that ends up clustered in their hearts? Do we give it back to the people it was meant for? I do have memories that are still young, in the part of my heart where time has frozen, the part which is writing all of this like a letter that I would never share with whom it is addressed.
My aunt S. made us feel like she was a magician too: a magician with food, a magician who mesmerized us with her beauty. Ah! She was too beautiful for us to actually believe that she would love us back.
And yet, she did. With all her magic tricks, and specially-prepared dishes, and girl-talk, and laughter. Memories, I tell you, have a way of ruining us. Memory, like the time she once kissed me on my cheeks, because I felt I didn’t look good. Memory, like when she held my hand as I was scared of putting my foot on those darn escalators. The memory of when she teased me with the name of the boy I had once liked. The memory where she was my aunt and I didn’t have to think twice before saying it out loud without making it sound like a desperate attempt to have her back in my life. The memory of how she cheered along on our first-ever flight on an airplane.
With time, I know my mother and her changed in irreversible ways, the distance now too vast for any of them to cross. But when I do go back in time—as my days in this beautiful world of longing end—I will still see her. Not because it is our brains’ learned response, but because love never dies. It never diminishes. It just turns into nostalgia, or sometimes, into anger, an ache in the heart for everything to be as young as a flower, old as a scab of wound, when nothing matters and we know if given a chance, it will slowly wear off—this consistency of cemented silence.
I have seen time age all, except the eldest aunt Sk. of our extended family. She stands there, where time stops, ever gracious and calm, as she paves way for the rest of her sisters, too. A young girl who built her home not by succumbing to what the world wanted her to be, but by rebelling and making it on her own.
Even though this bridge of age is too vast for any of us to cross, to be comfortable with sharing silence and memories alike, she has always given love without making it seem like an obligation. Aren’t the older generation supposed to make it feel like there is no chance of meeting at a ground where they see us as we are, and we see them as people who once had a childhood, too? Aunt Sk. never did that. I am a child and I am a grown-up for her. There have been very few conversations, but what stands out the most for me is this feeling of not being too young enough to sound foolish, and not too old enough to sound as if life has drained out of me. She always gave the space for me to be both.
I think I indeed am born in the family of angry, rebellious people who love as strongly as they can. Our loved ones carve paths for each other; or else, how can we ever find where the trail starts and ends?
I do know that love doesn’t need constant reminders. When it does, a simple conversation can satiate that feeling.
I never thought I made a mark on anyone’s life. I believed I was as feeble as a lie. But when my aunt Sk. expressed that she told her friends about me, I wondered if it were possible for someone to be so proud of me as her eyes twinkled. She googled what I have written over the years to show me how I look from her perspective. I do know that, even though she has aged—become a grandmother, too—the warmth of her embrace has never changed. I don’t think it will any time soon.
I suppose this is how we build our own empires too. We stand where people who loved us stood before just so we feel their warmth in this cold cold world. I think I am going to stand there for a while, before I start building my own.
No, I have never needed any loud proclamation. The little moments would do, so full of love that they carve their imprints on my mind which can never be erased.
To love is to be kind. And she has been kindest to me. I suppose this is how we build our own empires too. We stand where people who loved us stood before just so we feel their warmth in this cold cold world. I think I am going to stand there for a while, before I start building my own.
My childhood was so full of moments like these. But what still remains as fresh as it was, is this memory of my uncle A., who would do anything to make us (these little monsters with no sense of good and bad) smile. We were a big family living in a cramped house of two rooms but it always felt like there was enough space for all of us. My uncle could do magical things. We would ask him to fly a kite such that it could touch the Govind Sagar Lake, which was visible from the terrace. And he would fly it so high that all of us kids would clap and jump. He was the source of hope for us as we thought any distance was coverable, whether the lake or relationships. I’ll especially remember his ghost stories, like the lady in hostel room with feet turned backwards, or the house besides the temple where a lady screamed at midnight. I remember them all not because they were scary, but because he was the greatest storyteller of our family.
Himesh Reshammiya’s songs on that dusty black radio was our morning routine. There was a time when all the kids would dance when he played songs on his latest computer, which only he knew how to operate, and he danced along with us. I believe it was he who taught me how words when used with proper diction and emotions could come alive. It was he who believed in me when nobody else did. Even when the things have changed over the years, and he has aged too, but our excitement to meet him never gets any older.
Now when all the kites are lying on the ground, the old radio not working anymore and nobody listening to Jhalak Dikhla Jaa on repeat, I can only look at him and travel back in time. He loved us with such generosity that when I look at myself with despite, I remember how he gently took care of all the versions of me and all the kids, our teenage, our distance with growing up, our “getting lost in own worlds, chasing dreams”, and slowly forgetting what these memories will mean to us in few years, when there will be no turning back.
This family has carved my heart into museum of sweet memories. Sometimes, it irks me when I can never ask them to love me how they once did, in my childhood. It is selfish too. But what is love if not a little demand to be cared for again, just how we liked it. It is a painful reminder—this growth—but I believe I have enough memories to sustain me for a while. And when they fade, I think I can always go visit my ‘Nani ka ghar’ (grandmother’s home) before it is refurbished to match the modernity of changing times.
I do hope, however, that some things stay the same. Or, if they do change, they remind me that I was a good enough kid to be worthy of their love. In vanity, I found seamless love. In loneliness, I have memories to guide me back to life. As long as that stays, I think I can manage to find my way back home.
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Bharti Bansal is a 24-year-old student from India currently pursuing Data Science. She lives in a small village called Hatkoti. You can find her on Instagram: @bharti_b42.
