Project 6 at the Toastmasters Club was designed to meet the goal of highlighting the vocal variety in voice.
Its my grandmother’s 83rd birthday today and this post is dedicated to her. I hope you all will enjoy reading this one.
It is one of nature’s way that we often feel closer to distant generations than the ones immediately preceding us. The another reason grandchildren and grandparents get along so well is that they have a common enemy.
Ladies & Gentlemen today I am going to share my story with all of you. One beautiful woman with whom I was so attached from my infancy to my adulthood was my grandmother. Not a single day was gone without her presence when I was a kid. Just about time, when the woman thought her work is done, she became a grandmother. With a cute, little baby girl in her hand, she definitely felt blessed but it certainly did not come to her as an easy task. She cared for the baby all day long, feeding her at the right time, singing her lullabies, playing with her, making her comfortable, all was provided by God in one package.
The days passed and the bond grew stronger. A grandmother is a little bit parent, a little bit teacher, and a little bit friend. She taught me all the religious hymns, because of which I have always felt proud of my culture; she taught me how to be morally correct, so that I have a strong character. Yes, she has been the first teacher of my life giving me the basics of life. She instilled in me family values, making me an ethical person. She became a parent then and when she heard my long silly stories of the day, she became my best friend. A garden of love grew in her heart in which I played and enjoyed day and night.
A child needs a grandparent to grow a little more securely into an unfamiliar world. What children need most are the essentials that grandparents provide in abundance. They give unconditional love, kindness, patience, humor, comfort, lessons in life. And most importantly, cookies. For me cookies were substituted by paranthas. It became her favorite task to feed me with loads of paranthas whenever I returned from school. It used to be a feast for me. Although, I did not like to see it accumulating on me, when I grew a little older but by then, it was just too late. I was completely addicted to them.
Days passed further and life started to become busier. More responsibilities started pouring in from various aspects of life. She always made me feel she had been waiting all day just to see me and now her day was complete. As she grew older, she developed some hearing troubles. We all know old age is a problem in itself in ways more than one. And so, she created a vacuum around herself. The communication between us to some extent, started fading. It restricted to only the essential communication of day to day life. With passing years she engrossed and drenched herself completely into God’s name. She found it easier to read books than to talk to other family members. Her ever increasing silence made her look older each day.
And one early morning, something went wrong inside her, she had to be rushed to the hospital, neither she nor anyone else had ever thought that now she world never return back. The ray of hope of her coming back to her home kept on diminishing each day. She was in pain, she was in misery, she was helpless and the doctors were losing hope.
Soon the bitter reality of life confronted us and I found it one of the most difficult times to be contained inside me. That was the day when I realized that my teacher, my parent, my best friend had left me alone on this earth and made her abode to the heavens.
Today, two months have passed, and I still feel that God could have given her some more time to be with us. There was no hurry. I have always felt protected in her presence and that she had seen me grow and evolve each day. I wanted her to see me getting married one day becoming great grandmother too, but God cannot fulfill all of our wishes.
Ladies and Gentlemen, of all the time that we have with us, if we can spend just a fraction of it with our grandparents, there cannot be any blessing bigger and better than this. Lucky and fortunate are those kids who get hold of their grandparent’s hands. And I feel pity for those who knowingly and willingly do not make a way to their heart.
Of all the grandchildren that my grandmother had, I feel so proud to say it that the bond of love she shared with me was there with no one else. She held my hand for a little while but my heart forever.
Some unknown author has rightly said,
‘The history of grandparents is remembered not with rose petals but in the laughter and tear of their children’s children. It is not into us that lives of grandparents have gone, it is in us that their history becomes future.’
Vrinda Bhagat 