Whenever someone would ask me why I address my dadi as maa, I’d respond by saying ‘I have a mummy and I have a maa’. Mummy is .. well.. mummy. Dadi is my maa. So when my brother-in-law called me on Thursday morning saying ‘Dadi is no more’, it took a while for me to understand what he meant.

The pain and the loss we’ve been witnessing for the past year or so has made us kinder, I thought. But when this call came, I silently wished that he was talking about his grandmother and not my maa.

The whole day after that phone call has been a blur yet I remember every single detail, every single thought. As I waited for the cab to arrive, I stood in front of my cupboard for a while thinking about which bag to carry. Bizarre, right? But that’s all I could think of. All I felt was numbness.

“I should carry a big one because I need my wallet, phone charger, water bottle, sanitiser, tissues and extra masks.“ “Should I carry my laptop? We will have to send out the announcement of her death. It will be easy to make on canva.” “A big bag will be a hassle to carry around while making arrangements though.” “I should withdraw cash on the way.”

Maa suffered from osteoporosis and spent the last few years of her life in a lot of pain. She never let her pain overshadow her smile. In some way, I have been preparing for this day for a while. I knew exactly what was expected of me, what I needed to get from the market, who all to inform and so on. Yet, today has been surreal. I still am not sure if I believe that she is gone.

As she lay on the floor of my parents’ living room, all I could think was how that room had been our ‘bedroom’ for over a decade and a half. She would set her manji right next to the sofa I slept on. Sometime in the middle of the night, I would quietly move next to her instead of sleeping on the sofa.
The same manji was put outside during sunny afternoons in winters. After school, maa and I would take a nap on the manji in our courtyard. I grew older and started taking up more and more space on the manji but that never stopped us from cuddling during those winter afternoons after lunch.

She loved me the most and none of my cousins would contest that. My dad might but he is wrong. Maa loved me the most and I loved her more than anyone in this world. She would eat the creamy part of the cassatta ice cream and I’d eat the nuts and the bread at the bottom. Till this day, I don’t really know what all the different flavours in the cassatta ice cream taste like. I’d eat the frosting on top of the cake and she’d eat the sponge.

Every evening, she would take me and my sister to play with my cousins in the next apartment at 4pm. And sharp at 5pm, all the cousins would gather around her as she bought us ‘orange’ ice cream from the Kwality Walls stand outside the apartment. We rarely told our parents about this detour. It was our little secret.

She loved playing Ludo. LOVED it. Played it with the intensity and focus of an Olympian and of course she always won. Though she never admitted it but if rumours are to be believed, she cheated! You couldn’t go over to see her and leave without playing Ludo.

I know you think your mum or dadi is the best chef in the world. But, my maa was better than everyone else. She had a special ingredient. She claimed it was love but there was something else in there too - a lot of ghee and tomatoes! She taught me how to cook … over the phone. I’d call her and say ‘I want to try making bharta today. What all do I need?”. She’d give me a list of ingredients and ask me to call once I had them. Over the next hour or so, I’d call her after ever important step to share my progress and ask what should I do next. Even if I followed the exact recipe, nothing I ever made came anywhere close to how good her food was. I clearly got the love, ghee and tomato quantities wrong.   

I wish you had gotten a chance to meet dodo. He reminds me of you. Often when he cooks for me, he asks “but is it as good as Dadi’s?”. It never is. I know you would’ve loved him and even tolerated his cooking. He just doesn’t understand that you only need 2-3 ingredients to make the best food. 

She was the cool dadi. All of us kids would tell her first about our love lives. She nudged us to find love and to find happiness and to follow our hearts. All she’d ask was “tu khush hai na?” And that’s all that mattered to her.

For as long as I can remember, I walked behind you holding your dupatta. As a kid, I knew I was safe wherever you were. As an adult, I wanted to make sure you were safe whenever with me. I am feeling lost today, maa, without your dupatta to hold.