Cockroaches, Calcutta, And Canjeevarams

There’s a poem by Agha Shahid Ali—something about bones refusing to burn when fire was set to flesh, because who would have thought you’d be stubborn even in death? The cremation is long over, but the bones remain like pineapple needles, lodged in the folds of every saree I still “borrow”.

Ajji was not, contrary to posthumous consensus, a naturally genial person. She was efficient. She distrusted excess effort. Her day had a logic to it—morning filter coffee, the newspaper read end to end, a running commentary on headlines she only half approved of, and fascination with the strange names of dictators and fascists, repurposed as nicknames for pets and family. Afternoon nap. Evening kashaya with a magazine or a book, and television. And always a little room for dessert—72% dark chocolate.

She had a precise tolerance for people—warmth in measured doses, irritation when boundaries were breached, and a complete unwillingness to pretend otherwise. If a guest overstayed, she would point blank shoo them out because it was television time—“Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, Lil Champs”. She had strong views on how terrible my boundaries were: “you don’t have to say yes to everything. You really need to learn to say “No!”–most important word in any language”.

With every saree I borrow, I try to borrow Ajji’s temperament too—a distant smile which says, I’m exhausted but thrilled to see you. I return both saree and temperament dry-cleaned and sanitized, each weighing heavier for having witnessed yet another ceremony.

A popular bedtime story from my childhood, concocted by my grandfather, was about an anthropomorphic cockroach who went to Calcutta. One night, as someone packed for Calcutta, an unsuspecting cockroach slipped into the trunk looking for a snack. The trunk shut. Before he knew it, he had reached Calcutta–different food, different smells, a whole new world. He thrived. Then he missed home and quietly climbed back into the trunk to return.

Ajji used to laugh about how my borrowing her sarees for weddings was akin to the cockroach going to Calcutta. She was tickled pink by the thought that a saree she bought or bartered with her sisters decades ago would now traverse the country with a second lease on life.

I used to have a bustling side-hustle as a wedding attendee, where I shamelessly handed out business cards in the garb of catching up with guests. Ajji rolled her eyes and declared, “Yardo duddu yellammanna jatre,” loosely translating to feasting on someone else’s dime. I tried, therefore, to carry gifts of appropriate monetary and sentimental value. I no longer have it in me to observe “We don’t believe in caste!” followed seamlessly by rituals dripping in it. The performance it exacts out of me—costume, make up, logistics, varying degrees of sincere enthusiasm, side-stepping minor deities known as “custom” and “ritual”–falls flat without my most loyal audience member.

She always wanted to know the details. “It’s a trend, Ajji—there’s something called bridal entry, then there’s groom entry, couple entry, entry after entry but where is the exit? It’s a Chakravyuh, and we are all Abhimanyu impaled by drone shots and overenthusiastic emcees” I’d bemoan.

She’d press more. Ajji delighted in my hypothetical provocations. After watching far too many Brahmin grooms profess to go to Kashi before being convinced to marry their brides instead, I asked “Why can’t we just wish these men happy journey and let them go to Kashi?” She’d guffawed. “That’s a great point!”

I’d brief Ajji about the panoply of wedding-events and she’d suggest sarees from memory. “Daytime backyard? Lovely yellow Kanjeevaram with black border.” “Arya Samaj? One off-white handloom somewhere…” “Grand evening reception? Take the shahi-blue or bottle-green Mysore silk.” “Sangeet? Gottilla. Was not there in my time!”

If Ajji knew what went down at sangeets, she might have had a word or more to lecture me about draping myself in her prized fabrics only to get down on my knees and head bang to Chaiya Chaiya. She did ask me once about how I managed to bring back her sarees without a single stain. I told her the tricks I employed to ensure future saree-borrowing prospects remained intact–draping without a single pin, choosing what to eat and drink based on spillage factor. She rolled her eyes and said “Cockroaches are very happy to go to Calcutta. They don’t need first class AC ticket.” 

More queries. Always curious.

“Nikah? Did they say qubool-qubool? How lovely!”; “You draped your head with the Seragu of my Seerae in a Gurudwara? Asadya! Show photo!” “Bengali? Did the bride wear that white crown?” And inevitably: “Met any nice, smart, eligible men?”

“OMG, Ajji, didn’t know you were on the market. What kind of man do you want?”

She’d play along with my deflection and mock-blush. “Widower. I can’t possibly train a man at this age. Ideally no kids–if they take my sarees, then what will you borrow?”

She once half-heartedly declared, “I won’t die till you get married!”

“A real-life Chiranjeevi!” I yelled. She laughed so hard my mother had to intervene.

My marital prospects were a negligible price to pay for her immortality.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t work.

It happened when I was in Bombay for a wedding—one of those three-day affairs that unfold in the evenings and leave the days in an odd lethargy. An omen my hyper-superstitious brain missed. There had been the usual minor chaos—misplaced logistics, shifting schedules, but none of it felt remarkable at the time. During the day, I moved through the city, meeting friends, hunting down an elusive bookstore, stopping in to see family, carrying on as though the days and nights belonged to entirely different people.

The call came while I was on the Bandra-Worli Sea Link wondering if I should make plans to meet someone I didn’t want to. Ajji was critical. There is a distinct stillness that follows information like that. Everything continues to move, but slightly out of sync. Ajji’s favourite sister lives in Bombay. I instinctively re-route my taxi to her house as I simultaneously re-book my return tickets, and bargain with a God I’d forgotten about Ajji’s immortality.

By the time the next call came, I was at her sister’s house. The sisters had always found ways to redistribute care-giving between themselves—passing it back and forth, offering each other brief reprieves without ever calling it that. It felt, in a way I couldn’t quite articulate then, like the right place to be when the news arrived.

At the cremation, I pick a fight with the pujari over some archaic ritual. Someone intervenes, but in my mind, it is six months earlier. I have just returned from galivanting around Greece and I am amusing Ajji with stories as she inspects her imported candy.

“Athens, the capital, is named after Athena. She’s the goddess of war,” I begin.

“Oho! Missed opportunity. We should have named you that!”

“Haha, yes, because I fight a lot.”

“Illa, ma,” she sharpens. “Where is your imagination? I’m Vijayalakshmi. So if my granddaughter is Athena… there’s poetic continuity, alwa?”

The pujari is still talking. The pyre is burning. And some uncles hand me mango twigs from their own rationed bunch to lay on the pyre. I suspect I’m being given special treatment to bring me back to reality. It’s a welcome gesture.

After the cremation came the comments, merging into instructions: “Physical invites must go out tomorrow. Sunday the post office is shut.”; “Her eyes refused to close—rigor mortis obviously—but it felt like she wanted to see everyone one last time.”; “Fine—we’ll use a laughing photo on the invite—it’s not the norm, but when has that stopped you or your grandmother?”

The invites seem to have been posted on time because it felt like the whole district had descended upon the house. Amma balked at my cottons and wanted me to drape a silk saree “to send her off in style”. I went through the trunk and in between the folds of an everyday cotton saree–I found batteries to a hearing aid, Ajja’s funeral invite from 2004, and a decade-old postcard that read:

“Namaskara Ajji! Today I came to Delhi and went to India Gate.

There’s a voice on the loudspeaker that keeps saying:

“Please keep the garbage in the garbage bin” Where else do they think I’ll keep the garbage?

Ashte. Bye. Love, Pinka. (August, 2014)”

I don’t remember writing that. I don’t remember what she said when she received it. I guess we keep garbage in the folds of unassuming sarees so that future generations can weep without warning.

I vehemently refuse to comply with Amma’s sartorial request since my primary saree lender isn’t around. “Here—take this one—Auntie V lent it to me decades ago.” Draped in a twice borrowed saree, I witnessed the spectacle of the 12th day–the public facing marker of grief. True to Ajji’s spirit—her mourners included people of all faith and no faith. On the 12th day of grieving… my Ajji came to me—like a partridge in a pear tree? Get it together, girl. These are the 13 days of prescribed puritanical mourning—not a Christmas jingle.

Sensing my overwhelm and dreading my spiral, Auntie J rolls her eyes, pulls me aside and says “Puttu, people just want to pay their respects—smile and nod. It’s enough.” Amma notices my unusual bonhomie with everyone gathered and raises her eyebrows. “Auntie J said smile and nod at everyone. I decided to take it a step further and added one “Namaskara”—and suddenly I became a conduit of Ajji’s communal memory” I say with a shrug as Amma rolls her eyes.

There’s a garlanded photo and people threw flowers on it. “How did they know to bring flowers? It doesn’t say so on the invite?” Appa snorts. “We kept it ready.”

I can’t help smirking when the pujari praises Ajji’s “fantastic cooking.” Open secret: she cooked most begrudgingly. “Always cook in one pot,” she’d say. “Easier to clean. Work smarter, not harder.” He goes on about her “genial spirit”—Amma and I exchange a glance. Ajji once scrubbed a bathroom clean while hurling choice expletives after a difficult house guest left. “You have to get it out of your system,” she’d shrugged. “Otherwise it’ll rot you from within.”

Much like how she’d always laugh when she saw me clutching a hot water bag to my stomach and exclaim “thank god for menopause!”, I now imagine Ajji’s reaction to my proverbial chakravyuh—“Aei Pinka! I found the exit but you’ll have to wait your turn!”

Later, Amma recounts having seen all her cousins. She comments on how it’s so lovely when the full extended family gets together. I had to be the thief of joy (a role I undertake with utmost sincerity) and ask “so you mean—funerals?” An uncle steps in to say “yes—funerals—but also weddings! We wish the couple well but honestly, we go there to meet and catch up with our peers! Madhuves and Bhojjas—the two great unifiers of the human race!”

In the original story, I always wondered if Calcutta clung to the cockroach in ways no one could see—some altered preference, a tolerance for mustard oil, a quiet awareness that there was more than one way to live. I have come to realize that some things change but most things don’t. I suspect that rituals are pesky indestructible insects and life is Calcutta.

I try to buy my own sarees these days—to circumvent sifting through hers. My splendid plan of avoidance falls short when I catch a reflection in the mirror and hear her acting surprised that her granddaughter managed to inherit a sense of taste. In the face of joy, grief, and everything in between, I’ve learnt that “adulting” is less to do with the domesticity of doing my laundry, and more to do with keeping a steady hand to pleat my borrowed saree and upholding with reverence the time-honoured matrilineal practice of rolling my eyes in private but smiling gracefully in public. To deliberately misquote the Penguins of Madagascar—“Just Smile and Namaskara. Smile and Namaskara.”