Thinking of my Dida, my maternal grandmother. Watching a painting of 5 women that my aunt Shyamali painted. Somewhere, there’s a photo of me, yay high with kneehigh socks, standing in front of it. I’m not much taller now, but that painting, those women press me forward. They are as alive to me now as they were then. Thinking of my Dida and the choice she had: to stay in Kolkata, to look after her brothers, to marry (late), to have babies. Have my Mum. If not for the choice Dida chose I wouldn’t be here. And yet, every bone in my body hears her words vibrate through me “Ami London jette partam.” I could have gone to London.
You know she never once came to see me in Vancouver. Not once in Toronto. Not when I lived in Dublin. Not even when I lived in London. But once I moved to Leiden, she appeared to me everywhere. In shop windows, her sari’s aanchal (ãtʃol) sailing in the wind, her eyes creeping up behind my retinas, together we looked at beautiful things.
