Grandma Dances Sometimes

Dark red hibiscus flowers hung upside down from their stalks and swiveled quietly in the slow afternoon breeze. The bright yellow oleanders in the garden bobbed their heads in unison, agreeing to whatever secrets those crimson flowers had whispered into the wind.

Swamy could hear his wife snoring. They were lying on recliner seats in their veranda after lunch. He looked at Devi, her short stocky frame draped in a soft cotton saree and her thick-rimmed spectacles still on her face.

When she was asleep, she looked the same as she did before her illness. It was like her Parkinson’s disease was also taking a nap.

He watched her sleep without a word, scratched his grey stubble, and rubbed the few twirly white strands of hair on his bald head. His blue check shirt, the one that used to fit him well 20 years back, fell loose and airy over his arms and chest but wrapped snugly around his belly. He would’ve liked a cup of tea then, but he sat back and waited for Devi to wake up.

Swamy looked up at the sky. He liked watching the sky while he waited.

Fluffy cotton ball clouds had mushroomed out and filled up the sky, like an atomic explosion of clean white smoke, frozen in time. Their wispy edges bathed in warm golden sunlight as they were chauffeured around by a lazy monsoon wind. Like giant white slugs made of cotton, the clouds crept across the blue cosmic ceiling.

Swamy had to squint his eyes and watch for a long while to see them move a little. He found bits and pieces of a happy blue sky peeking out from in between them.

“Swamy” Devi croaked in a voice deeper than usual. Her eyes were still closed, but her arms were awake, and they resumed their usual tremor.

Swamy placed his palm on her trembling hand. The tall jamun tree in their backyard rustled its leaves gently in an unhurried wind, occasionally filling up the intimate silence they held between them.

Rukmini, the housemaid, waited patiently with a teacup and saucer as Devi slowly raised her hands and took hold of it. The porcelain cup rattled against the saucer, as she guided it towards her mouth and the surface of the hot brown liquid quivered in sync with her tremors. A few drops of tea spilled over the edge of the teacup, trickled down its smooth white curve, and stained her white saree with spots of brown.

For a while, this porcelain rattle filled their silence.

“Swamy, did you buy the banana chips that Lakshmi likes?” Devi’s tea had gone cold, but she kept sipping anyway. “And new toys for Rahul?”

“Everything will be ready.” Swamy smiled reassuringly at his wife. “Don’t you worry.”

“I must make the mango pickle myself,” Devi said, doggedly. “My daughter used to eat whole jars of it when she was pregnant with Lakshmi.”

“Even I like your mango pickle.” Swamy chuckled. “I guess Priya has to come all the way from the USA with her kids for me to eat some pickle.”

The old couple went about each year, looking forward to their daughter’s visit. Since the COVID pandemic hit, it’s been about 3 years since they last saw her and her kids.

The warm aroma of spices wafted around the house as Devi slumped back in a plastic chair in the middle of the kitchen and Rukmini did the cooking. Raw mangoes were getting tossed around in a pan, mingling with the spices and the splattering oil, turning a fiery shade of red. Jalebis were being fried in another pan.

“You cut the raw mango unevenly, Rukmini,” Devi said, inspecting the cut pieces.

She inched a trembling hand towards one of the fried sweets cooling on the countertop and brought it back to her mouth.

“My grandchildren aren’t diabetic! Make another batch with more sugar.” Devi wanted every dish to be perfect.

Swamy interrupted their cooking sessions from time to time, handing Devi her medications and tasting a bit of everything.

“These jalebis are delicious, Rukmini.” Devi rolled her eyes at her husband.

When she wasn’t cooking, Devi would walk around the house with short shuffling steps, balancing herself with one arm on the wall and inspecting their old home’s decor. With Swamy’s help, she rearranged the furniture, put up fresh curtains, and took out the fancy plates and cutlery that they never used.

The old lady hadn’t moved this well in the last 6 months. It seemed like the electric thunderstorm of excitement in her head had convinced her brain disease to let her go on parole.

After a few days, Priya walked in with her elder daughter, Lakshmi, her younger son, Rahul, and a bunch of trolley bags bearing American gifts.

Lakshmi walked up to her grandparents and hugged them both. Rahul followed suit, but he forgot to smile as he did so.

“I can’t believe she is 12 years old,” Grandpa said, holding her close. “Almost a young woman now.” Lakshmi, in her high boots and ripped jeans, was almost as tall as her short, portly grandpa. She smiled showing all her braces, as she stood in between them and held their wrinkled hands.

“And Rahul was a baby when we last saw him” Devi raised her free arm in a sluggish arch towards his mushroom-cut hair. The young child backed up a little as the trembling arm approached him. He waited for her stiff shaky fingers to finish brushing his hair to slowly step away.

The next day, when they had slept through their jetlag, the children sat at the dining table in their pyjamas and rubbed the sleep out of their eyes. Their grandpa kissed them both on their foreheads and sat down in a cane chair with his newspaper. Rahul smiled a little as he was kissed this time.

Priya tied up her hair in a messy bun and poured Tamil filter coffee with milk and sugar from a metal tumbler into a cup, back to the tumbler, and repeated this until it was frothy. The children were pleasantly surprised by how good it had tasted.

“Your mother used to make coffee like this.” Swamy smiled, sipping from his cup.

Priya smiled a broken smile back at him. The last time she was home, her mother was still making coffee like this.

Devi usually lay on her bed for a long while after waking up, but she wanted to get up quickly that day.

She could hear her grandchildren’s voices from the dining room as she slowly tried to move her arms and legs. The left side of her body obeyed, albeit slowly, but the right side barely moved, as if it wasn’t done sleeping.

She grabbed the mahogany bedpost with a trembling left arm and tried pulling herself to one side, but her torso wouldn’t budge. Her body weighed down on the soft coir mattress like a statue made of lead. She pulled hard, with her shivering hand, but it felt like trying to flip a rock with a plastic straw.

Every morning she had to wait for Swamy to come lift her up, but it had never bothered her so much before.

In the silence of her house, interrupted by the distant happy noises of her entire family, she stared at the same ceiling she had woken up to for the past 40 years and felt truly alone.

Time seemed to be trudging along at a Parkinsonian pace.

She could feel her feet tingle and tried wiggling her toes, but it moved too slow, and she couldn’t shake it off. She helplessly endured the tingling as it crept up her leg.

A gentle gust saw itself in through the window, slowed down and lost itself into the damp air that hung motionless in the room.

“This is a good day, don’t you cry.” Devi thought to herself, clamping her eyes shut.

Swamy walked in with a hot cup of coffee, and sat her up on the bed, gently. The blood dropped from her head, and she held onto the mattress until the giddiness stopped.

“Top of the morning to you,” Swamy spoke in a sing-song voice. The same voice he used with their grandchildren. She smiled back weakly and ate her morning medication. The tablets would slowly thaw her frozen movement in some time.

Swamy helped her up and she rushed to where the kids’ voices were coming from. Her hair was not made, and she had not brushed her teeth, but all that could wait a while.

Devi’s feet lurched ahead in small but quick strides, while her torso wobbled awkwardly atop her feet.  Her legs led, but the rest of her body refused to follow, like a duet where only one of them had the dance steps memorized.

Swamy couldn’t react quickly enough to catch her, and she hit the floor with a thud. The dull sound rang across the home and died out quickly, dissipating away into the graveyard of silence where all muffled sounds were eventually laid to rest.

Priya wasn’t sure what scared her more, the muffled thud from her parents’ room or the silence that ensued.

Rahul ran to the bedroom first and held Devi’s left hand as Swami helped her up. Devi was yet to find her bearings, but she held on to his little hand tightly.

Priya, being an internal medicine doctor, examined Devi quickly. She furrowed her brows and let her training take over for a while. Devi’s lower lip was broken and there was a bruise on her forehead, but apart from that, she seemed alright. With a sigh of relief, Priya resumed being a worried daughter again.

“I’m alright.” Devi insisted multiple times, her left hand still holding her grandson. Lakshmi stood next to her, furrowing her brow just like her mother.

Priya sat next to Devi, dialing rapidly into her phone, and trying to arrange an emergency consultation in one of the hospitals she knew.

Devi’s clammy fingers brushed against Priya’s face.

“I am alright, but if you really want me to go, we’ll go after the children have eaten something.” She said, holding her daughter’s face.

After she was back from the hospital, Lakshmi assigned herself to be her grandma’s walking stick, watching carefully as she hobbled around and pouncing to hold her whenever she wobbled a little.

The little boy followed his grandpa around, sticking to him like Velcro, but occasionally, he would walk up to his grandma and let her tousle his bowl-cut hair.

The children sat with the old couple in the veranda after lunch every day and listened to their stories. By the end of one week, the kids had heard every single story from their mother’s childhood thrice.

Some days they would play board games.

Lakshmi sang a Carnatic song from her Indian music class one day and the old couple were in tears.

When Rahul did a goofy little dance, to a nursery rhyme he had learned, their applause was equally loud.

Some days, they would just sit in silence and breathe the same air.

In a few days, the children would be on the other side of the globe, and the old couple would lay back on the same recliner chairs and replay these memories more times than the number of miles that separated them.

In a few years, the kids would hardly remember half of the stories they had heard and in another few years, they would have even forgotten how their grandparents’ voices had sounded.

Even then, they would remember how an old couple had cherished every moment they had with them.

They would still remember how tightly they were held.

In the silence, interrupted by the occasional rustle of the jamun tree’s branches, memories were being woven together.

One such day, as they sat in silence, Devi’s right hand started moving of its own accord, flinging wildly. Her face started twitching, then her right leg joined the show and eventually, all her limbs started revolting. The medications that helped her move better sometimes caused her to move too much.

Lakshmi sprang up from the floor, furrowed her brows, and held Devi’s left shoulder gently, trying to stop her arms. Swamy held the other side.

Rahul backed away and kept staring at her with wide eyes. Devi wanted to look away from her frightened grandson.

Tears streamed down her face. Right then, she would have given the world to switch back to her early morning paralysis.

Swamy quickly bent over and whispered something in Lakshmi’s ears. He then fished out a cassette from the cupboard and popped it into the cassette player. A funky Tamil disco song from the 90s played out loud.

The old man started flinging his limbs too, but in rhythm with the music. Lakshmi looked at him and copied his moves. Neither of them was too good at it.

“Grandma likes to dance sometimes, Rahul,” Swamy shouted over the loud music. “Sometimes, she doesn’t even wait for the music.”

Rahul took his time to take in what was happening. Grandma was still moving around in her chair clumsily, but the other two seemed to be having a lot of fun.

He eased up slowly and decided that Grandma was probably the worst dancer he had ever seen, and when Swamy took his hands and helped him up, he started dancing along with them.

Devi could not stop herself from moving, but it hardly mattered anymore. With her eyes clouded by tears and her limbs still flinging, she kept looking at her husband’s silly dance for her.

In the days after, Devi spent a lot of time hugging her grandchildren. By the time they visited the next year, she wasn’t sure if her hands would move too much or too little, so she hugged them as much as she could before they left.

On the day they were going back to the USA, Priya’s ex-husband called to talk with his kids. Swamy overheard the little boy say, “……and Pappa, we had a dance party last week!”. The old man let out a little chuckle.

Priya and the kids left for the airport after their evening tea. The old couple sat in the veranda for a while after they had left and watched the sun go down. The glowing orange disc inched away so slowly that it seemed to be staying in place, but whenever they forgot to look, they found it closer to the edge of the sky.

The air hung still and the flowers in the garden hardly moved. There was no wind to rustle the jamun leaves and nothing interrupted the silence in their veranda. Streaks of bright red retreated to where the sun was drowning in the sea, leaving a tired dark blue sky behind.

Soon, the sun would rise again, they thought.