Memories of Grandparents-2

A twelve year old boy, village-bred and very shy Having but token familiarity with buses, routes and places Escorts his mom’s mom, very sick and about to die To the town forty kms and four hours away those days Involving three buses, two junctions needing directions And a km on foot, where her other two daughters lived. She sat on the road and vomited, so bad was her condition, The boy waited without a thought till she once again moved. Finally on reaching the house wanted, everyone there was aghast On how we two made it and critical of my mother’s foolishness In entrusting a boy who knew next to nothing with such a task. (But mom with none to help did what she thought right in all seriousness) Grand ma gets promptly admitted in a hospital nearby. Along with others, the boy goes to see her daily. On the third She pleads with him to stay back with her that night But, no, he runs away because he wanted to play with the other kids. He never knew she was going to die that night till he was woken up To board the ambulance which was taking her dead Back to her native village, and the boy who sat with her was I. My dad’s dad was dead before I was born But about him I used to hear a lot all through my life Because he was a big landlord who owned a village Of twelve hundred acres, as the head of a joint family He was a monarch of sorts, albeit, without a sceptre and crown. Trained in herbal medicines, which he dispensed for free, And a scholar in astrology and all those esoteric things And a man of great virtues, he was much sought after. Then suddenly the rules changed and the system Of joint families went and after partitioning his estates Among his kinsfolk , without taking an inch of land for himself, He shifted to his wife’s place where too they fed a hundred daily But they fell on hard times with the litigations that followed The new laws which ruined families and my grandpa died poorer .