Possession
The time has come to distribute her things. Leaving no will, only vaguely indicating her desires, she has left us to sort this out.
Things. Sarees, little bits and bobs of jewellery, her books and tapestries – these are all the tokens that are left of her. Her steel cupboard is still tricky to open, you have to push at a particular spot with one hand and turn the key with the other. Inside is her smell and her life, if a life can be measured in memories and momentoes.
Her twisted strands of tiny pearls. The necklace of hollow gold beads. Her rings. She wore all three on her ring finger, a ruby and diamante flamboyance at odds with her usual elegance. No wedding band. It was lost years ago and she didn’t want to replace it. Her red and green and blue glass bangles, the two thin gold bangles that never left her wrists except in the last days of MRIs and scans.
The bohemian silver jewellery from her college days. She wore silver bangles from wrist to elbow and they jangled each time she lifted her arm to write on the blackboard. I imagine it was either terribly romantic or terrifically annoying to her students.
The beautiful little boxes she collected. A carved silver one with a mother of pearl top, standing on four legs. Inside, pearls and coloured beads and gold sequins, wrapped in pink paper or muslin. Her beloved papier maché boxes from Kashmir, filled with more little packages, a little silver whistle, some manjadikuru (the shiny red seeds of Adenanthera pavonina) I must have collected for her, and the most amazing hollowed out seeds from Sri Lanka, capped with a tiny bone elephant. Inside are nestled infinitesimal elephants, each with beautifully carved details, so tiny a breath would scatter them…
On some summer afternoons, I was allowed to empty all these treasures on her large bed. She would lie there, telling me stories behind each of these links to her past. Each time, I walked anew into a wonderland. The bottles of perfume, her lotions and creams, each from one part of her life, each fragrance stored deep within her memory and now mine. My childhood toys – my gollywog and giraffe, the porcelain doll from Japan all found a place in a corner of her cupboard after I grew bored with them.
Her sarees from all over the country are somewhat stained and worn – a result of her failing eyesight. The elegant and muted ikats and pochampallees she loved, the venerable balucheris and jamevars from a distant time, the brash kanjeevarams. Soft marbled silks from Pondicherry nestle between ornate benares sarees. Two sarees, one white and one black, carry her own hand embroidered borders of roses. On the white one, is a border of multicoloured roses in tiny stitches, in remembrance of her beloved rose garden in Cochin. On the black, the roses are blood red, bold and striking.
Then there is the glowing bright jewel amongst her things – an old saree. Almost 150 years old by our estimation. She inherited it from her mother who in turn inherited it from hers. There might have been an earlier mother too who was the original owner. It has passed from mother to daughter and she gave it to me a couple of years before she died, it had become too heavy for her to wear. I’m the fifth generation, I think, to wear this piece of art. Of Chinese origin, a black gara with cream hand embroidery. Chrysanthemums and creeping vines, birds of paradise, the only colour a ruby eye or faded orange feet, a pale peach blush to a flower’s inner petals. The cream sik thread is rich, unmarked. The fabric is a thin but tough silk, the kind that is impossible to weave or find nowadays. The stitches are tight, with even tension throughout. The reverse is almost identical to the front. There are no loose threads, no criss crossing or untidy work at all. The entire saree was once edged in thick silver thread, which protected the fabric and threads from fraying. The inner most corner of the saree has two treasures hidden away. One is a blob of red glowing sullenly – this is to show that the precious, rare black was dyed over the more common red colour. The other is a label with Chinese lettering. It is faded somewhat and I imagine it tells the name and story of the person who created this masterclass in embroidery.
This gara is fragile now. It is not priceless but one could name a price for it and get it. Forty years ago, when my mother first wore it in Madras, a pillar of the community admonished her for it. According to the old dragon, the saree should have been safely locked away in a bank locker. Instead, my mom wore it to special occasions, she said it was meant to be worn and would waste away from neglect otherwise.
The first time I wore it, I stepped through the pleats and tore it. That ripping sound was like a death knell, I felt the weight of four generations of formidable women frowning down on me. My mom took it very well, I have to say. It can be mended, she said in her matter of fact way. She handstitched it together with careful stitches. Many years later, I gave it to a professional to restore and repair. He admired my mum’s stitches and left that bit alone.
This then is the sum of my mum’s material possessions. In her missing wedding ring and the venerable gara, the boxes crammed full of unprecious baubles, is her life story. Things in the final analysis, not the person herself – flawed, beautiful, ravenous for life, sorrowful, joyous and perfect all at once. But she touched all these things with tenderness and love, and so gave each one a little part of herself. And so…these things are precious to me.