The first feeling that I had yesterday, as I went to the ice-box and
saw paatti lying still in it, was of a sinking and heavy heart. One more life
from that precious generation gone; paatti is, was, around 93 years - this
generation I mean. I hold it precious because elders I know from this age seem to
live with a sense of fullness of life… complete, whole, seasoned lives. The
following sloka comes to mind as I think of this phenomenon:
ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते ।
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥
Om Puurnnam-Adah Puurnnam-Idam Puurnnaat-Puurnnam-Udacyate |
Puurnnasya Puurnnam-Aadaaya Puurnnam-Eva-Avashissyate ||
Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||
Roughly translated, “That is complete. This is complete. From completeness, arises completeness. Removing completeness from completeness, only completeness remains. Peace. Peace. Peace.”
Granted that I didn’t see that much of Rukmini paatti in recent times.
It had been in the 90s that I met her a lot, going to school with her
granddaughter Sathya, one of my best friends from school. And then for about a year or so between 1995
and 1997 I saw her for a few hours every day. Particular life circumstances
made it such that I spent almost all my time besides school and sleeping hours,
at their house for that time period. Then as we grew up, and supposed
adulthood, its daily life and responsibilities took over, my visits got lesser
and lesser.
However, I never could forget her altogether. She made it
so. I went over to visit them (paatti and thatha) in their lovely Mandaiveli
house from time to time, selfishly just to get her sweet blessings. And she,
peace be with her soul, never forgot to call and wish me every year for my
wedding anniversary, a month earlier on the same date! Every year. We would laugh about it, she’d say, ok I have
it marked right this time, and then like clockwork call me a month earlier for
my anniversary the next year.
This I will remember of her the foremost – her sweetness of
speech. In all the years that I have
known her, I have never heard her utter one word that was harsh, or with
ill-will. The two instances that I do
remember her starting to say something that was approaching negative, she
stopped herself to say “but we don’t know what it is for them” and “we don’t know
their circumstances”.
A heart, so pure and innocent, was sending out the sweetest
blessings for me and for others. Wholesome blessings with utter absence of any
agenda, guile or self. It was all
between Perumaal (Lord Vishnu) and the receiver of the blessings. That she was
simply the almost-invisible instrument, was the implicit feeling in the way she
gave her blessings. I realise that my fervent prayer as I write this is for me
to imbibe this quality of hers, while also laughing wryly at the irony that the
prayer itself has so much self. Whenever I gave my obeisance in the traditional
way, by doing namaskaaram and touching her feet (which was every visit, to hear
her blessings of course!), she would just direct me to the altar as well every
time. And say, “it all comes from there”.
I will always remember her as so active, taking care of her
household and everyone in such a lively manner. Not a stray moment around her,
until the last couple of years when age took over Will I think. She knew that I loved coffee, and the first
thing she would do is to give me a cup whenever I visited. I always saw her
taking care that all of us, Satya’s friends, or anyone else in her vicinity had
eaten properly, and insist on this. Like many elders from that generation, she
would remember the significant to the smallest life details that we tell her, and ask about them.
The job offer. Daughter’s school. Shift to new city, are you settled. Cold and
cough a month back, how are you now. Didn’t
you say painting was happening, is it over ... Such keen interest in the sense
of well-being of people around that she would glean from all this apparently “just
information”.
It is this aspect of being able to serve the well-being of others that she seems to have held above all. Way back in 1992 I think, when I first started going over to their place, there'd been a time of water shortage in Chennai. The water lorry came when I'd been there chatting with Satya. I helped with the activity of filling up many drums and pots and stocking up water and saw it through until the lorry left, and the work was over. She never failed to mention this as her first introduction of me to anyone, for more than a decade. I am pretty sure that it was this one instance that warmed her to me so much.
It has been a couple of months now since I visited. When I mentioned regret that I hadn’t been able to see her
one last time and get her aashirvaadam (blessings), Sathya sent me this message:
“She really wasn’t talking the last 10 days. I would hold the memory of her as
the active, loving person you know, with the natural simplicity of being that
many of us aspire towards.”
By the time the rituals were completed at home, and she was
taken to the crematorium, her body had started shrinking rapidly, and face had
started looking bird-like. As part of the ritual, coal was placed on her heart,
ghee (clarified butter) was poured on it, and it was then lit. My heart was on
fire. Her body was pushed into the incinerator. The impermanence of this physical
body and the permanence of some higher energy that it houses – Paatti and others of
her generation seemed to be so much in touch with this, and so
effortlessly. Maybe it is this sensing
that gave Rukmini paatti her pure and good heart and her simplicity of being.
What more is this body for, if not this religion.
Sathya’s words are paatti’s truest essence - her religion of the heart. It is this
picture of her I will carry in my heart forever, and this slokam as her life’s
blessing:
ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते ।
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥
