My grandmother had always been a kind and bright soul.
In my early childhood days, she would take me out for evening walks, where she often looked at the people we met across the street and tried to guess what kind of a day they had been through.
We would walk around the cluster of houses where our family and my father's colleagues used to live and try to draw an intricate picture. In this story, everyone we met was a character, and we would imagine how they interacted behind the scenes.
We gave good endings to some and hopeful endings to others.
She wasn't a fan of bad endings and would often say that any ending perceived as bad could improve and evolve into a good or hopeful ending.
She would feed me with her hands when I still couldn't properly use my fingers to eat and mash up the rice, curries, and vegetables to make little balls topped with an onion ring.
It was one of my fondest memories until the day she accidentally mixed some green chilies in the food.
I threw a childish tantrum that I still regret to this day. Her face, when I said I didn't want to be fed by her anymore, still ran a knife through my heart. After that, she kept moving to her other three daughters' houses, excluding my mom's, and rarely visited us.
I kept blaming myself for that.
When she lived with us, I often slept beside her, falling asleep while listening to stories of the Gods, Goddesses, Asuras, Rishis, Heroes, and Rakshasas.
She was an avid reader of Puranas and often told me stories of how Vishnu, one of the three Great Gods, came down to earth in different reincarnations to eliminate the evils plaguing that era.
What I loved most were the stories of Vahanas of each God. Stories behind why a particular animal got attached to a God ascending as a Vahana or their Mount were unique and captured all my child-like curiosity at that time. It was like the Gods were Pokemon trainers.
She would remind me that, in most cases, the animals approached whoever they wanted to be with.
'Sometimes you just need to accept things as they come, cherish them as they stay, and bid goodbye with a smile as you part...' she would often say. It was like a healing charm that improved my mood whenever I broke or lost a toy.
She would also scare me sometimes with stories of danavas, huge giants capable of destroying kingdoms with a swipe of their hands, and greedy Asuras whom the great gods granted powerful boons.
I learned about yugas, a cycle of repeated eras marking humanity's apparent dawn and destruction.
Kali Yuga was a concept that would frighten me to the core. Thinking about how we will cease to exist because of our greed was terrifying to me. If you count the years that make up a Yuga, we will find that one would die and reincarnate a thousand times before reaching the end of Kali Yuga.
"It is not that far away!" My grandma would exclaim. "Who knows? Maybe we count in a different way than how they used to."
She was the one who first guided my hands in my pencil-holding ceremony, a kind of coming-of-age ceremony for children stepping into the world of education, where we write the first few alphabets of our mother tongue.
The Goddess of Knowledge, Saraswati Devi, presides over this ritual to bless children with a successful academic life.
After that, she even mentored me on how to sketch and draw. She was an expert in the art of Chitram, a collection of detailed and intricate sets of symbols that are put together to create a complete picture.
She often said that every great picture comes from the amalgamation of small strokes made by your brush.
'If you do the little ones correctly, the bigger ones will automatically get imbued by our emotions and the thoughts we want to convey while creating a piece. In due time, everything will fall into place.'
After I turned five, she stopped teaching me, saying it was better to go outside, play, and make friends with the kids in our neighborhood that it's not good for little children to stay holed up inside houses.
My grandfather passed away when his eldest daughter was only seventeen, leaving my grandmother to raise her four daughters just by herself. She lost her mango farms to greedy relatives and was manipulated by them to marry off her third daughter to a family far away from home in a rural village as soon as she reached adulthood.
It was as if the Gods were conspiring against her to make her life miserable.
When reminiscing about her past, she often said how desperate she was and how often she had almost given up.
'But I refused to consider my life as a bad end. The world had been keeping all the happiness I deserved away from my grasp. I believed that one day I would be given all that back, along with interest, in exchange for all the sadness I had overcome.'
Her following smile would make me wonder whether she was given back what she deserved, even if it was only a tiny portion.
I last saw her relaxing on the balcony of her two-storied home, made by my grandfather, the last thing left among her possessions that she had fought relentlessly to protect, where countless of my childhood memories now resided. It was just a few months before I had my eye accident.
"Are you eating well? Or are you still holed up drawing animals and power rangers in your house?" She had asked. I had felt a sense of distance between us then as if she was deliberately putting up a wall between us.
I stood behind her quietly.
"Do you still like scribbling the designs I taught? Your mother said all your notebooks are filled with those patterns. Don't draw them recklessly until you understand what they stand for... It was my mistake; seeing your steady hands, I couldn't stop experimenting." She had said.
"No, I just liked drawing them with you. And I play hide and seek every day with my friends. I'm fit enough...see?" I had tried to flex my biceps in front of her.
I was particularly proud of the little egg I had developed by picking up marble slabs, a competition my friends and I often participated in behind the renovated clubhouse.
These clubhouses were the hangout spaces of friendly delinquents, a surprising adjective to describe them, but true nonetheless. They would often invite us in and teach us how to play carrom. It was like we were stepping into a world we weren't allowed into yet but given enough glimpses to make us want to be a part of it.
They also shared Pepsi with us, not the packaged bottled drink... It was the nickname of a cheap, flavored cold water that our mothers would say was made from drainage water...
She had taken my hand in hers, holding it softly while looking into my eyes. There was a slight discomfort in her expression at that time. "I'm sorry for making you go through this... Even in the future, you'll lose a lot of things, but never allow yourself to get caught up in sadness. Know that whenever you lose something, you will get something even better. You'll become an incredible person."
"Can you grant me a wish?" She had suddenly said right after. "I have talked with your mother and father. They are currently hesitating, but I know they'll comply. I have always wanted one of my grandchildren to attend this school, but getting admitted there is difficult. All of your cousins are now older than the permitted age to apply. Can you try studying for the admission exam? You still have about more than one and a half years left..."
I learned this school was based on the ancient Indian system of gurukuls. Where you enter at 12, get mentored by a bunch of old wise sages, hang around only with dudes, wear traditional attire, pray to the Gods, and acquire the wisdom of Vedas, our sacred texts.
But this school neither had the wise old dudes nor did they teach Vedas. It was just a simple boarding school that kept you away from home and taught the same things any other regular school would.
It was an easy decision. I knew my grandmother would be disappointed, but I had to refuse. It was too much for me. I would have to leave all my friends here. Leave my mom's home-cooked food. All for what? Repeating to everybody what a great school I studied in and how crazy my daily routine was.
My father learned from one of his friends that this was a prestigious school to attend and found out about a guy who taught students specifically for this exam.
I was forced to go there, endured beatings from the teacher for no reason, and stopped going because of my eye accident midway.
After my vision returned, it was time to decide whether to send me there again. My mom and dad had a huge fight. She was against sending me, while my father wanted me to sit for the exams as it would soothe my grandma's atma...her soul.
At that time, my guilt-ridden self couldn't refuse, and I decided to do my best for the few months before the exams.
By this time, it was a done deal; students studied for two years before attempting, and here I was, giving a sincere effort for only ten months. The second round with the teacher was way worse.
He thought I had left the course midway because I was a coward and never forgot to put me down using harsh, insulting words. He would scold me in the presence of my and the other students' parents whenever they came to pick up their children.
The other children also had a weird sense of competitiveness among themselves and treated me as if I was not on their level. It was understandable, considering they, too, have been taking beatings for a period longer than mine.
I toiled hard for a year, soaking up concepts as much as possible, as many times as possible.
I was thinking about the problems while in school, during my commutes, in the bathroom...
It was as if a fire was lit inside me to prove people wrong and to win.
This period left a deep impression on my character, as if only winning and losing mattered. I wanted to shove the results in the faces of my fellow 'getting-beaten-up' mates, their parents, and my teacher.
After sleepless nights, countless revisions, and losing my seat on the school ranking list, the judgment day arrived.
I ate two rasgullas for a sugar rush to put my brain into overdrive mode and tackled the question paper. The exam was a blur, as if it had ended as soon as I started reading the questions.
Our teacher gave a lot of importance to clear and concise answers and neat, beautiful handwriting, which was right up my alley.
There were a few unknown questions that I skipped instead of bullshitting my way to fill up the paper, and even drew some chitrams on the final rough page during the last 5 minutes after finishing up early. It resembled a mongoose I saw in the mango orchard right in front of the school for the first time.
It was scurrying around looking for something as it caught my interest. I knew they were badass predators, pro at taking down venomous snakes like none other.
My respect for snakes was already at an all-time high from watching the Anaconda series, and an animal that bested such beings deserved much more praise.
I came back from the beautiful campus, thinking in the back of my head that being in such a school might not be bad after all.
Apparently, a group of exam takers had seen monitor lizards in a nearby lake chilling on the banks like crocodiles. I have to go back to see them, I wished fervently. The stress during the exam preparation also left a bad taste in my mouth. Being at home now brought back memories of the insane grind I had partaken in.
Only two of my friends had tried to contact me during the days of my rehabilitation, and that too only once.
I felt like something was working behind the scenes to close all other doors, leaving me with only the choice of attending Gurukul. When the results came, I wasn't even surprised. All the fire inside me lost its fuel. I was instead thanking all the people I wanted to prove wrong for giving me enough motivation to embark on such a path of self-serving vengeance.
I was the only one who benefited after all. The expression of pity I had on my face while looking back at all the other parents whose children didn't qualify was so satisfying. Two other guys also got selected, and finally, free from all the competitiveness, I had a conversation with one of them for the first time.
We asked each other when we had our interviews and wished each other the best of luck, hoping to meet after getting admitted.
On the day of the interview, I was asked about fast multiplications based on techniques in Vedic mathematics, generic questions on what sports I liked to play, and what I did for hobbies.
'It's been a while since I played cricket, you know, for the exam preparations. I want to play here with a full team.' I had said.
" We have a huge playground where students 'have' to play daily." one of the teachers said.
"Sometimes, we also come to play with you. I won't go easy on you during the teacher vs student matches." he said, laughing. "Which handed are you? Fast bowler or spinner?"
"Left-arm spinner." I answered.
"Ohh, we got a rare one here." Another teacher chimed in. "Which hand do you use while eating then?"
I knew this was a question that would come as soon as I mentioned being a left-handed person. In our culture, we are supposed to use our right hand for sacred and pure rituals that include 'offering' things to both the Gods and our bodies. In contrast, the left hand is supposed to be used to get rid of the filth inside.
When you mix both of them up, you have a problem—a weird concept but classic human psychology.
If I were right-handed, maybe my views would be the same. My mother came out as left-handed and was forcibly converted to use her right hand by daily practice. But she didn't impose the same on me.
She often told me that she regretted doing so because her once beautiful handwriting worsened after changing hands. She wanted me to be comfortable with whatever I got naturally, including my skinny body and smaller-than-average height.
I still have some room for growth, hopefully... I wished deeply.
"Right hand." I replied, "I have been trained to use the right from the beginning for eating."
I saw them getting bored at the wasted opportunity of teasing me, and the other teachers moved on to mundane questions, whether I knew some of the test takers or had talked with them while waiting in line.
They were probably judging on what we usually do while tackling nervousness. The final interview was for the parents. They never told me what they were asked.
Children are a reflection of the habits and disciplines that their parents follow. Maybe the interviewers did some deductions and inductions based on the parents.
While waiting for my parents' interview to end, a guy beside me suddenly started talking. He was the guy sitting beside me during a little what-if character test conducted before we were called for the interviews.
And yes, I chose to save my grandmother in the ethical trolley problem by sacrificing five other people. Their fates were sealed the moment the question setter chose to pick grandmothers as the single person on the other track.
"You probably know that I received some help from you, so let me say my thanks. But that glare you gave me when I got caught looking at your answer was the funniest. Can you try that again?" He said with a smirk.
"It wasn't a glare. I got irritated that you didn't even try to be stealthy while doing so. They would have kicked both of us out if you got caught." I expressed my intentions in a tame manner.
"Ohh, so you aren't angry, I guess. You're a pretty chill guy, it seems. Nice to meet you, Dhruva!" He gave an all-knowing expression, expecting me to commend him for even knowing my name.
"Hope you didn't copy that too..." I snickered, getting interrupted as a teacher came out to call the next set of parents. That would be my new acquaintance's.
"Nice to meet you too..." I also gave him a smirk. "Saiyan." I snorted, repeating his name from the announcement as he got embarrassed.
"It's the name of a great ancient sage." he defended, "Not what you think it is."
"Yeah, son of a dragon ball fan~" I laughed at his red face as he went to fetch his parents.
I didn't see him afterward as I left the venue to explore the campus. I asked around where I could find the monitor lizards, but as my luck dictated, I could not find a single one.
I guess I've got no choice other than coming here to stay for the rest of my student days—a weird motivation but a motivation indeed.
A few days later, we were notified that I had been admitted, and more details were communicated from their side, giving us lists of what to and not to bring. Rules and regulations to take care of and various other things. They all translated to being a good boy and not creating trouble.
However, the list of troubles seemed flexible depending on the teacher's mood.
After all necessary arrangements were made, it was time to leave for the Gurukul. The only skills in my arsenal were drawing, which I inherited from my grandmother, and the art of chanting, which I had come to hate because of my mother's strict instructions. However, I must say I was good at it nonetheless.
Memorization was a considerable part of chanting and helped me immensely for my exams, too. The last one was a somewhat fit body. Will I be able to make trustworthy friends this time? I kept wondering as a sudden thought crossed my mind.
"My friends also expected me to talk about my situation... But did I ever tell them I was preparing to leave my school for a new one? What right do I have to expect them to be worried about me? Did I ever ask them why they didn't try to ask about my health? Why did I even conclude that they never bothered to worry about me? Even after I returned to school and healed my eyes, I never talked with them properly and only focused on my studies for the transfer." I told myself.
I want to talk directly if I have grievances from now on. I'll meet sincere people by only being a sincere person.
I wondered where the sudden thought came from. Just in a moment, I felt myself relaxing, feeling hopeful about the future. Maybe it was a coping mechanism to rid my brain of its worries. Or a sudden flash of enlightenment from experiencing the adversities I have overcome over the last year.
I won't repeat the same mistakes for now; I decided and got ready for the journey to my new school.
'If I lose something, I'll get something even better the next time.' I repeated grandma's teaching.
I've finally fulfilled your wish, Grandma. I hope you're having fun seeing me from above. And I hope you're proud, too... I thought as I felt a lingering sensation locked and lost behind a barrier of guilt and regret.
The feeling of her soft, wrinkly hands as she held mine while sitting on that relaxing chair more than one and a half years ago. A strange sensation started building up behind my eyes as I tried hard not to blink, afraid that any movement would break whatever was holding it back.
I held my hands close to my chest as I looked forward to my new life, smiling at myself and remembering that I once had outright rejected the suggestion itself.