Biji Da Bioscope
Hello to all of you reading this blog. Before I start with anything, I want to apologize to the regular and not so regular readers of this blog for not being able to update it with regular posts. But at the same time I also thank some of you for their encouragement to help me keep this blog alive.
For the past one week or so I and my family have a guest and rather not a usual one. My mother calls her 'Biji', a Punjabi word for mummy, I have taken a clue from her since I was a kid and call her (and my paternal grandmother) by the same name, albeit both are my grandmothers. A few posts back I wrote about her. She is over 80 and has trouble walking and climbing the stairs. We brought her from my uncle's house where she has been staying for the past 3 months. The last time we went bring her to our home we returned empty handed for she didn't recall calling us the previous night to come and take her. Being in her 80 her voice has gone a little course and most of the time her utterances are almost a murmur. Most of the time she talks to us when she needs something, water for example or when she needs to go to the bathroom. Initially when she came she had trouble using the facility but now she's ok. But she still needs someone to guide her till the door for she can't remember the location every time. Same goes for her room. She just starts walking in one or the other direction till she reaches one of the three doors. Then she would stand there and stare at anybody who's sitting inside through her high powered glasses which makes her eyes look like a golf ball. "Where is my quilt?" she would ask with weary eyes. "Did you change the bed sheet too", she continues. "No, Biji, you have come to the wrong room, your room(which apparently is my room) is to the other side", we would tell her. For a split second she would stare in disappointment at us, perhaps saddened at her own mistake, after all she has walked almost 10 steps on her own. "Acha! It’s on the other side?", she would realize and takes a U-turn in 2 steps and start walking in the opposite direction. I usually take hand and guide her through lest she this time walks up to the mail door and ask us to open it. The other day I woke on my parent’s bed where I've been sleeping for quite a few days and grabbed the newspaper, Mum and Dad were out while my sister was in the bathroom. Mum instructed me to take care for her before she left. Biji turns up suddenly at the door and asks me to show her the way to the toilet to which I obliged. I brought her at the door, opened it and lit the bathroom and said "Ok Biji, go in". She looked at me with a puppy dog expression and said "No, I don't want to go there, I'm going to the room", and just whisked off indifferently; I just stood there, staring at her audacity...
To be continued in the next post...
