The Faded Tapestry of Time – My Nani

The last time I saw my Iaa, she did not know who I was.

She sat on the old wooden bed, her thin hands resting in her lap. Her eyes moved slowly across my face, searching for something that was no longer there.

I took her hand. She smiled. It was the same smile I remembered from childhood. Only this time, she did not know my name.

That was not the Iaa I remembered. In my childhood, Iaa was simply part of every day.

She would be in the kitchen in the morning, making rotis while the house slowly woke up. The smell of hot food would spread through the rooms. Someone would be looking for tea, someone for a missing towel, someone would be asking when breakfast would be ready and Iaa would be there.

If we children came running into the kitchen, she would tear a piece of hot roti, put some ghee on it and hand it to us.

If I had been playing outside and came back hungry, she already seemed to know.

She remembered the little things about all of us—what we liked to eat, who was fond of which sweet, who had gone out, who had not yet eaten.

I was her eldest grandchild, and I was especially close to her. I would tease my Mausis and, when they complained, hide behind Iaa. She would smile at me, sometimes pretend to scold me, and then quietly let me stay beside her. Her lap was the safest place in that house.

If I scraped my knee while playing, she would wash it, blow gently over it and ask where I had been running.

At night, she would sit with us, listening to our endless stories and quarrels. Sometimes she told us stories too. Sometimes she said nothing at all. We simply liked being near her.

The house was full in those days. Children ran through the courtyard. Someone was always calling someone else. Steel plates clattered in the kitchen. There was laughter, small arguments, footsteps, and Iaa's voice somewhere among it all. She did not have to do anything special. She was simply there. And somehow, that made the house feel like home.

Then we grew up. The visits became shorter. Uncles moved away. Cousins became busy with their own lives. The courtyard slowly lost the noise that had once filled it.

Iaa grew old too. Her hands became weaker. She began forgetting small things, then names, and sometimes faces.

The woman who had remembered all of us now sometimes looked at me without knowing who I was. Yet when she smiled, I could still see my Iaa.

Then came the call. Iaa was gone. I returned after the funeral.

The house was still there—the same courtyard, the same rooms, the same old wooden bed.

But something had disappeared from all of it.

There were no children running through the courtyard. No quarrels.

No laughter.

No voice from the kitchen asking whether we had eaten.

I sat on her bed and ran my hand over the old wooden frame. For a moment, I thought I could hear her.

I looked towards the kitchen. Nothing.

At the doorway, I turned back once. The bed was empty.

I closed the door.