My grandmother from my fathers side (doda), Jayanti Irvathur died almost two years ago. She had sustained a slip in the bathroom a few years before. She could walk thereafter, but always with some help. And soon, her feet started giving out on her. For three years, she had been bedridden. Slowly, with the exactness of a knife, time took her from us.But she was a person before all that. A vibrant, strict, caring person. When I was younger, my parents sometimes left me at her place during summer vacations. She was always concerned about my cousins. They had to always eat on time, come up when they were called and playing for too long usually resulted in a frown. My sister, who has won softball championships, at the time sported a no less magnificent boy cut. Doda hated this. And she didn’t keep to herself either, always the Indian grandmother. There were constant comments. But my sister obviously didn’t care. Neither did anyone else. Though when she finally did grow out her hair, the comments did not really stop. They were still about how terrible that old cut was.

She made great maggi. It felt more like a wholesome chicken soup than stale maggi. I loved having it when I was sick. She used to make cakes too. These beautiful bun cakes are made in special aluminium pans. She was one the first older women I knew who made such dishes. And since she was a south indian, she made great goddamn fish. There was always dahi prepped in her home, because her sweet child (my father) loved it.

When she was younger, she studied in a convent school. She completed her education till the twelfth grade, a rarity for her time. And she was in her school’s volleyball team. I found the report card one day, Jayanti Irvathur, volleyball team. She raised her children to value education. And although she might have preferred if they all just stayed inside and studied, she was proud of other things too. She kept the first trophy her kids got. My dad, at a rabbit race when he was two years old. Either that, or that trophy is fake. At a later date, all of them were always involved in some or the sports activity too.

She lived a disciplined life, her and my grandfather. They took regular walks, either to the market or to the nearby garden. They provided all that they could for their kids and then their grandchildren. But they had fun too. She had a bright, beautiful smile. I saw it in some pictures recently. Her long face made her seem a bit rigid, but the wrinkled smile brought you right back.

When we went to celebrate her birthdays, since my dad has other brothers, there were always two, or more cakes. Surprisingly, my grandparents never had health problems before their very late years. No diabetes, no blood pressure, no cholesterol. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. The consequence of a disciplined life. But they loved those cakes regardless. When she fell, I think my grandmother changed a lot. She had lived a relatively stable life till then. She would always complain of her terrible luck. How she never wished old age problems on others. How the doctor told her to exercise, and she did, but nothing ever came of it. And there were periods when she seemed better. But really, the years took a toll on her after my grandfather died. She never came to terms with it. After a while, she stopped mentioning him too.

But she was a person. It’s difficult to remember. I have to try and remind myself she was a person. Bright smile, sari loving, volleyball team member. She wrote in English as well as Kannada. She took my lessons too sometimes, when I was younger. She made great daal rice. She kept a poster of a kid in her cupboard, and then let me take it home years later. She kept a pouch with the crispest notes you have ever seen, wrapped in a handkerchief next to her bed. She often whispered to bring “the pouch” to me and discreetly gave me the fifty rupee note, trying to hide it from the servants. She liked going through old photos. There’s still a picture up of a drawing my sister made on her bed. Her kids are the only things she remembered, even in the last few weeks. How her middle one was the studious, strict one and yet the youngest was her favourite. And she was a real, flawed person here on this planet, before the sickness made her more or less unrecognisable.

The movie inside out is about emotions and memories. In it, different memories are coloured differently, based on the emotions the character experienced. Happy memories are yellow orbs, blue ones are sad etc. For most of the movie, the memories are only one colour, since the main character is a kid.But in the end there is a scene where the main character realises that memories she thought were only happy had some sadness to them. The memory orb, typically a simple colour, comes out, a kaleidoscopic mix of yellow and blue. It’s about how when we grow up, we must realise that our memories are not one thing only. They are multicoloured. It’s a kids movie, but sometimes common lessons must be drilled into adults. It’s easy to feel our memories of a person are only one thing. Let your memories be multicoloured.