the perfect grandmother

‘Maa’ technically means mother in Hindi. Its what papa called her, but its also what we, her granddaughters called her too. Because she kind of was like our mother too. I always said ‘no matter what happens, Maa will always be there,' and I believed it: she was an institution in our family and no one ever imagined life without her. By the time I knew her and loved her she was short, fat and had a waddle. (I’m allowed to say it because I was her favourite, but you aren’t allowed to laugh). She was perfect to me.

She was perfect because she was so dependable and stable. She just showed up, stuck around and made sure to be there for me. Not in the big flashy ways that my parents are supportive of me, with the gifts and the giving into my ridiculous demands (I had 4 piercings and blonde highlights by the time I was 13), but in the small moments, like when I desperately missed papa when he was away on business trips.

Maa was there in the small, quiet ways that no one would notice unless they were looking. She was always there with some aloo papad she’d fry for me (only me), ready to make me laugh even when I just wanted to cry from the horrors of 6th grade maths homework. I used to call my best friend on Skype to gossip discuss algebra, and Maa would sit on the side next to me just coaxing me to eat something she made.

She used to tell me these stories every night, without fail. It didn't matter how tired she was or how annoying I'd been all day, at 9.30 pm every night she would shut the lights, lay down with me and tell me her stories. I can't exactly call them fairy tales and they probably weren't the most appropriate for children, seeing as they were filled with blood and snakes and betrayal. But in her sleepy voice, in the Marwari dialect she painstakingly taught me over time, they seemed like magical fairy tales to me. These old stories passed down through generations of our family, from mothers to daughters (or in my case grandmother to granddaughter) and I can't wait to share these with my family one day.

I miss her all the time even now, even though it’s been 10 years since I've heard her voice or tasted her cooking. I miss her when I play cards because we used to spend hours playing rummy together. She’s the reason I can track cards and instinctively know what to do during card games. She's also the reason I play solitaire on my phone when in awkward social situations: I text my friends the screenshots of how much time it takes me to complete a game, my record being 72 seconds. We talk about her every time we play a card game and we play card games every night as a family. She had a terrible poker face though. Every time she was dealt a bad hand, or picked up a card she didn't want, she'd quietly swear in Marwari "dhat thara", making us all laugh around the pile of cards. We imitate her now, mumbling the same "dhat thara" to remind us of the original card shark in the family.

I also miss her every time I eat pizza, and I would live off pizza if I could. She used to call it ‘peejha’ because she couldn’t pronounce the letter ‘z’. She never actually ate any pizza because "foreign food is bad for you", but I used to make her say the phrase ‘pizza party’ till we were both crying from laughter. She was never embarrassed about her pronunciation (even though if I was her I would have hated being the butt of the joke) just because it gave me so much joy.

I got glasses that look like hers. They're trendy so people don’t judge me for it: I just look like your regular basic bitch in round metal frames. I got them because they’re exactly like the ones she had before a monkey snapped them in front of her out of spite (a story for another time). So now, I have my father's face, my mother's sense of humour and my Maa's glasses.

She was diabetic so she wasn’t allowed to eat too many sweets. She loved them though, always trying to bargain with my dad who just wanted her to be healthy. But every time my mom yelled at me, she used to sneak me these little sweets that were pure sugar, orange food colouring and weird chemicals. They were perfect. She got my nanny to buy them for her just to sneak to me in times of crisis. I'd later come out of my room with red eyes and orange lips, and she'd smile at me, never saying a word about the candy or the crying that happened in the room before. The thing is, Maa never ate those sweets (though I’m sure she was tempted) unless I gave her some, just because they were for me.

She really was the perfect grandmother, and I miss her every day. But I know if she saw me today, she'd be partly horrified (my clothes really don’t have enough fabric on there for her), but mostly so proud of me. I grew up to be a mostly sensible person (still a bit bratty), who loves aloo papad and swearing in Marwari. I'm who she raised me to be, and I think she'd be delighted at how I'm the new card shark in our family.