Blessed  

Hootoksi Tyabji, 2005

This beautiful piece was written by Rahul Khanna, son of cousin Gitanjali & Vinod Khanna, after his beloved grandma, my Phi masi passed on.  

Last week my grandmother passed away and it was as much an occasion for joy as it was for sorrow.

Always perfectly turned out in her silk saris and pearls, she was one of the most elegant women I knew. She loved the buzz when she attended public events with me and my brother. I remember her at the premiere of my first movie, clutching tightly to my arm as she alternated between smiling dazzlingly for the mob of photographers and shooing them away when they got too aggressive. And I think she secretly enjoyed seeing her picture in the papers the next day, although she’d always complain how she thought she wasn’t photogenic and that her already petite five-foot frame was shrinking. She’d read all the papers every morning and would often amuse us with her knowledge of Bollywood gossip and society happenings.

She’d had long, healthy and fulfilling life, the center stone of which was her wonderfully romantic marriage. She and my grandfather, a kind, crinkly eyed man with matinee idol looks and charm, had found their soul mates in each other and were the best publicity the institution of marriage could have ever hoped for -- adoring and inseparable as newlyweds well into their seventies when he passed away. Although she put up a brave front, underneath it she nursed a broken heart. The next 10 years or so of her life were spent packed with prolific letter writing, tea parties, helping those in need, art classes, classical concerts and even a couple of trips abroad but I don’t think she ever stopped pining for my grandfather. Lately, it seems, she often talked to her maid and her friends of how much she missed him and how she couldn't wait for them to be reunited. And although she battled bouts of depression over the years, these last few months her spirits were up and she was looking better than she'd looked in ages. She was almost glowing. I now wonder whether, somewhere deep down, she sensed that finally that time was coming and was excited to be moving on.

I’m not a very touchy-feely person and she’d often rib me about the way I’d pat her back when we hugged. I hope you’ll at least cry when I die, she’d joke. I would always tell her not to be so morbid, but I could almost see her winking and saying, I told you so when I did. I received the news just before boarding a plane to host a benefit in Toronto and I think the stewardess thought I had a really bad allergy from the amount of tissue I went through during the short flight. But they were tears of happiness as much as they were of sorrow. I was sorry that she was gone, that I would not be able to attend her funeral and that I wouldn’t be seeing her for a while but I was overjoyed that although she went suddenly, she went peacefully, during the course of a normal day, her son by her side and her head in her daughter’s (my mother) lap. No pain or suffering and it was over in a matter of minutes.

I have somewhat strong intuition and I was actually dreaming about my grandfather at the time he died but with my grandmother I had no sense of her passing. It almost seemed like her spirit was in too much of a hurry to get to my grandfather to stop for goodbyes. In my mind’s eye I see them as two beams of white light racing towards each other against the deep indigo backdrop of the universe, barely able to contain the joy of reuniting after a decade. And then intertwining and spinning in a cosmic dance before disappearing into the distance together.

At this strange time when the world seems so filled with suffering and hardship, it’s a rare gift to be able to celebrate a soul so blessed.'