getting old (& buying a packet of incense sticks, unironically)

I don’t like incense sticks because of how aggressively they occupy the room. I’ve always been a scented candle person, but when I saw the packet in the supermarket, a couple months back on one of my weekly grocery store trips, I caught myself buying a pack of chandan agarbatti. It looked like it needed a home. No other thought, the next thing I know I had Gpayed ₹ on the scanner and was walking back with the packet (and other things) in my tote bag.

Lately, I’ve been feeling a strong wave of adulthood hitting me as I do the most mundane things like putting revenue stamps over my rent receipts, walking downstairs to my cab to get to work, and entering shops and not being able to leave without making a single purchase. I'm writing this essay after 2am on a thursday after work and as much as I love my freedom, a part of me expects my parents to question why the lights are on at this time and why can't I find an hour in the waking day to do whatever it is that I do (mundane) after midnight, their efforts of getting me to fix my sleep cycle in vain. Often, I stare at the ceiling and think thoughts I'd never thought I'd have when I decide that it's finally time to sleep and get some rest before the next day. Today, I'm thinking of my ajoba.

As much as it hurts to see that he's not here to see what I'm upto, it's comforting to think of the time when he was. His loss is debilitating and my mother says that I'm too much like him and even though it scares me, it keeps me going. Coming back to the day I bought the incense sticks, I realised that I get this undying urge of not being able to leave a store without making a single purchase from my grandfather. A little over a decade and a half back, and I remember this as plain as day, there wasn't a single evening that he didn't go to the market. There was something insanely hilarious about him having to carry his entire wad of cash along, didn't matter if it was a trip to the beach, the market, or to the park, he always made sure he had more than enough cash incase he liked something on the way back and "liked it so much that he couldn't leave without it." Everyday without fail he would put on his best shirt, crisply ironed, his signature diamond ring, reapply his perfume that gave me a mild headache everytime and head to the kitchen to ask me and my mum if we wanted anything from the market before proceeding outside. Sometimes, he took me along. We would walk to multiple intriguing stores and he would perfectly notice what caught my eye and before I knew it, I would be the owner of the said thing that caught my eye. (This is the only way I can explain the amount of footwear I owned as a toddler).

I was 6 when my parents were having our house redone and in retrospect I think the concept of temporarily moving to a different place somehow didn't sit well with me. I was having a tough time getting anything done at all, and during that exact week my school decided it's a great time to introduce this concept called multiplication to its students. I was (and still am) horrible at mental math and one afternoon, right before lunch, my mom and I had a disagreement on what the correct answer for 36x4 was. I was stubborn that 129 was the right answer (don't ask how I got there) and as a result, I didn't get called for lunch. After what seemed like an hour of staring at the math textbook, without being able to see much through the tears, I got handed a plate, by ajoba. I don't think I've been capable of skipping a meal to anger/stubbornness ever since. My ajoba made the best daal on the planet. No one can make daal like my ajoba did, and my mother strongly thinks that she can, but there is no comparison. Food at home doesn't taste like a recipe, it tastes like love and you can't really compare two kinds of loves. I am not a picky eater, and I refuse to believe that coriander, curry leaves and coconut shavings are meant for human consumption. I would barely eat any of the daal he made as it was generously garnished with the above mentioned ingredients, but today, I would sell my soul to have a meal made by him. What they say about realising the value of a thing only once it's gone is completely true.

One of my favourite memories of ajoba is how supportive he was of my mother to continue with her full time job and his innovative gimmicks to make sure her 5 year old didn't see her leaving the house. His best strategy to keep me engaged was to put Oswald on POGO and hand me a jigsaw puzzle that I'd be glued to for the rest of the day. I owe my liking for puzzles to the afternoons ajoba and I have spent in assembling them. In a few weeks, we could complete all of the puzzles I owned in one sitting or until mom was back from work (whatever happened sooner) and both him and my mother kept buying me more. What I hated the most though, was dismantling all the pieces and putting them in the right boxes after. He would volunteer and religiously try his best to put them back correctly, but I was never able to complete a singular jigsaw without having to hunt the last piece down.

I read somewhere that 'grief is just love that hasn't been translated' and really, who are we if not the pieces of the people we've lost. I cannot solve a jigsaw puzzle without thinking of ajoba, the afternoons from 2004, and the pride I saw in his eyes for every milestone in my life. I was disappointed because of the incomplete 'Finding Nemo' jigsaw but now I carry the missing piece with me forever.