Warmth is a circle of three old kind ladies

Words by Aisu Minam

A family is like a tree, is what I am being told to believe. It’s my grandma. She tells me in an appealing voice which is otherwise always very grating. Our ancestors are the roots while my grandparents are what grows from them. She says their children and all of us are extensions of it; she means the branches and the flowers & fruits. I am thinking what makes better sense is that the daughters of the family are the flowers and the fruits. Like them, one day we are bound to leave the tree, grow and start a new family somewhere else but my grandma is right. We will still remain a part of the tree regardless.

It’s my vacation and I have come back home, to the village back to my grandparents, and to the greens & the blues of home. I don’t live in a village anymore. I used to read about cities in my books in school but now I live in one. I never say it aloud but sometimes when I realise it, I feel so proud. But not really anymore. Now I have come to terms with it and it just is a chapter in my life that is ongoing.

I am sitting next to my grandpa, it’s also my favourite spot, listening to my grandma and making notes as usual in my copy of Toltz’s A Fraction of the Whole that I have been ploughing through since months not because it is a big book – which it is – or boring, but due to the laidback pace of reading in a home with a big family. My book and I have spent countless evenings and nights next to the fireplace, like now, as ash flakes and soot powdered my hair and lodged into the spine, deep between the pages of the book.

I try to read my grandpa and study his actions within tunes of the monotonous clicking of his dentures, behind my grandma’s never-ending chunter. It is one of the many times that I’m exercising this trick with regard to her; took me a long time. Grandpa doesn’t indulge much anymore in household conversations and mostly keeps to himself in his own corners, specifically pinned around the house. This isn’t how he has always been, it manifested shortly after each of his eye and ear announced they couldn’t hold onto him the same way as before. It commanded him to pull back from everything and maybe believe, nobody cares anymore about him.

Old age is a seclusion of sort. The more your years, the heavier your baggage. I hate to see him unoccupied or unengaged, unlike me he is a people’s person and I don’t wish to see it slip away from him. I will never know if he accepts the change as it allows him to resort to his own ordinary routines with the animals of the house, which he seems very happy about too. Or if he is only trying to accept the truth and doing his best to keep the urgency of his inability hidden. And then there is my grandma whose mouth is never at rest. As soon as she is awake and moving, it is a cue for her mouth to start talking. As my little brother says, it’s like the train tracks, just goes on and on.

My thoughts are popped by another popping sound coming from the fire. Father is sitting beside grandma, on the left to us, roasting corn that mother plucked from the farm. It is one of the very few things father prides himself in doing, and one of the many things he insists on doing his way. But the fire is too big and it keeps burning the corn a little more than how father prefers it - according to him it ruins the taste. He has been warned not to mess with the fire just yet as mother is waiting for the rice pot to boil while she is making a cap with just her fingers in a nauseatingly fast pace.

In the morning, I start by collecting the leftover ashes from the fire of the night before into a dustpan and spilling it in a dustbin meant particularly for the ashes. Then I bring together the half-burnt logs and woods and sticks and huddle them together under the three-legged iron stand with a circular opening. It is necessary to keep a good passage for air to pass between the collected woods, so that it’s easier to catch fire. I use a piece of egg carton, which I light with a match and put it carefully under and between the logs while it is still burning. If you are having a good day, your fire will wake in your first attempt. But other times, whether you do it right or not, it takes multiple attempts to start a fire the way you desire.

Every evening the whole family gather around the fire to have tea, food, and conversations. But mostly for warmth and shared silences. The way it appears to me, three warm and kind ladies huddle together in a circle daily for us to bask in their exclusive company. Grandpa drinks his rice beer with ketchup across the fire and he is the one who keeps feeding logs to it. He loves fire and its fierce burning tongue. Grandma sits to his left, chattering non stop as she collects coals and nails from the fire bed to hoard them for something she knows we will need it for later. Father sits with his silence and his drink, while my aunt sits lost in the world of her own mind. Chillies, meats, and some beans are dried upon the fire. Mother squats next to the fire cooking and few paces from her, our white cat turns in its sleep, now turned grey. As for me, I am definitely with my book, patting our dog, listening to everything that is happening around me, or probably, just thinking as fire dust settle on our hairs, and stick to our clothes and encapsulates everything else around the fire.

That, I believe is what it means to witness warmth.