All excuses done for not updating this space. For anyone that is still reading here - thanks for sticking around and sorry for testing your patience so.
I will work backwards because some thoughts need to be penned right away. Everything post wedding has been subdued. My grandmom took ill a few weeks before the wedding, took a turn for the worse after the wedding and passed away last week. She from whom I inherited my broad shoulders, my love for piping hot showers even in winter and my dislike of all things cold. She who would call every Sunday at 8 pm, reprimand us for missing her calls and ask us if we have eaten and if I have gone to the gym. She, who was the cause of my speaking Kannada like an old woman! She who held all her life that all problems are best tackled on a full stomach. Even as I write this I cannot believe that she is gone. Last night as I cooked the first meal in the apartment that I will now call home in Brussels, it came as a passing thought that I should call Ajji since I haven't spoken to her in a while - it was an afterthought that I cannot speak to her anymore.
I cannot take solace in the fact that she lived a good, full life - she didn't. But for her sake I want to believe in afterlife, may she have a wonderful afterlife.
For us, the ones left behind, my father misses her like a limb, my mother in her own unsaid way, my sister is still in shock and for me it has not yet sunk in. When I do remember - I miss her in ways I didn't think possible. I miss her voice on the phone saying yeno puttanna". I miss her asking me about my week, about the little things that are happening in my life and when I will visit again.
There is left a void in our lives that we will never be able accept - we just have to find the strength to move on.