My grandmother had always been a kind and bright soul. In my days of early childhood she would take me out for evening walks where she often looked at the people we met across the street and tried to guess what kind of a day they have been through. We would walk around the cluster of houses where our family and my father's colleagues used to live and try to draw an intricate picture, a story where everyone we met was a character and imagined how they would have interacted behind the scenes unknown to us. We gave good endings to some, hopeful endings to others. She wasn't a fan of bad endings, and would often say that any ending which is perceived as bad has potential to improve, to evolve into a good or hopeful ending.

She would feed me with her hands when I still wasn't able to use my fingers properly to eat and would mash up the rice, curries and vegetables together to make little balls out of them, topped with an onion ring. It was one of my fondest memories until the day she accidentally mixed some green chilies in the food. I threw a childish tantrum that I still regret to this day. Her face when I said I didn't want to be fed by her anymore still runs a knife through my heart. After that she kept moving to her other three daughters' houses excluding my mom's and rarely visited us.

When she lived with us, I would often sleep right next to her falling asleep while listening to stories of Hindu Gods, Goddesses, The Asuras, Rishis, Heroes and Rakshashas. She was an avid reader of Puranas and would often tell me stories of how Vishnu, one of the three Great Gods came down to earth in different reincarnations to get rid of the evils plaguing that era. What I loved most were the stories of Bahanas of each God. Stories behind why a particular animal got attached to a God ascending as a Bahana were really unique and captured all my child like curiosity at that time. It was like the Gods were Pokemon trainers. She would remind me that in most of the cases the animals approached by themselves to whoever they wanted to be with. 'Sometimes you just need to accept things as they come, cherish them as they stay, and bid goodbye with a smile as you part...' she would often say. It was like a healing charm that made my mood better whenever I broke or lost a toy.

She would also scare me sometimes with stories of daitvas, who were huge giants capable of destroying kingdoms with a swipe of their hands, greedy Asuras who were granted powerful boons by the great gods. I came to know about yugas that were a cycle of eras that repeated over and over again marking the apparent dawn and destruction of humanity. Kali Yuga was a concept that would actually frighten me to the core. Thinking about how we will cease to exist because of our own greed was terrifying to me. If you count the years that make up a Yuga, we will find that one would die and reincarnate a thousand times before we can even reach the end of Kali Yuga.

"It is actually not that far away" my grandma would exclaim. "Who knows? Maybe we count in a different way than how they used to."

She was the one who first guided my hands in my pencil holding ceremony, it is a kind of coming of age ceremony for children stepping into the world of education. We usually do this infront of our Goddess of Knowledge, Saraswati Devi, where we write the first few alphabets of our mother tongue. And after that she mentored me on how to sketch and draw. She was an expert in the art of Chitram, which is a collection of detailed and intricate set of symbols that are put together to create a greater picture. She often said that every great picture comes from the amalgamation of small strokes made by your brush. If you do the little ones correctly the bigger one will automatically get imbued by our emotions and the thoughts we wanted to convey while creating a piece. After I turned five, she suddenly stopped teaching me, saying that it was better to go outside and play, make friends with the kids in our neighborhood. That it's not good for little children to stay holed up inside houses.

My grandfather had passed away when his eldest daughter was only seventeen leaving my grandmother to raise her four daughters just by herself. She lost her mango farms to greedy relatives, was manipulated by them to marry off her third daughter to a family far away from home in a rural village as soon as she reached adulthood, it was as if the Gods were conspiring against her to make her life miserable. When reminiscing about her past she would often say how desperate she was and how often she had almost given up. 'But I refused to consider my life as a bad end. The world had been keeping all the happiness I deserved, away from my grasp, and I believed that one day I will be given all of that back along with interest, in exchange for all the sadness I had overcome.' her following smile would make me wonder whether she was given back what she deserved, even if it was only a little portion of it.

I last saw her relaxing in the balcony of her two storied home, made by my grandfather, the last thing left among her possessions that she had fought relentlessly to protect, a place where countless of my childhood memories now resided. It was just a few months before I had my eye accident.

"Are you eating well? Or are you still holed up in your house drawing animals?" She had asked. I had felt a sense of distance among us at that time, as if she was deliberately putting up a wall between us. I stood behind her quietly. " Do you still like scribbling the designs i taught? Your mother said all your notebooks are filled with those patterns. Don't draw them recklessly, not until you understand what they stand for... It was my mistake, seeing your steady hands I couldn't stop myself from experimenting."

"No, I just liked drawing them with you. And I go out to play hide and seek everyday with my friends. I'm fit enough...see?" I had tried to flex my biceps in front of her. I was particularly proud of the little egg that had developed by picking up marble slabs, a competition me and my friend often used to participate in, behind the club house that was being renovated. These club houses were the hangout spaces of friendly delinquents, a surprising adjective to describe them, but true none the less. They would often invite us in and teach us how to play carrom. It was like we were stepping into a world we weren't allowed into yet, but given enough glimpses to make us want to be a part of it. They also shared Pepsi with us, not the packaged bottle drink... It was the nickname of a cheap, flavored cold water that our mothers would say was made from drainage water...

She had taken my hand in hers, holding them softly while looking into my eyes. There was a slight discomfort in her expression at that time. "I'm sorry for making you go through this... Even in future, you'll lose a lot of things, but never allow yourself to get caught up in sadness. Know that whenever you lose something, you'll get something even better"

I surmised that it was something she said from her own experiences and maybe she was just talking to herself instead.

"Can you grant me a wish?" She had suddenly said right after. "I talked with your mother and father. They are currently hesitating, but I know they'll comply. I have always wanted one of my grandchildren to attend this school, but it is a bit difficult to get admitted there. All of your cousins are now older than the permitted age to apply. Can you try studying for the admission exam? You still have about more than one and a half years left..."