Ashengba wari macha amata mayamga loinana share tauminage khanjaduna mapham asida lengshanjari. Wari libadi yamna heijaba nate…bore churabadi warawbigani.

Wari asi thokhiba maphamna--
A Girls College Hostel, Bangalore.

Matamna------1995-1999.

My tryst with "Aji" dates back 6 years ago. "Aji" ---"Grandmother" in Kannada language is apt of her description. Streaks of grey hair neatly tucked away from her ever-smiling ovaled face wrinkled as many as her age. Although in ragged blouse and discoloured saree, I've never ever seen her clumsily dressed. She takes as much care of how proper her saree tucks in from left to right as of her booties.

Yes, this aged woman I am talking about is none other than my college hostel's regular peanut and guava seller.

The girls in the hostel waits eagerly for "Aji".---tea at 5.00 p.m. is incomplete without washing it down with green channas, kodbere(a circular shaped snack made with wheat flour), bujiyas, potato chips wrapped in minute sized polythene bags. True-there are girls who just buy things from her because of pity.

Well, nine of us manipuris in the hostel simply adores "Aji"----she knows each one of our names- Tombi, Chaobi……Memi…..Sobita….Sanatombi….Ibemhal….Sobita……---that's the sloka she byhearts and calls us out of our rooms whenever she comes… We use to buy things from her daily and sit down beside her in the corridor….and talk to her sipping our evening tea. Seeing her small face crinkled up in uproarious laughter at our twisted Kannada is an extremely pleasant sight.

As years passed by, Aji and I became good buddies. She tells me of her family-four grandchildren, two boys & two girls from her two deceased children. Sad, tearful fact which immediately draws pity from the listener. Yet, such a sorrowful turn in life, she tells without a hint of disappointment. It is "HIS DRAMA" is her permanent line for years that has wrapped up and for the years ahead.

I remember a time when I had fallen badly sick after a night hang out at a friends place ---those crazy days when you felt chilled beer streaming down your throat for the first time and felt terribly excited. Aji worried about me day in and out for a week. She would touch my forehead, sigh and would kneel down on the floor next to my cot and raised her hands up in prayers ----her eyes tightly shut, concentrating on bringing " God" down to rid me of fever.She would utter some vague…illegible words, stirring not a bit, sometimes for as long as one hour at a stretch. I remember feeling guilty for making myself sick.

Many such unforgettable incidents happened with "Aji" around. She will always be an unforgettable figure to us.

Aji is etched in my memory as a woman with substance who made a difference to LIVING….living a contented world of her own irrespective of the setbacks. She will always be remembered as a person who had made up her mind to be happy and cheerful without much effort, without a sinister facade behind a mask (as humans in a society generally are prone to, in adversities) no matter how tough life treats her.

To me, in "the test of living life successfully" she is a winner

-----all the way.