Vidya V. Trivedi, my grandmother, passed away a year ago. To me, she passed down her hairline, her Gujarati daal recipe, her love of storytelling. I never properly thanked her.
My grandma wasn't perfect, (nobody is, though it's tempting to remember the dead that way) but she did what she could with what she had, and then some.
She only went to school until fifth grade, and always said she wanted to learn more, that she learned English quickly for that one year they taught it to her, but the schools kept shutting down so she wasn't able to finish. She spoke reverently of her parents; I imagine she missed them dearly.
My grandma got married in her late teens, in India, in 1947. She married a freedom fighter and had supported the cause for azaadi, for freedom from British Raj. She always used to joke that she lost her own independence the year India gained it. She had nine pregnancies, eight children, seven daughters. She knew pain well, and prayer too.
Alongside my grandfather and often with my dad and his sisters, she visited Shantikunj, in Haridwar, an ashram where she completed countless anusthaans and met with our gurus, Pandit Shri Ram Sharma Acharya and Mata Bhagwati Devi Sharma. She fasted devotedly and memorized all the prayers she chanted.
Older, wiser, tired, after weddings and grandchildren expanded her clan, she and my grandfather temporarily followed my dad into diaspora, holding my baby brother's hand in pictures at Chicago's Sears Tower, the Saint Louis Gateway Arch, and the beautiful BAPS Swaminarayan Mandir in Chicago. A world so vastly different, so far.
Steadfastly and until her dying days, she was not afraid of hard work―out of necessity perhaps, or maybe habit, unwavering regardless. In the tradition of women of our kind, the soles of her feet were cracked and the muscles in her forearms were strong. While she worked, she told stories.
She told tales of Narad Muni and Narasimha, of angry rishis and selfless children, Shabri's devotion, Hanuman's strength, Arjun and Eklavya's archery, Indra's court in devlok. I think she knew them all. She told the stories to anyone who would listen, and with every beginning, I couldn't wait to hear the middle and the end. I was educated by this woman, the one who never got past fifth grade.
One summer when I was in middle school, we watched all 94 episodes of the 1988 Mahabharata TV series. Twice. My grandfather and older sister watched with us often, but it was my grandmother and I who never missed an episode. She wouldn't let me skip past the narration at the beginning when the the voice of Time preambled the action, and we would pause periodically so she could tell the backstory when context or details from scripture were left out in the visualization. Even when my sister and I just wanted to get to the action, my grandma found joy in each story's telling. Though I've now forgotten most of the stories, I remember that joy.
At first, when she died, I felt a confused sense of regret that I couldn't remember more of those stories, that maybe I let them die, that maybe my children and grandchildren will never understand storytelling or Hinduism because I couldn't remember. I was young, and she told a lot of details. Her stories were always about Hinduism, drawn from ancient texts, committed to her memory but somehow escaping mine. Stories about names I sometimes found hard to pronounce and superstitions I couldn't make sense of. Stories that nonetheless captivated me entirely.
I miss her, we all do. It's been a year since she died, and I think of her often. I hope that she has found peace; I'm not sure how much she found on Earth. I may not know remember all the stories she told, but I remember my grandmother's story. I think that's the one I'll tell my children and my grandchildren. It is a part of who I am, and she told it not in Sanskrit or as an oral history but through hard work, prayer, resilience. Her story is about Hinduism, and it's also about education, fighting for freedom, motherhood, service, diaspora―a story I will never forget.