Appa hired an Innova as soon as our landline rang bringing the sad news.
I was in some way relieved that my Ajji no longer lived.
I had travelled to my grandparents' in April and was completely pained to see my grandmother suffering , she was already a mere shadow of the strong busy householder she had been.

As our vehicle travelled on the NH , many cars whizzed past us, traveling at speeds which made us believe that there was no time at all left in the world.

There was of course a time when time really stood still. It was the time when we took this train
http://indiarailinfo.com/train/map/all/route-yesvantpur-salem-passenger-56242-ypr-to-sa/9018/997/38
This train of course had a slightly different timetable then and we simply called it "Passenger".. The ticket was priced at 10 rupees if I remember right and it started from Bangalore City station at 7 30 in the morning.
Amma and Appa preferred this train to ferry us to Salem. There were many factors which counted in our parents choosing "Passenger ", it started at 7 30 am, so it helped Amma to yell till we woke up, finally threatening to abandon us here in Bangalore if we did not get up and brush our teeth.

Both twerp and I would brush our teeth , we had short hair then,so no trouble on that front and we would finally be bundled in the auto and deposited in the train by Appa.
Amma would have packed idlis and chutney pudi for breaksfast which we would devour as soon we were near Hosur.
Amma would use this time to catch up on her reading and twerp and I would read our Enid Blyton's passing the books between us.
We would later graduate to Harry Potter of course.
We would get sleepy again and would doze off in Amma's lap.
The train itself was a real circus,being unreserved, people would fight for seats and luggage space.
It mostly carried people from rural Tamil Nadu who worked in  Bangalore, mostly in the construction business
Twerp and I were usually the yuppies on the train and drew a lot of attention with our short hair and our fancy books.
Sometimes we found that we had noisy poultry for company and Amma would frown vowing to take the intercity train from the next time.

But it never happened.
We only took the passenger year after year till both of us became busy with our entrance exams and our grandparents also slowed down, needing extra care.

The best part about our Ajji was that she was totally unhurried, unlike Amma, all of Ajji's time was ours.
Most of the days were spent playing nonsense games with twerp , I also picked up the habit of reading the THE HINDU to the last T since there was nothing much to do.
We also played chess with  thatha , two against one.


Afternoons of course very hot to go play outside and thatha would have dozed off after the lunch  and Ajji was free, all her chores almost complete ,so the three of us would retreat to either of the bedrooms to spend the afternoons.
Ajji would tell us a lot of stories, she would tell us about her father, whom she loved a lot and spoke about the time he was a clerk at Maharaja's college in Mysore. She spoke about how they were chinese tradeswoman in Mysore with whom they bartered stuff, I wonder why I never asked her more about it.

I would be doing a lot of injustice , if I dint mention that my Ajji was passionate about Carnatic music.
To this day I wonder how she learnt it, I should ask Amma before I forget.
She had made an dedicated effort to teach all her children and grandchildren Carnatic music,  none of us were as good as she was  despite all her efforts.
Ajji always wore a classic pair of earrings with white stones, they were not diamonds but they would shine, she would tell me she had bought that after AIR paid her for one of the programmes she had performed for them.
Every person who walked in to mourn for her that day, would not leave without mentioning how she loved to sing.
She treated me and twerp as equals, she would tell us about how her brood of seven kids had dissapointed her in some ways, some days she would talk about them with pride.
When we retreated to the smaller of the rooms, where her blue netted cupboard was kept she would make us privy to it contents.
She would us show my Uncle's pictures, who had then left India to pursue his American dream, she would show his pictures in front of the NASA and his family in a American street all decked up for christmas.
She loved MSS and kept a picture of her , which one of my aunts had got clicked for her after a concert.
She kept the picture in the Complete works of Swami Vivekananda, she would tell us how she was grateful that one of the swamiji was kind enough to get her translated version in Kannada. Some afternoons she would immerse herself in these books and me and twerp would be  left to fend for ourselves.
As the afternoons progressed we would doze off, twerp and I would wake up to find that Ajji was already up making coffee and bristling up some tiffin.
In the evenings we would go to the Ramakrisna Ashram both of us catching clinging to our Ajji's hands and we would hurriedly crossed the road to make it to ashram on time.
We would never fuss, because the music was beautiful and I can still sing some of it.
We would meet Ajji's friends after the aarthi and she  would introduce us as  " Lakshmi ponnunga".( Lakshmi's Daughter's).
Ajji also taught twerp crochet and twerp remembers how she never lost patience even though she kept asking her to teach something again and again.

I did not cry at all but I broke down when I remembered how my Ajji had taken me to a dentist in Salem  to correct my teeth which were growing haphazardly then, I continued the treatment in Bangalore of course , but it was my Ajji who first noticed something was wrong.

The last time I met Ajji was just before I got engaged, sometime in late March.
She had difficulty then in remembering a lot of things then, but she was very lucid when I asked her to sing.  I recorded three songs one on Rayaru, two on thulasi and felt very stupid and very guilty for not having done it the countless times Ajji sang in the kitchen or when she suddenly break into a song to illustrate a point she was making.


I travelled to Salem again after my marriage , with my husband to meet my grandfather but the house felt completely empty.
My Ajji in her better days would have quizzed A about so many things.
She would have waddled around the house cooking a  "habbada aDige"
My grandfather would have complained the curd was sour.
But time is weird, it also begins to fly and bloody it makes our grandparents all frail and takes them away.