Afterlife

Amma often wished "May the Lord call me upstairs soon". My cousin and I would cringe and squirm, uncomfortable at the idea of our grandmother dying. We would tell her, "Why bother the Lord for that? You can go upstairs, we have another floor at our home.", referencing the fifty-odd, rickety stairs at our childhood home. That didn't deter her. 

The woman waited every day to be reunited to the love of her life. My grandfather was much older than my grandmother, not surprisingly. Indian grandmothers are much younger than their male counterparts. But that also meant that my grandmother was left alone for a very long time when my grandfather had a natural, age-related death in the year 1991, 6 years before I was even an idea and 27 years before my grandmother joined him.

I was born in 1997. I grew up in a household which ranged from my grandmother who wouldn't let the maid broom the house after sun-fall to my father who would, at every instance, explain to her that the only logical reason for that superstition was the inaccessibility of artificial light after sun-fall. Naturally, I took after my father and in my mind, logic took precedence over spirituality. A combination of early exposure to Ayn Rand's works, the Discovery Channel, and a curious mind, led me to question the entire existence of God and religion; The very God my grandmother prayed to every day. The afterlife my grandmother so desired was a laughable idea.

With the years, my father grew less logical and more religious and I kept honing the idea of a man-made God. Amma, the devotee never waivered, her illiterate mind unclouded by the doubts that surrounded her grandchild. Her wish of being called to the home of God got more and more urgent as I grew up. She would cry out for her husband, the one who left her too early and all alone. I would tell her, "Amma you're not alone. We are with you.". 

She finally got her wish on the 3rd of July, 2018. She went away peacefully leaving behind a very grieved little girl who only wished that she could be reunited with her grandmother. The idea of an afterlife didn't seem that silly afterwards as I started to look forward to seeing my Amma again and meeting my Baba for the first time.