The Giving People Project- Hands That Held Generations

Story 1 — Hands That Held Generations

On a hot summer weekend in 2001, the bus — little more than a metal box with hard bench like seats was packed. It crawled from Delhi to Saharanpur at a snail’s pace through small towns, taking six to seven hours. Today, with highways and better transport, the same journey takes three to four hours.

Exhausted from a night shift, summer heat and the journey, I got off near the small railway station and was swarmed by multiple cycle rickshaw pullers asking for my destination. I knew a negotiation was inevitable, since the rickshaw pullers had to haul their carts and passengers over a bridge to reach my destination — my maternal grandmother’s house. With the fare settled, we made our way to the large half acre compound where the house sat on one side and other half of the land was full of fruit trees mainly mangos.

As the house came in sight with the mango trees in bloom, I could see kids walking past the boundary wall eying greedily at the fruits. Memories flooded back — summers spent climbing trees and plucking the forbidden mangos. Per my grandmother, Badi Mummy — the matriarch of the household, a lean woman barely four feet tall who still commands discipline at 99 years in 2026 — it was forbidden to pluck raw mangos so as to allow them to ripen and it was forbidden for kids, i.e. her grandchildren, to play in the orchard in the afternoons for fear of loo (not the toilet which you will be sitting on for long if you catch it, rather the heat wave which blows over northern India in peak summers causing heat strokes).

Being a rule breaker even at 10 years old, it of course meant that I would sneak out from the back door into the orchard, gather my friends and climb the trees. The care taker, weary of our mid-afternoon shenanigans had complaint to Badi Mummy many times. One such afternoon her patience wore out and out she charged with a stick in her hand shooing away all the kids. I sneaked away from the group, entered the house from the other side and played the perfect innocent act. Eventually Badi Mummy cooled down and with her hands on my head told me again not to sneak out in the afternoons or I will fall sick.

The rickshaw jolted to a stop at the gate pulling me out of my thoughts. Exhausted, I stepped into the house and went into Badi Mummy’s bedroom with its large double bed, a set of sofa chairs and a side table under a showcase with shelved which carried pictures of her grandchildren, of family events and of my grandfather, whom she had lost in 1987, fifteen years ago. The room had its familiar scent and her tall cupboard had enough space for me to keep my weekend bag. The old trunks which held all the seasonal beddings were exactly where they used to be, 1 by the bed and 1 by the large window.

Badi Mummy brought me some water, with her gentle hands on my head fussed over me and cursed the heat. Her anger with the heat was on point because lo and behold the very heat stroke I used to evade as a kid had found me. Over the next 2 days Badi Mummy would bring me various concoctions to manage the heat stroke as my uncle gave me meds to combat the fever. What truly worked its magic and brought me strength was when she sat beside me, put my head in her lap, and gently stroked my hair. In a soothing voice she said “All will be well” while reciting the Hanuman Chalisa (Hymn verses praising lord Hanuman).

It was March 8th 2026 when I again pulled up at the same gate. The mango orchard no longer there, land being sold off many moons ago. Badi Mummy’s room was still the same, the chair set and side tables, the showcase and its pictures, the tall cupboards and the trunks. There were a few more additions, oxygen concentrator and tanks stood by the bed while a patient monitor sat on the trunk. Beneath the oxygen mask lay my frail Badi Mummy who at 99 had returned from the hospital after a scare making all her children and grandchildren to make way to her home.

I had just started working in 2001 and heard the words women empowerment and gender equality for the 1st time. The moment I heard those words I knew who embodied them — my grandmother, Badi Mummy. She never studied beyond 5th grade, yet raised 6 kids to be doctors, engineers, teachers and home makers. She never worked in an office yet when I got selected in a call centre to live and work in Gurgaon for a meagre salary and my parents, aunts and uncles were dead against me joining, she backed me up. Married at a tender age of 14 or 15, she never judged my decision to remain unmarried at 46. Supporting her daughter-in-laws in their careers, beaming at the success of her grandchildren and being the one with minimal possessions — never expecting anything more than some sweets or sugar candies.

The hands which held the stick when I was 10 to discipline me, which stroked my hair at when I was sick at 21 and which cooked lovingly when her grandkids would turn up were patched with IV’s and monitor wires. She lay there frail, on the very bed she had consoled me 25 years ago with an oxygen mask on her face. She didn’t immediately wake up to speak with me or to fuss over me after an arduous journey. I sat beside her, stroked her hair gently and said “All will be well” as I began reciting Hanuman Chalisa.