"Mera beta," she said in her shaky, low-pitched aging voice, "let me apply some oil on your hair. See how lifeless it's become with all this stress you've been under because of college and all." 

I felt her warm, wrinkly and soft palms caress my forehead as I rested my head side-face in her lap.

"You're only here for a couple of months, beta. You will be gone again before long. I miss you so much when you're gone." Her sing-song voice fell softly on my ears, reaching out to that 6 year old little girl in me whose life once only revolved her grandmother. A tear flowed down from my watery eye, meandering through the unevenness of the skin of my face and making its way over my nose to finally drop down and blot on her impeccably white salwaar.

I turned and looked straight at her looking back at me. I noticed the lines decorating her face. Her face had not changed, because she had always been old (or so I thought), but the lines were definitely fewer fifteen years ago. Those wrinkles had mated with each other and multiplied over time, and you could also see their little kids playing here and there on her face. My gaze went from her crumpled forehead to her neatly combed hair; spotlessly silver hair, just like the clothes she wore. I had always known her hair like they still were, like of a fairy Godmother from the princess stories I read as a little girl. But those were never my favorite stories. The ones I liked the most, and still did, were the accounts from her life that she told us whenever she had time. And she always had time.

"Daadi, nothing seems right in my life right now. I feel so estranged and hopeless. I wish I could go back," I said to her mawkishly. Somehow, I did not have to keep up my tough, careless pretense around her. 

She chuckled and blew away the lump in my throat with that. "And what is it that is making you think you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, my sweet little child?" she said with a benevolent smile. Had it been someone else undermining my mental and emotional baggage, I would have gotten upset and probably tried to get back at them with a frowned defense. But with her, it wasn't the same. 

"You don't understand Daadi. You think I am still a child, which is why you give no value to my problems. You, papa and mumma too. Everyone. I don't know how to deal with this. All of my other friends seem to be doing good. They have jobs and careers or plans. I, on the other hand, have to deal with this family drama everyday. I'm just not used to it anymore,"  I sulked.

"I know, beta. But you still have time. Nobody is forcing you to work or study or even to sit at home. Well, not anymore, at least. We only want the best for you. Now, your papa might get angry and shout at you but he does it only because he is worried about you, just like your dadaji was worried about him. When you have kids, you will scold them too, but only because you care for them. You will realize it one day."  Sweet honey dripped from her mouth in the form of words, the nectar of innocent wisdom collected over so many decades. "Did I ever tell you the story of the two mismatched friends?"

"Is it a real incident, or just a story?" I asked with child-like enthusiasm.

"Hahaha. I won't tell you that. You must decide that for yourself,"  she answered.

I smiled a smile I hadn't smiled in weeks. The story was of little importance to me at the time. What really made me happy was what followed all her stories - delicious food cooked by her. She sometimes made halwa, or choori, or sandwiches, or sewaiyaan, or daliyaa, or parathas, or her special signature maggi. I would always get so busy  stuffing myself with them that I never took time to appreciate her cooking the way she did mine.

"Nobody makes a tadkaa better than you. You do it like a professional chef,"  she'd say to me every now and then. Sometimes I couldn't help but feel uncontrollably sorry for letting her down for reasons I could never know. Probably because I knew she had never let me down but always lifted me up, and I doubted if I was even capable of that. I can still recall the first time I tried my hand at cooking pasta in white sauce at home. I had been really disappointed with the way I had cooked it and had kept going on about how bad it had tasted. She, on the other hand, sat in front of me with a bowl full of that ugly looking dish and reassured me, "It is lovely. I have never eaten macaroni that was cooked this way. It's very tasty."  She sat there trying to eat that under-cooked garbage even though I asked her not to before I left the room. About ten minutes later, I saw her coming out of the kitchen looking left and right as if making sure I did not see her. I went into the kitchen to find more than half of the pasta from her bowl in the garbage bin.

"Once there was a beautiful boy, who was rich and tall,"  she began." His best friend was a poor boy, who on the other hand was not good to look at. The poor boy would feel jealous of the rich boy every now and then. The rich boy felt secure and proud because he did not have to work hard. He thought he would later join his father's, business. The poor boy had to study hard because he had to find a trade to make a living for himself when he grew up. One day, the rich boy's father passed away. He took over his father's business and money. It wasn't enough for him and he wanted to expand his business."

The plot seemed to have thickened and it suddenly had caught all of my attention, which till now had been rather astray. I lifted my head from her lap and sat up looking directly at her as she brought her story alive with the right expressions and tones, the signature of all good story-tellers.

"One day, both decided to leave town. The rich boy, for merchants and the poor, for an occupation. They had to travel through a lot of villages and dusty roads before they could reach the town. While on their way, a group of bandits caught them. They asked them for money. The poor boy did not have much. He told the bandits that the other boy was rich. The bandits took away the rich boy's money and beat the poor boy black and blue. The poor boy felt so sad for being so poor. He cursed himself, his life and God while the rich boy grinned and felt smug. Then they stopped at a village for the night. At midnight, a group of cult fanatics came and caught both the boys. They were looking for boys to sacrifice to their God. They looked at the beat up, bruised boy and then the handsome, rich boy. 'We don't want an impure sacrifice for our Lord. Let's leave this ugly boy here and take this good looking one,' said one of them. They took away and slaughtered the rich boy and let the poor one go."

I was dumbstruck when her story ended. Her stories had never, ever been so macabre. 

"This was a disturbing story, daadima," I said to her.

"Life can be, beta," she said as she started to get up from the bed in the only pace her body knew, slow." You see, sometimes you do not have much control over the things happening to you. And sometimes, the greatest problems you face can become your greatest strengths. They say that there is no hero or villain in real life. And my point is, if you find yourself broken because of a problem, fear not for it might even be a blessing in disguise."she said as she stood up.

Though shocked I was at the cruelty in her story, I couldn't help but accept that there was a certain raw, blatant truth in it. I had forgotten all my sadness but instead was taken over by an emptiness. 

"Now cheer up, beta. Let's go have some kheer,"  she said. I rejoiced at the very thought and forgot about everything else.