Column

The best gifts you can give your children are grandparents. The more the merrier. If you can manage all four, (two sets from both sides each) you’re truly blessed. But any thing else, is welcome too.

A grandfather from one parent and a grandmother from another is not bad either. But if mortality has taken its heavy toll, then at least one grandmother from either side, a symbol of your family’s lineage, the past heritage, a repository of love, wisdom and graciousness is enough.

These days because of divorce and remarriage, a child can inherit any thing up to six sets grandparents. That’s the upside of modern life.

Why do I say grandparents are God’s gift to children? Surely there are those who will argue that a Play station set or an IPOD is every kid’s perfect companion, and insist that a complete makeover Barbie, along with her own hair dryer, ironing tongs and curlers is a no-brainer?

To these people I say: you have obviously not felt the reassuring ancient soft fragrance of a grandparent, basked in the embrace of their saggy skin and bones, sat transfixed by the beauty of their countless wrinkles, to know what a thing of beauty and a joy forever is a grandparent.

Grandparents are God’s way of making up for the error of our society, our limited, reductive nuclear families and the unseemly haste of contemporary living.

In homes where both parents work, where children have no source of world view or insight, grandparents provide a longer gaze, a more considered view, a wiser approach.

I know of an instance where a young child’s life was saved in the nick of time, because a grandmother noticed what she immediately recognised as an unusual growth on the neck, had it examined by a doctor when the parents of the child, who did not have the benefit of years of experience had overlooked the symptom of a malignant tumour.

I know of grandfathers who have given unsurpassed career guidance to their grandchildren, not limited to mark sheets and academic streams, but a deeper understanding of the young person’s family lineage and its strengths and weaknesses in particular fields.

It is to my eternal dismay that I never knew my grandmothers. Both my parents lost their mothers before they were six. And of my grandfathers I really got to meet only one: my mother’s father, my Nana, a rosy-cheeked, snowy-haired old man, who lived in Srinagar and visited us in the winter, laden with walnuts, home made jams and apples.

I also, till I was nine, had a great grandmother, who having suffered an accident early on in her life was rendered unable to walk and thus was on a wheel char most of her life. Mataji, as we called her, was a Gandhian, and I watched her spin Khadi all day long, as she handed out pithy wisdom, advice and prayer to whoever came her way.

I am increasingly reminded of the subject of grandparents as I grow older and watch as more and more of my contemporaries turn in to grandparents themselves.

Isn’t it time we measured our children’s inheritance, not by the material assets we give them, but whether we can ensure that they enjoy the wise, caring, patient, thoughtful, gentle, kind, considerate, and compassionate companionship of their grandparents, for as long as possible?

s_malavika@dnaindia.net