A sense of Loss & Inadequacy

Today I am here, writing this. Almost a decade ago, I was in a foreign country - going about my business - perhaps walking towards my college from the train station. I don't remember the specific time and date of such a day but I am pretty sure I felt the same way I felt today. Out of nowhere a passing thought about my grandmother (maternal). Such thought must have brought warmth to my heart on that day, I can confidently guess. But today, such thought only disheartened me out of incapacity. 

My grandmother - she had never known anything about human ambition; for her ambition only existed amid the four, soot-smeared walls of the kitchen. Since she had not known about ambition, she had never seen a reason to worry about her grandkids' academic endeavours. She was just bothered that we didn't stay on the shady side in summer afternoons and ensured we ate full and beyond.

Me being an unenterprising boy by nature (but aspiring out of peer pressure), I had found great solace in her affection sans concern. I had hated the ennui of never-ending afternoons (blame the incessant power outages during Indian summers in the '90s) back then, but now I reminisce them with her breezy smile slapped all over my memory. I cannot forget the twinkle in her eye, the dimple in her smile and the cups of her large palms stroking my back when I hugged her.

Today's reminiscence of my grandmother was triggered by an old lady who works on my work campus's Building Management System staff. I and a colleague went down for our postlunch walk and I saw this 60-something lady, dressed in a depressing uniform, standing there accompanied by a broom and a trashcan, staring into the distant green of a manicured lawn. I noticed her alternating her stance between her tired legs. There, that stirred a pot of memories, served with a scoop of overwhelming nostalgia.

I stood there, leaning against a wall, at an obtuse angle from her, looking at her, allowing her to paint a picture of my grandmother in my head. She looked tired. She had a limp - out of dotage I suppose - yet she was there, at her workplace, toiling away and taking moments to stare into the manicured lawn before she resumed. The sight filled me with a feeling of sorrow I haven't processed yet.

I walked up to her and told her she reminded me of my grandmother. 

She flashed a faint, fagged smile and said nothing.

I hesitantly pulled out my wallet and offered my inadequacy.

'No no,' she refused with a sustained smile. 

'Can I buy you a cup of chai?', I meekly proposed.

'They serve us at 4 pm,' she said.

I gritted my jaws in loss of words when she picked up her apparatus and slowly limped away from me, but before that the smile sustained.

Both women deserted me. Grandmother lost her mind to Alzheimer's and estranged herself from me. The latter, she took away from me someone I wish I had.