Post-Memory Parenting

Photograph: Ria C.

My Grandfather, my father's father, had met me for the last time when I was a month old. He had named me which perhaps is  the sole reason I allow myself to like my name. Although I could not meet him because unfortunately a meeting can be successful only if I can recapitulate the registered memories. My grandfather is my unregistered Memory. 

Since I have no memory of him, I rely on the very few blurred photographs I have of him, my mother's description of him and some loosely joined stories from several family members. My mother speaks very highly of him, she has immense gratitude and respect for him and she often forms a narrative that I resonate with my my grandfather. But all of these didn't make the man my Grandfather. I empathized with the stories but at the end of each story he was reduced to a photograph that we have hung in our drawing room.

 Though I cant deny that I always had a subtle desire to know him. 

It was not until recently, I discovered him as a grand parent and established a post memory relationship with him. A while back, while cleaning my father's long untouched bookshelf, I found several books that belonged to my grandfather. Several literature books that he owned during his Bachelors and Masters. I don't know if inheriting old Classics without an inch of anticipation is any less than winning a lottery. 

I spent the next few days nurturing and nursing those books, reading all the side notes, smelling the Old-ness and a forever looming despair. In these few days it appeared to as if I met my grandfather for the first time, lost him and now have these books to remember him by. 

Among all the books he had left behind, unknowingly, for me, there is a copy of Arms and the Man which I have placed right next to my copy of Arms and the Man and never before have I felt that I needed two copies of the same book. 

Maybe my mother is right. I and my Grandfather do resonate and this perhaps is just a silly, small example. 

I will write if I find more...