My Grandmother, Mother and Me: Three Generations of Women

Today I will tell you of three women in different stages of life: my grandmother, my mother and me.

As I sit in front of the computer, writing a piece about life, I am doing things my grandmother never did, and things my mom did very differently. My grandmother is illiterate, or hardly literate. I think I have seen her read the Swasthani (a religious book) once, but I remember that she read slower than I did, and I was just about nine then. I know for a fact, however, that she cannot write, and even when she had something she had to tell (something worth sharing with the world) she couldn’t. My mother, on the other hand, has studied to a certain level. Having completed her intermediate level (12th grade in today’s language), she can write, but even when she does, does not share (sharing with my dad doesn’t really count) her work or send it for publishing in the papers. I, on the other hand, sit in front of the computer whenever I have time and write. I know that the sound of my fingers going tap-tap on the keyboard makes my grandma really proud, but I’d love it even if my grandmother could read only one of my writings. If this did happen (hypothetically), I would give her my very best work to read.

My grandma got married at the age of thirteen. It was an arranged marriage, and both she and my grandfather say that they didn’t see each other before the wedding. As the wife of the oldest son, I can imagine what she went through, having to serve her in-laws at such a tender age. She swept and cooked and cleaned. She washed and scrubbed all day, and for many years, her husband lived away from her, initially to study and then to work. My grandmother had her first son, my father, at the age of nineteen. My father was followed by two other sons, and my grandmother raised all three of her sons splendidly. My father says his father came home once in a week, but that was only when the river on the way wasn’t flooded. At other times, it would sometimes be a month or two before he came home again. When she was 35, my father left his mother so that he could come to Kathmandu in search of opportunities. I think it required my grandmother immense strength to let her only grown son to leave, and to single handedly take care of her two other sons, but she did it. I have heard stories of my grandmother being too shy to wear slippers. I have heard of her trying to give her son, my father, the best possible, and I have heard of her struggles.

It is hard to say whether or not my mother had it easier than her mother-in law. Her husband was mostly with her and she was genuinely her in-laws’ family member, not a helper. She is now loved by my father’s parents, but I know for a fact that it wasn’t always that way. I know, because I have heard my parents talk that relatives often filled my grandparents’ ears with rubbish and sometimes my grandparents believed those things.

My mother lived as the wife of a journalist who didn’t earn too much, and had to travel a lot during the initial years of their marriage. My mother says she spent quite a number of nights alone, with two (one before my brother was born) little children on her side. She says she cried through the nights sometimes because she was still a child then. She had been married at the age of 18 and had me, her first child, before she became 20. She was luckier than my grandmother because she got to see her future husband, and had the liberty to reject him before they got wed (thankfully for me, she didn’t do anything of that sort). But my parents, unlike my father’s, had no ‘prestige’ in the city (village in their case) that would pay my school fees. My grandfather had the liberty to reject job offers in Kathmandu to go back to his district because he had the assurance that if anything did happened, he could sell a piece of his land to feed his family. My father did not have an option; he had to work. A piece of land in Illam wouldn’t even feed our family for a year.

Life for me is much easier. I’m 16 and my parents sponsor me to one of the best schools in the country. Each and every of my demands (most of them are sensible—but my sensibility is itself courtesy of my parents) are met and I am given all the love that I can handle. I also know that my mother and my grandmother(s) are proud of me, and that I have a lot of their blessings, and a lot of their wishes to fulfill. But like I said, having all this is better than not having it. Not being able to write as well as Amy Tan is much better than not being able to write at all. My grandmother has so much to say, so much to share with the whole wide world. It’s unfortunate that she cannot read, and more unfortunate that I wrote in a language she will not understand even if I read it out to her. Maybe I will translate this and read it out to her, or maybe, just so that I will not have to see her cry when she hears what I have written, I will make my grandfather read it out to her.

Although these women cannot understand this piece, it was dedicated to the young woman my grandmother(s) was, the one that my mother is today, and the one I will grow up to become. My grandmother said to me some years ago, “If I’d known that you would come into my life, I wouldn’t have cried at my wedding.” My eyes filled with tears when I heard that, and do, even today, when I remember it.
 

This blog originally appeared on maichyang.wordpress.com on March 8, 2007.