A Quaint Love Story

During my teens, we lived next door to a couple deeply in Love. A love so unique that I enjoyed watching them when they were outdoors in the veranda or garden. An extraordinary flavour of love that I have not witnessed anywhere else and is very hard to come by in today’s day and age. Only when you watched them closely over time would you be able to gauge the depth of their love. It is nothing like the love we have grown up watching in movies, reading in books or the kind we usually imagine in our mind.

I am talking about the love shared by a couple who had lived together for more than sixty years as man and wife. They were parents of four, grandparents to several grandchildren and had recently become great grandparents too. I am talking about the time when Thatha (grandfather) was in his eighties and Paati (Grandmother) in her late seventees.

In spite of her age Paati was far better dressed than any other woman in the vicinity. She looked beautiful in her bright, colourful Kanjeevaram sarees. She would wear shades of bright yellow and scarlet reds that women half her age would shy away from. Her grey hair was usually tied up neatly in a bun, with sindoor and a red bindi in place. She loved jewellery and choose to adorn herself with several gold chains, mangal sutra and bangles even on a regular day at home. She even wore diamond nose pins on both sides of her nose. To me she looked gorgeous, a picture of beauty and grace. Paati could only speak in Tamil so I never really had a conversation with her but her cheerful smile was enough to warm anyone’s heart.

Thatha on the other hand was tall, lanky and forever dressed in a simple white shirt and a cotton dhoti, even during the winter months. He was simplicity personified. Instead of wearing sandals or shoes, he chose to wear a pair of rubber chappals and tied a string (nada) to the two rubber thongs to keep it from coming out of his foot. I found his “jugaadu” sandals amusing. He could speak fluently in English and possessed the memory of an elephant. He always had pearls of wisdom to share whenever you met him.

I would often see them sitting outside on the porch every morning. Thatha would read the English daily while Paati would enjoy the Tamil magazines. They would sit there for hours, have their coffee together and intermittently speak to each other. When Paati would get up to walk inside, Thatha would hold her hand delicately and help her, even though he himself could do with some help. When Paati would go to a doctor Thatha could not stay inside the house. He would sit in the porch with his head turned towards the road, restless, constantly on a watch out, patiently waiting for his beloved to return. As soon as she returned he would ask what the doctor said.

They, in their decades of companionship may never have said “I Love You” to each other but if you saw carefully you would see it in the their eyes when they looked at each other, the gentle holding of hands, the concern on their face for each other and the fact that they were never a few feet away.  They had been companions for so long that it’s hard to picture one without thinking about the other. The strength of their bond was such that even death could not keep them apart for too long. After Paati passed away, Thatha followed her within the year to join her in their heavenly abode.

This kind of quaint love is hard to come by, so I shall keep their memory etched in my mind, treasure it in my heart, cherish it forever and hope to come by another exceptional love story akin to theirs.