The Woman My Grandmother Loved.

Chapter Twenty-nine

"After all this time?"
"Always."

J. K. Rowling.

It has been almost a year into my marriage with Zoravar as I write this. It has been over a year and a month since I read Dida's journal.

Over the due course of time, I have had so many thoughts and so many questions about it. And I think it has brought me so much more clarity in the manner in which I viewed the older generations of the country. As millennials, we pride ourselves on being the most liberal generation to have ever existed; and rightfully so. We break societal standards and norms and replace them with the inclusivity and acceptance that our culture and nation sorely need. Dida's journal wasn't a disciplined notebook with a daily entry detailing her life's history. It was more of a lazy collection of poems, random scribbles and doodles, quotes from writers she had loved, snippets from the headlines of Veritas. The only substantial evidence referring to Becky was the series of letters. These letters were old and creased and almost torn.

When I remarked to Zoravar about their poor condition and the negligence they must have been subjected to, he looked at me with those serious eyes that I love so much.

"On the contrary." He said. "I'll argue that those letters had been read and reread a hundred times, folded and unfolded leaving permanent creases in it. Those blots are probably from the nights that they cried over the letters; when that was all they had."

It is not in my nature to be a romantic fool and as endearing as Zoravar's explanation was, I couldn't help but remark at the over-dramatic nature of his explanation.

"But don't you see?" He insisted, "That was all they had. Proof of who they really were. We look for proof of our existence in that of the people we love. Those letters were all they had to prove to themselves when they were constantly being made to believe that they had to be someone else."

I couldn't argue with that. I hadn't looked at it in that way; to be honest it had seemed a bit silly to me at times. The ardent declarations of love; can you blame me? I didn't bump into Zoravar at a cutesy bookstore (I wouldn't be caught dead in a cutesy bookstore, in the first place); I found my husband on Tinder. My idea of an ardent declaration of undying love is when he waits for me to watch new episodes of Money Heist.

But by and by, as I filled in the blank details of Dida's story with my own imagination and some answers from Mr. Jha, I think I must say. This is one of my favorite love stories and to say it was my grandmother's makes me feel proud. When I visited Mr. Jha (which I did more than once); over cups of tea and whisky, there were so many things that he told me. Dida's story was never kept under the wraps or hidden; at least not after her parents' death.

Over the years, most of Dida's close friends were aware of Becky and her presence in Dida's life. She didn't go about declaring it and shouting it from rooftops, but she never hid it as well. It stunned me, I think. The fact that my grandparent's generation could be as accepting and I remarked about this to Mr. Jha.

"We didn't have the loud and unashamed acceptance that you children show. We didn't ever tell each other I love you to show solidarity. But you have to understand, at the end of the day, we were just as young and are just as human as well. We have loved and cherished our friends just as you do. For your generation, silence is a form of oppression. For ours, silence meant support. Silence meant that while we couldn't go out on streets in broad daylight, we would still stand by them in the shadows. These secrets and stories lived only in the dark and standing in the dark, in the shadows with them was the only way we knew how to show our solidarity."

It was a revelation but at the same time, I wasn't entirely convinced.

"Did you stand in silence out of respect or acceptance? Did you believe it was inherently wrong but you were willing to keep quiet if it made her happy? Or did you genuinely believe it wasn't wrong?"