Vaskodigamma

My maternal grandmother migrated to a foreign land from the only world she knew at 16, to marry a man she only knew through a photograph. She taught herself how to read and write in English and learnt to speak pidgin BM from her neighbours. Her favourite book then was on Napoleon Bonaparte. I suppose she led a reasonably comfortable life while my grandfather was alive, with assorted maids and nannies to take care of them and their 5 children. But while my youngest aunt was still an infant, the communists shot my grandfather dead. All the money and gold dwindled away soon enough, according to family lore, due to unscrupulous relatives and friends and they were dirt poor. From what I remember, many people had asked her to remarry or give up the children, but she refused. And there were times she went without so that her children would at least have rice with water. My mum would say, those were times when most people didn't have much, but we were poorer than most. I wonder what I would have done had I been in her shoes. Would I have the strength to keep my family together. Reminds me about the story I read recently, about a homeless family that perished in a fire which happened in a building they were taking shelter in.

My mum also said that she tried to make special memories with the little they had, and she was a tough cookie when it came to discipline. But I don't really remember her being strict with us, then again, you take liberties with your grandparents, and not with your parents. The reason why we call her Vaskodigamma is because she used to tell us stories and since she loved history, one of those stories was about Vasco de Gamma, and since we used to call her Gamma too, the name stuck. I remember Gamma being really funny or doing funny things, like the time she was at the hospital and saw a 'Kakitangan sahaja' sign. She became pale and looked quite shaken, and my aunt had to coax her into telling her what the matter was and she said, "Mol, they are keeping body parts in that room." Hehehe... stuff like that is legendary. Stays funny no matter how many times you repeat it.

Then was the time my parents went abroad and she came over to take care of us, although in the end it seemed to be the other way around. You see, her presence was more about having someone at home, especially since we were pretty independent. But she'd insist on hand washing the dirty clothes, although we had a machine and instead of resting and taking it easy she would potter around the house doing needless tasks. I hated having to argue with her and being the eldest and most responsible child, I solved the problem by turning on the tv to the Tamil Vaanavil channel just before we left for school. That kept her engrossed till we returned in the evening and she would be upset she hadn't beaten me to the kitchen to cook dinner, since when I came home she absolutely wasn't allowed to lift a finger :-).

She also loved making kuih and baking so mum loaded the pantry with different kinds of flour. But grandma being grandma decided to experiment one day. We came home to a very quiet and well-behaved grandmother who didn't argue with me when I said I was going to cook dinner. She nodded meekly and went to continue watching tv. I was worried she might be coming down with something, but my sister who's blessed with a suspicious mind and keen eyesight spotted something under the kitchen sink. It was a blue plastic basin and a spoon was sticking out right in the middle of it, in a white, hard substance. Naturally, her presence was summoned to the kitchen and upon seeing the incriminating evidence in our hands, she yelped, "I saved us from death mol!" Further investigation revealed, Grandma had chanced upon my mum's plastic bag of white cement under a cupboard (kept alongside various tools and equipment and very, very far away from all other edibles).

That's my Vaskodigamma.