Essay: Tearing the Veil by Arundhati Dutta

In this personal essay, Arundhati Dutta shares memories of her grandmother whom she lost last year. Rummaging through grief, death, and loss, her writing makes for a compelling read.

Almost exactly 18 years ago on a January evening, I found my grandfather died in his bed. Or rather, in the process of dying; he was wheezing out his last breaths, and 8-year-old me did not know what to make of it, so I just stared at him until he stopped. Then I called the grown-ups in the next room.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about him a lot, not least because I lost my grandmother last September after a mercifully short battle with cancer. And I’ve been very disturbed by how little of him I remember beyond the day he died. I don’t remember his voice, but I remember what it sounded like when he was wheezing his few breaths. I remember he snored, but only because had initially confused his wheezing for snoring. I remember he loved toffees (he called them lozenges), but only because I remember giving him a leftover coconut-flavoured toffee that day from the colony’s Republic Day celebration. I’d never part with the chocolate-flavoured ones, of course.