Sonabhan Bibi

One year, a week before Eid-ul-Adha, my grandma, Dadi, came to Dhaka from the village and broke into tears. "What happened?" we asked. She sobbed and said she'd brought a rooster for us. A stranger who offered her help with her bags and belongings at Sadarghat Launch Terminal, while getting off the steamer, disappeared with the rooster. Dadi had been raising the rooster especially for us, ahead of Eid-ul-Adha festival. My father didn't earn enough to sacrifice any animal (or he thought he would better save the money for his children's education).

So, the rooster was Dadi's treat for us on Eid. It was a good, healthy, and over a year-old red rooster. "Lal boro rata morog," in her words. She could have easily sold it for two hundred taka, she said, starting to cry again. She cursed the rooster larcenist throughout the afternoon and evening. She blamed herself for her foolishness too, for trusting such a random stranger. 

For many reasons, Dadi was a remarkable character. Every time she was in Dhaka, she needed to see a doctor. After her visit to the family physician, she would whine about him, "This doctor is no good." Why? Because neither the doctor had ordered a series of tests, nor had he prescribed plenty of medication.

It was almost impossible to please Dadi. For example, say she was back from having had a meal at her son's house. How did it go? "They didn't give me the raan (chicken leg)," she would say. If she'd been offered the leg, her response would be, "They didn't give me the breast." If she'd been left on her own, her reaction would be, "They were so unamiable and unfriendly."

My Dadi happily played the "typical Bengali" mother-in-law role. After marriage, my 17-year-old mother came to Dhaka to live in a sizable joint family—my father's parents and his two unmarried sisters. Dadi left no sone unturned to make the young bride's life miserable. "Taka diya bandi kina anchi," Dadi used to bellow when she was within earshot, my mother told me. When my mother was pregnant with me, Dadi declared that if the baby was a girl, she'd send my mother away with the newborn for good and remarry her son.

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It was thought that Dadi was possessed with a jinni. When she was a very young girl, she was found on the top of a banyan tree. Sitting on a branch and dangling her feet, she was laughing hysterically. She was brought down, but the jinni never left her. She was also bitten by a mad dog in her childhood, that might be another reason for her intractable craziness.  

Every year, she used to attend the annual Urs festival of Lengta Paglar Mazar in Chandpur. The festival was to commemorate the death of the naked fakir Soleman. Many years later, I found out that the devotees of the festival were unhinged, delirious, and neurotic. These half naked fakirs wearing ox red loin clothes are withdrawn, long detached from the family, and, more importantly, many of them are addicted.

Every time she was in Dhaka, she needed to see a doctor. After her visit to the family physician, she would whine about him, "This doctor is no good." Why? Because neither the doctor had ordered a series of tests, nor had he prescribed plenty of medication.

At our family home in the village, Dadi had a secret and sacred place—a tiny room of her own, where she sat to perform her devotional act, zikir. As a little boy, I would peek into her sanctuary with a feel of fear and unease. Inside there was a step stool, and sitting on it was a small ebony staff, along with some half-burnt candles and incense on a brass pricket. And the walls, adorned with red fabric, promised the sanctity of the spot.

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Dadi was the first woman who I saw smoking. At times, she would buy a couple of cheap loose cigarettes, and when no one was around, she would smoke them in the kitchen, sitting by the chula.

Dadi was also the first woman I saw who had multiple piercing in her ears. Three in total—one in the helix of the ear, one in her tragus, and the third one in her ear lobe. Dadi had more than one nose piercing, too. She wore a nose stud and a septum ring. In those days, multiple ears and nose piercings were assumed to be a rustical and provincial practice seen only among the women of uneducated and subaltern families.

Many years later, when I went to Britain, I realized that Dadi was ahead of her time. Piercings, in the West, have become a form of expression. The western world has heartily taken the ancient practice of body piercing as a popular trend.

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I was in the third grade when the joint family broke up. By then my two paternal aunts had long been married. My grandparents settled back in their old home, in the village.

Dadi loved me a lot even though she was mean to my mother. Seven years before her death, Dadi took me to a small, ramshackle jewelry shop in old Dhaka's Karatitola to make me a ring. It was a marquise ring with an imitation ruby stone in the middle. I wasn't much enthusiastic about it, but tried it on my middle finger. It felt uncomfortable. My mother then kept it in the almirah safe in case I lost it.

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It was 1999. Dadi had been ill and bedridden for about a year. And for the past five months, she had completely lost her speech. She couldn't move her body on her own. Bedsores developed. My grandpa, Dada, struggled to take care of his wife alone. My two aunts who lived in the same district came in turns and stayed a few weeks to tend Dadi.

I went to see her one time from Dhaka. When I reached the village, it was late afternoon. I asked Dadi how she was doing. Her eyes stayed fixed on me; her mouth moved but couldn't make any words. Having had my meal, I washed some grapes and sat beside her. "Dadi," I said, "uhh, uhh." I opened my mouth to show her to do the same. Her lips parted a little. I pushed a grape into her mouth. Her jaw moved, slowly and sluggishly.

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The second time I went to visit Dadi, she was in a state that she might die anytime. She had stopped eating. When water was poured into her mouth, it would stream out in a trail through the corner of her lips. The only way to confirm that she was still alive was, her unblinking eyes, staring into the ceiling. And her irregular, unsteady breathing. Her back stank of rotting flesh. Ants found their way into her shital pati mattress to feed on her bedsores.

That night no one slept. It was awfully hot. A rattan palm mat was spread on the veranda. Dadi was transferred there as well. And, sitting by her head, Dada and phuphus read the Quran, hoping that Allah would take pity on her putting an end to her suffering.

Dadi died around three. For a moment, before she breathed her last, her eyeballs seemed to be moving, looking at us. At me, in particular. And then her eyes froze in a blank stare. She was breathing no more. My aunts sobbed, covering their faces with the hems of their saris. Dada closed her eyes. My youngest aunt said to me, "She just waited for your arrival, to see you for the last time."

It was the very first death that occurred in our family. Dadi, whose name was Sonabhan Bibi, died in August 1999.

Rahad Abir is a writer from Bangladesh. His work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Witness, Singapore Unbound, The Bombay Literary Magazine, Himal Southasian, Courrier International, The Wire, and elsewhere.