Love for a Lifetime

Say hello to Leelabati Basu and Gosto Behari Basu, my paternal grandparents, or Amma and Dadu, as we called them. In the years growing up, we hadn't seen a single moment that they weren't bickering and arguing, to the extent that we were reasonably sure they hated each other.

The day Amma died, which was quite sudden, given her good health at the time, Dadu was seen mumbling to himself angrily - "That old woman just had to take my neem tree away, didn't she?" - referring to the wood that had been cut down for her pyre.

And yet, the day Amma died, Dadu stayed on his favourite wooden chair and watched us go through all the rituals, one after the other, till we took her body away. He then came back inside the house, lay down on his bed, and never got up again. One and a half years of bedsores and dementia later, he too passed away.

Falling in love is all about the skip in your heartbeat, or the butterflies in your stomach. But when you love someone for a lifetime, you simply can't live without her.