This past week my thoughts have repeatedly turned to my maternal grandmother. My most prominent memories of her feature the soft Sungudi saris she wore with loose white blouses. Her besari. The soft veined skin on her hands that my sister and I would gently pinch, watching in fascination as the moulded ridge of skin gradually settled down again. But those are not the things I think of this week. I think of her frugality. A frugality that was not mean or stingy but one born of the innate belief that one must only use what one needs, not more. For so many of our grandparents, hoarding was anathema.
One shelf each in a Godrej bureau for clothes. A kitchen pantry stocked perfectly for just the month. The ability to use something completely and entirely before discarding it. My mother tells me of how my grandmother would make one matchstick last the entire day, from the morning, when she lit the lamp in the prayer room all the way till the evening when she repeated this action, using it in-between to light the gas to boil milk and cook meals. I remember hearing of the simple snacks she would make for my mother when she returned home from school — soaked poha and jaggery one day, a fistful of dalia another. How each person would eat well at lunch as there was nothing on offer till dinner. I think of these things again and again as we are faced with dwindling supplies in the supermarket and erratic or non-existent delivery services. And we are the lucky ones.
I try to make the supplies we have at home last for another week or two. Try to find tasty things to cook with just a few ingredients. Try to explain to my children that when those bananas are over we might not have another dozen on the counter soon, so go slow. And we are the lucky ones. I think of how I have gotten so used to excess. To abundance. The mindless order of things on multiple apps without really thinking ‘Do I need this?’ The non-stop snacking between meals. How easy it is to quash the pang of guilt and tell my child, ‘Fine, don’t eat it if you don’t want to.’
And allow what is not finished to go into the green bin. I think of how we have just taken the food in our lives and the people who help put it there for granted. This past week, I have been forced to take a leaf out of my grandmother’s book. I have put thought into meal planning. Poha and jaggery has supplanted Nutella. Nothing is tipped in the green bin. I look nothing like my maternal grandmother nor have I inherited any of her traits (those all went to my sister) but when called upon, I like to think that I can be like her in this respect. I need to remember to hold on to this feeling, this desire to economise, to be mindful, to be more like my grandmother. So that when this is all over, when we return to stocked supermarket shelves and express deliveries, I remember how lucky we are, and to not take that luck for granted.