““What is your native place”
For as long as I can remember, I have been one of the few people who answered “Chennai” to that question. As a child, I used to feel left out when friends packed their bags to visit grandparents in far off towns during holidays. My paternal grandparents lived with us and my maternal grandmother lived just two streets away. There were no long train journeys or vacation trips to another city. But today I know that I had something better. I had her.
I was her eldest grandchild and a certified bookworm. She loved learning and she loved teaching, so we were a perfect match. My vacations never smelled of beaches or hill stations. They smelled of aathichoodi lessons, general knowledge books and arguments about which city belonged to which country. She made education look magical. She never raised her voice. She never forced. She simply lit a spark in me and waited for it to burn.
She was the strongest woman I have ever known. She grew up in poverty with a single parent and had to start working very young. She studied only till SSLC because that was all life allowed her. Yet she did not bend. She topped the state in Hindi typing and earned a Central Government job. She continued working after marriage and poured every dream she could not chase into her children. She enrolled them in Kendriya Vidyalaya Adyar so they could get the exposure she did not have. For almost ten years she travelled to school with them on a train and two buses. Both her children completed their masters because she simply refused to let circumstances decide their future. In the middle of all this she also completed her graduation while working and taking care of the family.
After a lifetime of working, she made sure her retirement was filled with adventure. She travelled across India and beyond. From Kanyakumari to Kedarnath, from the 12 Jyotirlinga temples to the 106 Divyadesam temples. She went snorkeling in the Andamans and banana boating in Malaysia. She proved that life never stops teaching you and you never have to stop living. And together we explored Chennai in our own way. Pondy Bazaar, book fairs, island grounds trade fairs and Kapaleeswarar temple were ours. Those were the places where we built memories without knowing we were building them.
She had my back when I had my baby. People said she was lucky to meet her great grandchild. But the truth is that I was the lucky one. When my child was five months old, I got an opportunity to enter government service. I was not very enthusiastic and I doubted myself. She did not. She stayed up late with me every single night to help me prepare. The day I got the job she was the proudest person in the world.
She was active well into her 80s. She attended my son’s first birthday. In a short time she became bedridden and we lost her in 2024. The pain is still there but so is the gratitude. Because she lived. Fully. Fiercely. Beautifully. She used every day life gave her.
She was a Madrasi in the truest sense. She had seen Chennai from the days of boating in the Cooum to the days of Forum Mall. Whenever I go to Kapaleeswarar temple or T Nagar a part of me pauses. A part of me remembers. A part of me misses.
Love you Rani Thaachi.”