I had wanted to do this for a long time. To see if I could put the women of four generations from Sharmila’s side together in a picture. I was sure time was running out fast on me. But when Nikita said that she wanted to see “Didu” (grandmother) and the said grandmother agreed to travel from home to Kolkata, that presented the best opportunity for me.

After lunch, we headed out to Khardah to visit Nikita’s great grandmom. After a short one hour drive in reasonably crowded roads on a Sunday afternoon, we had that moment of Nikita, her mom (Sharmila), her grandmom (“Didu“) and her great-grandmom (do not know how you address great grandmoms in Bengali) together under the same roof.

For somebody of unknown age (she has no idea when she was born, but I think it would be safe to assume she is a nonagenarian given my mother in law is pushing 80) who can barely get up from bed, let alone move around by herself, she has incredible cognitive power, memory and verbal capacity. Not only did she remember the names of Nikita and Natasha, she recollected incredible details from the only other time I had visited her – 30 years back!!!

That was a beautiful moment.

I wonder if this can be repeated with Natasha too some time!