Today was a grim day. In addition to the recent tragedy faced by Mumbai, today was the first death anniversary of granpa. Well, really, not BBC news material, but on a personal front, it meant quite a lot. Till date we always gathered at Grandma's death anniversary to sing some prayers and bhajans in her rememberance and also so that grandpa would feel good that we havent forgotten her as he thought we would have. Every time during these sessions, granpa would make 'farmayish' of his favourite bhajans and songs and we would oblidge. He felt thrilled and had created a special set of xeroxed songs to be distributed amongst all of us. It was so ironical and sad that it was from those very sets that today we were singing those bhajans for the death anniversary of my granpa himself. He was terribly missed. Missed like hell.

 

I thought may be, no amount of words would do justice to a noble soul like his. And so i decided to make a small 2 minute movie for his dedication. the background score was as cheesy as it could get. It was the song 'yaadein' from the movie 'yaadien'. I quickly selected a few snaps and a couple of video clips of granpa for the 2 minute essemble. In a giffy, at night 2 i created this small and simple video. Little did i know so big would be its impact. In the evening, once all the bhajans and songs were over, I gathered all the family members in one side of the room and played the video on my television. The reaction. The entire lot of 20 people were in tears. Some of them, uncontrollable, the rest, mildly crying. I was aghast. They're voices choked as they congratulated me for this extraordinary piece of work (or so they say). They wanted to see it once more. I played it once more. And the tears flowed once more. I was really surprised to see this kind of reaction, but well, it was my aim, and hence i was happy. I was happy that they all cried in the memory of granpa. Nothing can be fitting than this, although im sure if he'd be watching from the heavens he'd say 'arreey! shit! they're actually crying for me! oh no! drashti! what did you do? why are they crying for me? im with them, always.' and then perhaps i felt him smile and whisper' thanks drashtiben'.