Jonah

Mother recalled the time when her 26 year-old self had only one dream. To leave her house, her family and going miles away from the woman who fed her. 

Jonah was my grandmother.  

Jonah was 72 when she took her last breath. She was a tall and self-made woman. The last few words of Jonah, when on her death bed was how she had started to look, “cheeks sucked in with protruding teeth”.

In the two floor magnificent house, built in 1953, she struggled to make ends meet. The house that was once the tallest in that entire village, today stood erect to hear the agonies of Jonah. 

“She was a wise lady”, said some while many fuelled the fall of a woman who stood tall due to her character among the other chickens in the village.

Jonah never washed the underwear of the guy she made love to. 

Men, the only thing Jonah did not have.

Men, the only entity Jonah never desired for.

She made love to betel leaves and dug out old love stories of her husband, the man that never returned. 

Women rolled makeshift cigarettes also known as Beedis which were highly in demand. With the availability of fresh betel leaves being imported from Sri Lanka, women during the 1990s in Jonah’s locality earned a handsome amount. Some women pursued it to kill time, while Jonah used it to make ends meet. 

She was indeed a multi-faceted woman. The only breadwinner of her house, mama to four and a biased mother towards her last daughter, Amy. 

Amy, being her favorite one, resembled Jonah in multiple ways. She was tall, talkative and (not-so) tolerant.

Jonah let Amy fly. Amy flew, but with the wrong company and never returned.