Charity Begins But Doesn't End At Home

December 10, 2024

I love the word “relative”. It diminishes every connection you have with someone to a genetic lineage, doesn’t it? Every so often – once in a generation perhaps – comes along a person who outshines the bounds of a connection defined by a relationship. A connection so deep that it transcends how you are related to them. To say that Dia was my grandmother is only just a fact – the truth rather is, she redefined how I think and how I live my life.

Doctors were certain that Dia’s elder daughter, my Mimi, still a baby, inflicted with a genetic disorder, had a short life-expectancy of ten years. I would not blame Dia in the slightest if she had given up, especially when the entire medical community – doctor after doctor – had the same view. But she did not give up. She never gave up. Her indomitable spirit, in spite of these insurmountable odds, did not accept defeat. Although the disease was not curable, in her words, “the effects of the disease can be treated”.

Battling the disease and its repercussions was farsighted and visionary, but at the end of the day it was tactical – treat what happens as it happens. Understand here, that we are talking about a mother and a baby whose entire future lay head of her. Mimi’s life could take two arcs from that point – to allow the illness define her life or not. Mimi’s life took the second arc. Deciding to fight the unforgiving Xeroderma Pigmentosum (XP) with this outlook meant the journey was as much a medical struggle as it was about mental dexterity.

Dia’s clear and consistent strategy acknowledged that it was not enough to just survive the disease. Mimi had to live. And live she did – integrating into society just like you and me – to the point that that XP became a detail about her, and not what defined her. Dia’s farsightedness empowered the person, who was not expected to live beyond ten complete school education, to get a Bachelor’s degree, pursue a Master’s, become self sufficient enough to indulge hobbies and interests, travel abroad – and even take care of her pregnant sister’s first child when she could not. Dia brought Mimi into this world, carved a path for her survival and gave her a life to live for – all while never compromising on the rest of her duties of a homemaker.

While you and I think of saving money for investing for the future that is decades away, hers was to manage cashflow. Mimi’s health was unpredictable – one month she might need to have a surgery, another month she would have to travel from Kolkata to Hyderabad to consult expert doctors or get a corneal grafting. Being a housewife meant that Dia had to manage her finances relying entirely on my grandfather. Accounting for this unpredictability, every month, she saved as much as she possibly could – from the “haath-kharach”, or the monthly budget. Sometimes that meant being the miser or portraying avaricious tendencies. Her unyielding spirit was never deterred by that – she knew that she had to save for a rainy day and she did. She taught me the value of money and the merit of financial planning from a very early age.

Dia had two daughters, one of whom needed much more care and attention, but she never lost sight of her younger daughter’s future. She had to formulate a way of bringing up both sisters without compromising either. Dia confided in me once that Mimi deserved someone to fight for her and that my mother deserved a normal upbringing – including all the opportunities that people normally take for granted – higher education, getting a job, getting married, having children. Dia never let one affect the other.

Leading Mimi through the constant onslaught of painful medical treatments, running a household, managing cashflow, ensuring my mother gets every opportunity in life, I would think Dia’s hands were full. Yet, she did not stop there, her impact went beyond the family. Charity begins at home but does not end there. Dia used to knit sweaters. She gave some to my brother and me – as a grandparent, that is not out of the ordinary. But what remains with me today, some twenty years later, is that she used to knit the same kind of sweaters to give to charity at Kathamrita Sangha. I once asked her why – it still gives me goosebumps to write this – she said, “if we don’t, who will”?

She never asked another person do what she wanted, she led by example, and laid down her principles in plain sight. As William Ward once wrote, “the mediocre teacher tells, the good teacher explains, the superior teacher demonstrates and the great teacher inspires”. Dia inspired Mimi to knit clothes for underprivileged children. Dia inspired my mother to teach for free. Dia inspired me to donate a small amount of my monthly earnings to Ramakrishna Mission.

Dia’s Polao and Pabda fish in mustard gravy is the earliest dish I can remember enjoying. Every grandmother cooks for her grand kids, Dia was no different. If you take a closer look though, she was much more than the sum of the roles she played in all whose lives she touched – a lifecoach, a mother, a homemaker, a grandmother, a carer for the unfortunate, a teacher – in every sense of the term, a role model.

The first time I ever saw Dia cry was the day Mimi passed away, at the age of forty-eight. It takes superhuman mettle to first acknowledge your daughter’s life-expectancy of barely a decade and then rise above it – defying the best scientific opinion of the day – to give someone a life that spanned nearly half a century. To the untrained eye, it might feel like a miracle, but it was anything but. It is a direct result of a single woman’s persistence, perseverance and pragmatism – her tears that day broke my heart but also showed me the true capability of the human spirit.

I usually write when someone close to me leaves us – not to honour them – but because I find it easier to express through the written word. I could not write anything for Dia. Simply put, anything I can possibly say or write will only diminish the impression Dia left on me. But I write this today, not because I want to express my feelings, but because hers is a story that deserves to be told. Because future generations in the Sen family deserve know about her – that there was such an exceptional lady in our midst. Her principles and ideals are worth living by. This is merely a crude recollection that pales in comparison to her essence, but it is the best I can do.

Her final wish was to donate her eyes to medical research. Even after leaving the mortal world, she was in service of the greater good. If you are reading this, know that there was once such a luminary among us – someone who touched so many of us in so many different ways that even if we live by a fraction of that, this world will be better place.

I, for one, will carry forward her teachings to my children, and I hope you do too.

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