The cup

Thatha would talk about his cup often. He would hold it up for us, his little grandchildren, to see, sitting in his reclining chair with all of us crowding around it.
“50 naya paisa,” he would say. “Can you anything this valuable today for that amount?”
We would shake a no, in awe that 50 paisa had so much value decades before we were born.
“Madras central….I wanted tea. They were giving it in dirty glasses, so I bought this cup so that he could pour the tea in this…it has been with me ever since,” he would go on.

We would giggle. Thatha would drink anything only from the cup – water to coffee to medicine to juice. He would even take it with him if went away from home for more than a day, much to Patti’s annoyance.
“Why, can’t you stay without it for some days?” she would ask.
“No,” he would reply, then turning to us: “You must throw this cup along in my funeral pyre.”
We would nod vigorously.

And one fine summer day, when we were all together at our grandparents’ for the vacations, the cup disappeared. Thatha, as we would describe now in our ‘grown-up’ language, freaked out. He was close to bursting into tears every time he had to drink from the normal tumbler instead of the cup.

Finally, we, the kids, decided to launch a massive search for the cup. We searched high and low all around the house. Servant maids at home were questioned as to when they last saw the cup, where, etc. After searching for three entire days, (it was good entertainment for us; we found many other things we had misplaced long ago) we concluded that it was not in the house, and was lost for sure.
Patti was worried when we conveyed the news. With a lot of apprehension, we told Thatha that we were unable to find the cup. Thatha broke down, all the while talking about the importance of ‘lost memories’ in old age.

Things soon grew worse. Thatha fell very sick and was bedridden. We all, young kids he used to play with often, missed him. Our parents regularly kept checking on him to see how he was doing. Doctors said he had a lot of mental worry which they could not treat with medicines. His sons and daughters talked to him day and night in the hope of relieving any mental tension. Nothing worked much.

Among all this hulla balloo, Bablu one day found the cup. He had found it in the fridge freezer when we asked him to scrape some ice for us to use in play.
Patti started shedding tears of joy when she saw the cup. With all energy she could summon, she ran to the kitchen, filled the cup with hot water, and ran back to where Thatha was lying, sick, talking vague matters in delirium. We all ran behind Patti.
“Your cup….”she said as she gave it to him.
Thatha broke down again as he drank the water from the cup. Then he looked up at all of us and smiled. We all smiled back.
Thatha was back playing with us two days later.

(Inspired by real life ;) )