Jaishree Misra's grandmother took false teeth into the realms of high fashion...
 Jaishree Misra |
When I remember Ammumma, my maternal grandmother, I'm afraid it's too often as a raging fashion victim.
At first there were her saris. But, when my grandfather died twenty years ago, Ammumma seemed to have tired somewhat of her vast collection of saris and decided to take up wearing only white. The pained, self-sacrificing decision of an Indian widow you'd have thought.
As a child I loved opening her wardrobe, to sink my senses into that frothy, scented sea of white, a heavenly milky-way galaxy of shimmering white stars. But, after a while, it was clear Ammumma was bored with her white collection too. There was only so much you could do with a sari, in the end it was just six yards of cloth. She needed an accessory that would give her tired old collection some pizzazz, some much needed chutzpah
And so Ammumma discovered handbags. Well, she hasn't promised grandpa on his deathbed that she'd never set off her whites with a clever little cherry-red clutch-purse, had she? Ammumma's new collection burgeoned, especially as no-one had to think too hard any more before buying her a gift.
But which fashion victim ever promised to stay true to one product? It must have been when Ammumma was in her seventies that she finally tired of handbags. But even as my mother worried briefly that Ammumma might succumb to depression if age started to curb her fashion statements, my irrepressible grandmother merely found herself a new passion.
Surreptitious visits to her dentist and an unlikely coyness of smile revealed all. Ammumma'd got herself a new pair of dentures. "The old pair was getting loose," she explained.
"Nonsense!" Mum exclaimed unkindly but, as it happened, perfectly accurately when, less than a month later, Ammumma was sneaking off to the dentist again, claiming that the new pair was making her jaw droop.
The litany of excuses got more and more adventurous as Ammumma started to amass her new collection. One that caused a visiting aunt to scream in fight once she opened Ammumma's cupboard - to be confronted with a multitude of grins from the top shelf.
But for the next ten years, Ammumma collected smiles with the same passion with which she'd once collected saris and then handbags.
Last November, my grandmother passed away at the age of eighty. I went to India for her last rites and accompanied my mother, uncle and aunt as Ammumma's ashes were carried to a holy site on the west coast. As is normal practice the priests had put her dentures into a separate box and Mum gave this to me as we stepped into the Indian Ocean. We were both probably thinking of how Ammumma would abhor the thought of making this final journey minus her dentures and so, as my mother and uncle opened the urn containing her ashes to consign them to the sea, I opened up the little box under the choppy waves, and slipped her favourite smile in after her. I'm just sorry I could send her best white silk... and a cherry-red clutch purse as a finishing touch too.
