THE UNKEPT RESOLUTION

Madhumati had just got off a two-hour-long call with Sushmita, her granddaughter, and she beamed from ear to ear. The call was one that she’d been needing for quite some time now; she had filled with a newfound determination—she was finally going to be able to fulfil her resolution that had been pending for years now.

Though in her late sixties now, Madhumati had been as curious as she was during her prime years, always wanting to learn new things and stay updated with the happenings of the world. She had been extremely to have had a father who encouraged curiosity and always maintained an environment of learning at their home. Not caring one bit of what the “society” would say, Madhumati’s father ensured that she and her younger sister received the best possible education and grew up to become independent and respectable individuals.

Unfortunately, destiny didn’t allow Madhumati’s father to see his daughters grow to become what he had hoped them to be. A massive heart attack took him away when Madhumati was just 15 years old. Being the eldest child, she had no choice but to help her mother take care of the family. Consequently, she couldn’t dedicate as much time as she would have wanted to continue her quest for learning. But she ensured that her sister continued with her education and fulfilled their father’s dream.

Over the years, Madhumati tried to keep up with the ever progressing world; however, due to the advent of old age and increased responsibilities of her own family and children, she couldn’t sustain the habit for long at a stretch. As the years advanced, so did her age, but her resolve started to weaken. However painful it felt, Madhumati had started to make peace with it. While she successfully managed to hide her pain from the rest of her family, there was one person from whom she could not—her granddaughter.

Sushmita was closest to her grandmother in the entire family; she practically spent most of her waking hours with her, even more than she did with her mother. And she was just like grandmother—equally curious about the world around her if not more and always hungry for learning new things. Madhumati saw a reflection of herself in Sushmita and thus encouraged her to never let her curiosity die out.

The mutual fascination with amassing knowledge that the two shared had brought them even closer as Sushmita grew up; however seeing her grandmother’s flame starting to extinguish as the years passed worried Sushmita; she did not want her grandmother to let her spirit of inquisitiveness die out. For the first few years, Sushmita tried pushing her grandmother to keep continuing; however she could not sustain for long the temporary flame she managed to rekindle whenever she tried. After a long streak of failure, she decided to do something more concrete and impactful—she went ahead and enrolled her grandmother in a BA in philosophy, a course her grandmother had always wanted to pursue but couldn’t due to the unfortunate and sudden death of her father.

When Madhumati first got to know about what her granddaughter had, she was left utterly flabbergasted; never even in her dreams had she imagined being able to ever pursue the course once her father had passed away. The veil of responsibilities had covered her eyes from the possibility of resuming her studies. It was only when her granddaughter removed the veil did she start seeing the faint possibility.

Once the initial shock had died down, Madhumati started feeling an excitement she hadn’t felt in decades—the excitement of getting to learn something new, of finally getting to pursue what she had always wanted to. She now felt what she had forgotten for quite a long time now—alive.