Granny : She is a Zombie

STORY – 2

I was eating my dinner when my granny called me. I went there. She was crying. Out of all, she will always call me anytime, anywhere. She cannot walk much. Most of the time when I go to her, she is lying on bed, patiently waiting with yet another piece of her life to share with someone. Most of the time, that someone is me. Maybe she just knows that I will carry her to the future.

She was roughly 16 then and all she wanted was playing and travelling and writing and singing her own songs. No matter what she was later, i.e , a homemaker, she was a rockstar till marriage. She had seen her grandmother, how she could not move, how she could not speak much, how she used to lie in bed all the time, how she was fed by a child, everything. Granny told me that she missed her stories, her corner, her talks.

Her mother was least bothered about the death and her father stopped speaking much after his mother was gone. At that age, she didnot know what to do. It was a huge loss for her. So she eloped to Aligarh without informing her parents. She was roaming down a street when suddenly a person in muslim attire approached her and asked her name and address. My granny was small but not an idiot. She quikly fastened her pace and found a space where all she could see was lock and key shops. She sat on one and started crying instantly. How lucky and how intelligent she was at that time.

She told me that the shopkeeper was kind and he offered her food. As the place looked as if it was prisoned in its own locks that she asked the shopkeeper about it. He told her that Aligarh is mostly famous for locks and keys. Also, this is Akbar’s favourite hunting spot.
As soon as she told me this, I saw a change in her voice. She told me that at that time everything else was just blurring and a picture of the animal killed by Akbar and her granny moaning just before her death was coming into her mind. She told me that she literally used to crawl for water while being on bed. My granny had seen her granny becoming a zombie, who could not remember much, cried at almost everything, always talked about her death, always had problems with food.

I was sitting there feeling something in my mind too.
I instantly found myself sitting in the same lock and key shop and this was me listening to the story and my granny acting as the shopkeeper. I doubt who was the real zombie. Granny’s granny in past, granny in present or me in future.