Sonal and Annal - Ba and Dada Memories

Tara Ba

Tara means star, and Ba was the star of our family. She was our center; our focus; the hub to all of our spokes. The spark. The matriarch. Who doesn’t remember all of us crowded around the phone in Ranjan Phoi’s living room, each one of us talking to her -- or, in Annal’s case—attempting to talk to her in his broken and mangled Gujarati? (Kem cho, Ba?! Saroooo chay?)

We all will miss her very much, but there are so many stories and memories to remember her by. Though she is gone, we are the spark now. She lives in all of us, literally, as Annal just pointed out to me, we grandchildren share 25 percent of our genes with our grandparents, but we could have told you that anyways, because each one of us captures a different part of her and dada.

Though in her older age, her body might have been a little frailer, her mind was still as sharp as a tack, and her will was Tata steel. Her memory was perfect, to a T. She was stubborn and strong, in her decisions and her words.

When I went to India three years ago, she recounted stories from when she was a thirteen year old girl, as if they had just happened yesterday.

She told me that as a young girl she sang Independence songs with Kasturba; she told me the story of how she married Dada; and she told me about the behind-the-scenes orchestration of my father and mother’s marriage. Just like a pigtailed girl of thirteen again, she was light-hearted enough to put a flower in her hair and let me photograph her.

But there is one story that we really feel is an accurate representation of her true might.

Back in the late eighties, Ba and Dada came to live with us in Ohio (land of cows) to those of you in more urban locales such as New Jersey. At the time, my dad and mom were recent immigrants, easily corrupted by the carnivorous Americans. My dad had learned the ways of Tex-Mex cooking as a student at New Mexico State, and had become a pot-bellied man who ate lots and lots of meat.

Open our fridge and you would find, in no particular order: chicken for shake and bake, a dozen eggs, frozen beef (yipes), and various other animal products.

Upon learning this, Ba proceeded to go “Duryodhana” on dad. “What kind of child have I raised you to be? You come into this country for just a little while and now you eat cow and lose all your morals? Either the meat goes or I do.”

Of course, the meat went. Dad kept his head down in shame. Our father has not eaten meat since that precise moment nearly twenty years ago.

And what a perfect match Ba had in Dada. He was yin to her yang. Vanilla to her chocolate. Abhishek to her Aishwarya.

We miss you, grandma. Say hi to grandpa for us.

Love
Sonal & Annal