Chapter 5 - Lalaji (my great grandfathers) and Sameer's birth

Index of Journals

Grandma had been to US in the year 1997. It was winters, final days of December. It was for ten days, and grandma returned here after the New Year. Sameer was born a week later on 8 January 1998.

After grandma returned, she didn’t find the diaries in which she had written about the family generations, starting from the lowest, uncle (Yashvir Singh Jain), dad (Babbu), to the great grand fathers of grandpa. It had very minute facts about them, which cannot be retold or recollected from memory. 

The blame went on aunt (Seema) and mom (Sadhana) for misplacing it, or throwing it away in trash. Aunt had verbally shot back if she was being blamed of stealing. Then grandma made clear that there was not money it the diary, that she would blame for stealing, it just had some information that was both important and personal to her. Along with the diaries, chachi had also misplaced a large silver-coin with the figure of god on it; it was given to grandma by chachaji.

Grandma would be never name grandpa’s father and grandpa’s grandfather; she believes that it is disrespectful. Grandpa would use ‘LALAJI’ before the name of his father and his two uncles; it was also out of respect. Over time, Lalaji had become a synonym to refer to any of the great grandfathers for me; it was never clear to me how to differentiate one from other.