A dear cousin

P was the youngest of four daughters. Their dad died young and their mother, a madisar-clad, convent English-speaking widow, struggled to bring them up, though aided amply by the extended family.

P was apparently a spoilt child. She was said to have been rude as a child and brash as a teenager. While her sisters vegetated with matrimony, nobody got P married off, thanks to niggling health problems. I’m not sure what exactly the problems were and what course of treatment, if any, was taken.

Anybody else in her shoes might have grown into a dejected spinster but P was made of better stuff. She taught at a school, bought sarees and jewels and watched Kannada movies with equal vigor. She was the soul of any function in the family. Golus were incomplete without her ‘Lakshmi baramma’. I particularly recall the oonjal event of weddings. While the mami brigade would drone out ‘Ponnoojnal aadi irundaal’ and ‘Maalai maattrinal’ (smug with the innovation of replacing ‘Kodhai’ with the bride’s name), P would belt out Mukesh and Rafi numbers and stun the sammandhi party. What her songs lacked in shruthi, they made up for in sheer zest and joy.

Her sisters disliked her. Her brothers-in-law hated her. She was forthright and rude, remember? The extended family just about tolerated her.

Her mother’s greatest worry was her own impending death – after all, she was in her late 80s. Who would care for P, who had neither money nor sibling love, after her mother’s death? P’s aunts and uncles pitched in regularly, but such aid could hardly be termed dependable in the long term.

A few months ago, P contracted an illness. Again, I don’t know the specifics. To her mother, the illness appeared a godsend. She wouldn’t hospitalize P because: (a) She did not have the funds (b) She was too old and frail to play attendant at the hospital (c) If P passed away, she wouldn’t have to worry about her anymore, and could look forward to a peaceful end herself.

Eventually, P died. Tongues wagged on how the mother let the daughter go. The mother was too relieved to pay attention to any of this.

And then came the shocker. It turned out that P had been sitting on a neat pile. She had saved her paltry salary so much that she left behind a tidy sum, plus a sizeable amount of jewelry. Sister, BILs and extended family have now scrambled into financial wizards mode.

So here come the questions – Why wasn’t her money used to treat her? Her mother surely must have known about it? Was the old lady so anxious about her daughter that she would rather see her die than carry on with an orphaned life after her own death?

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Dear P, this is to let you know I genuinely liked you. Yes, you were often irritating and occasionally obnoxious but then who isn’t? But tell me, P, why, why didn’t you write a will? I’m sure you would’ve wanted your school kids or maid or laundry boy or cobbler to inherit it. From up there, or wherever you are now, how can you stand by and watch the family paw your hard-earned money?

Anyway, RIP.