May Cordeiro 4th Aug 1918 - 30th Jan 2009

My grandmother May died last year in January.

Success or the sum of a person is usually measured in how much that person has accumulated, how many awards have been received and what the rest of the world thinks of the same. I would rather look at my grandmother’s life not as a list of achievements, but more as a work of art. A painting maybe, smudges included.

Everyone who knows "Mama May" well knows how she raised her children alone in Bangalore for many years while her husband worked in the gulf, in days when there was no email or cell phones. How she handled bankruptcy and the loss of her home to a tenant who decided to force the sale of her home to him. How she looked after anyone ill in the family with devotion and perseverance. How she made life hell for some people also. Moving, repeated loss and slow resurrection.

moving out of the brigade road house, for the last time

I'm trying to cut a very long 90-year-old story very short here, and it’s difficult to squeeze a lifetime of memories and conversations with her into a few paragraphs. To express memories that also involved smells, feelings and other intangibles. I would like to speak of her as I recall her truly and maybe this can illustrate her humanity and at times, lack of it, all of which played such an important part in my early life.

My earliest memory of my grandmother was of Yardley powder and the smell of dog. The smell of Yardley powder filled my nostrils as she carried me, held me in her arms and walked about her home on residency road. Walking fast, in the earlier years. May Cordeiro was not the sweet doting grandmother you read about in children's books. She was much better and worse than that.

I remember horrific cocktails of ragi porridge, egg and Waterbury's compound which I was forced to eat with threats of "ill tie it to your stomach if you don't eat it". I recall her fights with my quieter grandfather who enjoyed his drinks a bit too much, according to my grandmother. They were numerous arguments and she could be mean and relentless, and she aged so fast when he died.

I remember my grandmothers numerous dogs, being bitten by them and never learning and still playing with them thinking i would not get bitten and getting mauled again. Like so many Daisy Buchannans. Brandy with milk for the dogs and a yelling for the grandfather, every night. She would attend to my dog bite wounds with liberal amounts of undiluted dettol and bits of cactus which she heated on a flame and tied to the weeping teeth holes.

Pogo

Marchello A.K.A. Macho

She loved her dogs, maybe more than people sometimes. Neil wrote me and told of a time when he stepped on a dog turd. My grandmother said "Shit happens, deal with it". It doesn't sound like her as she did not have that American experience of the line, was incredibly proper and never said the word shit. She was so careful with her words, but it's a story I like, even though it's probably not true.

Macho, the miniature doberman was 23 years old here

I remember sitting with her at housie at Catholic club, surrounded by what she referred to as "her gang" and she being overly thrilled when I won 50 rupees and asking me to get her a whiskey " a large one please" which she whispered so no one could hear. I recall her playing the piano, while I stood by getting poked in the ribs if I messed with the keys. She was an accomplished piano player with all kinds of degrees but later on in life she refused to play because she was afraid her arthritic fingers would miss notes and that she would make a mistake.

May and her children

I remember her whacking with a broom a cart driver for setting the tail of an exhausted bullock on With 90 year old Mrs. Kamath from down the road she called the police on the man and brought the cow into the house to prevent it being led away. Later I was instructed to help Narayani the maid clean up a large pile of cow dung which I did before we went inside for a lunch of beef curry and rice. I had felt sorry for the cart driver as he looked tired and small and sickly.

Recently in December 2008 she has asked me many times to come over as she wanted to give me old photographs as I was interested in archiving them and finding out about the people in them. She called me several times but I postponed the visit and even when I visited I left them behind because I felt she was preparing herself for death. I told my parents a few days before she died what i felt but they felt I was being overly concerned.

On Ulsoor lake in Bangalore in the 50's

May Cordeiro was not a physical touchy feely kind of person. She was only affectionate with her dogs. I recall her sitting with a relative who had a troubled marriage and holding her hand once though. I hugged her at Leisha and Chris's wedding a couple of weeks before she died and it was a proper hug. This time she hugged back and held me very close for a long time. I told her I loved her and my heart broke when I said so, for the first time in so long, and she said so as well. So important this, to tell people you love them, when they're live. I recall how tiny and fragile she felt in my arms. We were surrounded by the legacy of so many of the family from all over the world, 13 grandchildren and one great grandchild.

"I'am tired of this noise Ryan, take me home"

Great grand child

After her eye operation a few years ago

I stood by her hospital bed as she lay there in a coma and as she died and talked long and earnestly to her about things I cannot repeat. Her heart monitor faltered as i spoke . I held her arm as she died and was profoundly present, with all my senses. Outside things went on as usual and cars honked and nurses walked by and when I walked to the window a flock of parakeets shot by like green comets, just like the flock I had seen the day before from the same window.

I do know of her failures with people she loved and I do know of a few of her successes. I know to some extent a little of her childhood and the traumas of relocating from war and violence in Iran. My mothers story of looking out of her window and seeing a British man being dragged alive behind a jeep and my grandmother slapping her to stop her screaming.

She, May, was abandoned by her parents at a relatives house in Goa for 2 years as a small child, and they did not tell her and left for Africa with her brother. This was something she spoke of with a trembling lower lip, 85 years after the fact. What makes us be who we are and how important our present moments are. And what power we have to sow whatever it is we sow.

Most of all I remember holding her and she holding me back.

I know that her mother, my great grand mother (Avo) had carried May in her womb, on a ship that suffered a cholera epidemic from Africa, to India, to undergo a kidney removal or die. The dead were buried at sea, dropped into a warm shark filled ocean from a stinking ship and I can only imagine those endless windless terrifying days. Avo survived and underwent the operation after trekking halfway across the country when there were no tarred roads, while pregnant with my grandmother.

Many years later my mother randomly met the son of the american doctor who had conducted the operation and saved the life of both my grandmother and her mother. What courage, what resilience and faith would have propelled this woman to survive that. And what of the child in her womb? Would May Cordeiro, suspended in the womb have felt her trepidation and terror, resillience and courage? And how much a part of her would they have become.

And how much of me?