I used to wear this silver chain around my neck that Saddy gave me on my birthday in 2003. It had a pendant with my initials engraved on it with a heart. I am sure anybody who saw me wearing it thought that I was probably in love with myself.

Then last year when my Nani passed away, I put her ring in the chain as well. Those two ornaments are my very precious keepsakes. I had given my grandmother that ring some eight years back. It was an ordinary ring with some pattern engraved on it. It was actually given to me by my mother’s friend who got it for me from Madinah but it was big for my fingers. So I asked my nani if she wanted it and she took it. She never took it off and my cousin’s used to tell me that though they often bribed her to take it off, she never did. She used to say that the ring reminded her of me.

Years passed and the color faded, the engravings vanished but she still wore it. The day she passed away and I and a couple of other ladies gave her the final ‘Ghusl’. I remember a lady pointing to her finger sayin’ that the ring needed to be taken off. I told her to go ahead but no matter how hard the lady tried, the ring just wouldn’t come off. I then tried to take it off and it just slipped into my fingers. It was then that I realized that it was the ring I had given to her.

The ring is still big for my fingers so I have been wearing it with the chain and the pendant saddy gave me. That chain broke today and so for the first time in a very long time, I feel as if my nani is away from me.

I miss both my Nani and Nana ji very much. There are so many times when something happens and I think instantly that I will tell it to both of them. And there have been so many times in the previous 18 months that when something goes wrong, I think that this happened because my nani isn’t here to pray for me.

I wrote a poem when my grandfather passed away and I remember that when I recited it to my Nani, she and I both cried.

And when I come upon,
Flowers you grew so tenderly
I try to find you
And you're not there
Then I'll follow my heart
& Remember you as I last saw you,
With that heavenly smile playing on your lips
Shining in your eyes
I'll find you resting there
And I'll kneel and say a prayer
To let you know how I always felt
But never said
I loved you then and I love you still
I'll watch you sleep peacefully
And wait for the day
When your smile will warm my heart again.
And yet, I have never been able to write anything for my Nani, I miss her too terribly to confine what I feel in words.