story

I don’t have a close relationship with my grandmothers as is found in many Indian households. My paternal grandmother spoke mostly Sadri and was shy to speak in Hindi even if she knew it. We didn’t speak much as I mostly spoke Assamese with my uncles and aunts. However, she is a hard-working yet calm lady. She used to cook meals with organically grown food in the semi-urban area that they were at. Whenever my uncles visited Guwahati from Dhekiajuli (Sonitpur), I would request them to bring some rice rotis prepared by my grandma. My dad had a transferable job. As long as he was in service, it was difficult moving about dogs. So we kept our dogs at our grandmother’s place. She was incredibly affectionate towards them.

My materal grandmother was a nurse who worked till superannuation. When my sister and I were little children, she used to get us candies and give us some money before leaving, back to Hatiali (Chabua) from Guwahati. Unlike my paternal grandmother, there were no language barriers with my maternal grandmother. Even then, we spoke less and only to the extent that was required.

My grandfather was a good story teller. He would ask me to sit down and express the story as it proceeded and even animate it to a great extent. I was a merely a child when he told be the story of the Tower of Babel. I only realised it when I was old enough to started going for Catechism classes in school.

With his deep voice, he modulated the narration and use the Lego blocks I was playing with to help me capture the story into my memory.

The story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) in the Bible is as we know it, a story of the people desiring to build a tower so high that they could reach heaven, with a common belief that the heavens are in the sky. The people brought stone bricks and bitumen mortar and got to work.

My grandfather kept joining the Lego blocks and built a towerlike structure as he spoke. He said,”Then the people wanted wanted to buid the tower high and higher. Finally when they thought that they had almost reached, they fired and arrow to the sky.”

The people who worked to build the tower spoke and understood the same language. Then my grandfather continued, “Then God confused them by making them understand and speak different languages.”

The tower of babel remained incomplete and the people’s arrogance shattered.

The tower was incomplete, but the world got its many languages to spread across the earth and live everywhere, creating civilizations, cultures and stories thoughout history.