First Empowered Woman I knew - “Bibi”
Bibi - Smt. Jagdish Rani, 1933 - 2020 I lost my grandmother yesterday - a woman who was so progressive and ahead of her time in her thinking and ideas, it startled me sometimes. I accepted what had happened, she was about 88 years of age but it took me a lot of time to understand the gravity of loss. This comes in the times of Coronavirus pandemic restrictions and almost two years after my grandfather’s demise. While I live in Melbourne, and grandmother lives with my parents in Chandigarh, I was constantly in touch with my youngest cousin over the course of these 5 hours. After a week of feeling a bit more unwell than usual at her age, she woke up, my father gave her morning medicines, she had a few sips of her morning tea, with a lot of difficulty and then she just could not breathe anymore. My father, who is extremely close to her knew in his heart what had just happened but called an ambulance and also called my cousin. And then within a span of 4-5 hours, the cremation ...