Life Lessons from My Granny: Embracing Open Palms

My granny spoke Tamil. We replied in English. Very often, her lessons came in hand gestures.

The one I recall with great fondness is her showing open palms. "If you keep your fist closed, you cannot give anything away, you also cannot receive anything." That's such a simple philosophy. If I had an audience like the motivational gurus Deepak Chopra and Robin Sharma, I could surely turn that idea into a best-selling book, podcasts and maybe even tell Felicia Mabuza-Suttle.

As the candles on my cake make bigger flames with each birthday, I've come to realise that all of the finest life lessons were already taught to us. A friend visiting from the United States shared wisdom that he gathered from his father, who travelled from India so that he could die in his son's home.

I'm not very good at remembering the finer details in tearjerker stories, but I grasped something along the lines of our human ages. From birth until seven, a father teaches his children values and habits that can never be unlearned. Stuff like brushing one's teeth before bed or standing up to shake hands. Just the other day, I took our elder son to the Beach Cafe for breakfast to celebrate his birthday. "I'll get that, Dad," he insisted when the bill came. We didn't do the Durban Indian man thing of fighting in the restaurant. He always pays.

"You know, son," I reminded him, "when we stayed in hotels, you and your brother would grab the room service menu the moment we got into the room and make a play about signing the bill with huge tips." Needless to say, it was my credit card that groaned when it came to checking out of the hotel. I'm happy to see that the boys have continued their healthy tipping habits. As a teenager, I worked in Durban hotels where tips made up for the starvation wages. In their open-handed tipping, my boys pay it forward for the kindness their father was shown a half century earlier. 

The second epoch, our friend related was from seven until twenty-one, when the father becomes the banker funding everything from education, to drinking binges to computer games and fancy clothes. Read father as both parents and guardians, as mothers and relatives fill those roles too. The third phase is from twenty-one onwards, when the father becomes the guru to the grown child, imparting wisdom as our American friend's father did on his deathbed. I fancy myself as a little too youthful and mischievous to be imparting great wisdom. At last count, when my son ordered an Americano with cream at 9am, I countered with a chilled draft. He dutifully followed suit.

"Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose", meaning the more things change, the more they stay the same. There are many better lessons I wish they had learned from their maternal grandfather, who, even as he approaches his 90th year, ensures that he exercises every day and is bathed and dressed at the crack of dawn. My own grandmother had never been invited into a classroom.

Her signature was a cross on a piece of government paper. Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren carry higher degrees, but Kanniamma Govindarajulu had far greater wisdom. She always had open palms. When there was a death in the neighbourhood, she quietly slipped the bereaved family paper money towards the funeral expenses at a time when five rand was a tank of petrol. Her money was carried in a pouch tucked into the waist of her white sari.

She handed her entire home to struggling relatives without concern for the rent. Her home on Road 327 in Chatsworth never had an empty pot. Imagine all the people living in peace with open palms. Naidoo is a local writer open to invitations anytime this Christmas season. He may be reached on 0829408163 or www.madeindurban.co.za.