In 2023, I thought a lot about my Abaji, the greatest storyteller and listener

Published on 5 December 2023

My grandfather was the greatest storyteller. We think it’s because he crafted a big, extraordinary life for himself, weaving his painful and difficult chapters with joyous ones that seemed even more precious because he knew just how valuable time on this earth is. His life-story was filled with adoration, community and service to others. 

He loved to tell it and I loved to listen.

We called him Abaji, a combination of ‘aba’ the Urdu word for father, and ‘jee’ a term of endearment. Through his stories, he curated the experiences of his remarkable and well-lived life. He told me tales from his childhood as an orphan and his painful experience of the India/Pakistan partition when he lost his sister. After his policeman father died in a car accident while on duty, Abaji was given the responsibility of choosing a home for him and his siblings to live in as compensation. He asked for land instead, because he thought about the continued value it could bring if they grew crops. He was 14 years old. He studied for his exams under candlelight as a teenager and young adult, desperate to eventually move beyond his circumstances. He told me that he immigrated to the UK alone in the early 60s, with dreams of giving his wife and children a better life.

But Abaji was as good a listener as he was a storyteller, and his birthday cards proved it. Every year, he wrote a thoughtful, personal message for each family member. His beautifully cursive handwriting was too sophisticated for my eye, so I’d ask my mother to read it. Each year as she read me his lengthy messages filled with references to my achievements, hobbies and interests, I knew Abaji loved me, not just because he told me, but because he knew me. 

His messages showed he paid attention.

At the beginning of the year, Abaji was in and out of hospital. One night in early April, I burst into thick, hot tears when I realised I’d probably received my last ever birthday card from him. He died 3 weeks later. 

Searching for comfort, I dug out the birthday cards I’d collected over the years. I curled up in my mother’s lap and asked her to read them to me again. On my 21st, as I was completing my English degree, he wrote:

You are our dazzling star of the family. You must have studied Shakespeare, John Keats and Wordsworth more than anybody else. You should not have any trouble in finding a fine lecturer job in a college. Your cakes are becoming famous among everybody. You may like to have a bakery part time.

At the end of one of his messages, he wrote, ‘I love you more than you can think of’. 

I sobbed. I tried to challenge Abaji’s assertion in my mind, to properly understand how much he loved me. I cried harder. In that moment I felt I would never feel a love so uncomplicated again. I had lost one of the last unconditional and truly simple relationships in my life, unburdened by the weight of expectations.

It’s my birthday today, my first without Abaji. I keep waiting for my mother to read me my 26th birthday card from him.

I’ve found my birthday difficult the last few years. I never feel like I’m where I’m supposed to be in life, and that elusive question of ‘who I am’ never seems to be answered. For the first time though, I’m now comfortable with the notion that finding that answer is a disappearing horizon. I’ve realised that the unchangeable, most precious personal signifier I will ever hold was given to me the day I was born: I am Abaji's granddaughter. He’ll always bring me back to myself. I know that he was mine, and I was his.

In the months following his death, I’ve realised I paid attention to Abaji in the same way that he’d paid attention to me. When I watch something on the news, I know how he would’ve reacted to it. If I throw my hair up right on the top of my head, I know he would’ve playfully laughed at how silly I look. When I take a biscuit from the tin, I know he would’ve coaxed me to take more. His death taught me that when you really know someone, your relationship with them continues long after they’re gone. 

So although I’d give anything for another birthday card today, I don’t need one. I know what it would’ve said.

Abaji died on 27 April 2023. He was orphaned at 14, a boy without a family. At 89 years old, on his last night on this earth, all of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren struggled to fit around his hospital bed. 

Abaji’s was the original story, the beginning of everything. All of our stories will always begin with him. I hope we’re able to tell them as well as he did.