The Grandmother in the Cold Tower

In the cold winter of an old year, in a small town called Sirhind, an old woman and two small boys were led up a narrow staircase to the top of an open tower.

The woman's name was Mata Gujri. She was seventy-eight years old. Her hair was very white and her hands were thin, but her back was very straight.

The boys were her grandsons. The older one was Zorawar Singh. He was nine. The younger one was Fateh Singh. He was seven.

The stone floor of the tower was open to the sky. There was no roof. There was no fire. The wind came in through every side at once, and the night smelled of snow.

The soldiers slammed the wooden door at the bottom of the staircase and bolted it.

Little Fateh Singh looked up at his grandmother.

"Dadi," he said. "It is cold."

Mata Gujri sat down on the icy floor and opened her shawl. She pulled both boys gently into the curve of her body, one under each arm. She wrapped the shawl around all three of them.

"There," she said. "Now it is less cold."

The boys pressed against her. She could feel the small hard buttons of their shoulder blades through their thin clothes.

Zorawar Singh, who was older and quieter, said, "Will they hurt us tomorrow, Dadi?"

Mata Gujri did not answer the question. Instead she said, "Tell me what you can see in the sky."

He looked up. The clouds had parted a little. A few stars were showing.

"Stars," he said.

"How many?"

He counted. "Seven."

"Good," she said. "Seven is a good number. Your great-grandfather said it was the number of the saints."

Fateh Singh, who was younger, tugged at her shawl.

"Dadi," he whispered. "Tell me a story."

"I will tell you the warmest one I know," she said.

And she began.

She told them, very quietly, the way one talks under a thick quilt, about a man named Nanak who had walked across the world with a friend and a small drum, singing one song everywhere he went. The song, she said, was very simple. It said only that there was one Light, and it lived in every breathing thing, and no one could put it out.

The boys listened.

She told them about a man named Arjan who had sat on hot iron and smiled, because he could feel the same Light under his skin.

The wind moved the corner of her shawl. She tucked it back down.

She told them about their own father, who they had not seen in many weeks. She told them how he had once, when he was their age, climbed onto a horse that was too big for him because his grandfather had said, the small one can do it.

"Was Babaji not afraid?" asked Fateh.

"He was a little afraid," said Mata Gujri. "That is how he knew it was worth doing."

The stars moved across the small open square of the tower's top.

After a long time, when Fateh's voice grew sleepier, he asked, in the way small children ask the only question that matters —

"Dadi, will we go home?"

Mata Gujri took a breath. She held it. She let it out.

"My little tiger," she said. "There are two homes. There is the house where your mother is making the dough for tomorrow's roti. And there is the bigger house, the one with no walls, where the Light lives. We will be in one of those by morning. Either way, we are going home."

Fateh thought about that. Then he said, very seriously, "Both are warm?"

"Both are very warm," she said.

He nodded against her side and slept.

Zorawar, who was older, stayed awake a little longer. He looked up at his grandmother's face in the starlight. He saw that her eyes were wet, but her mouth was steady.

"Dadi," he whispered.

"Yes, my brave one."

"If I am afraid in the morning, can I hold your hand?"

She smiled. "You can hold my hand any morning," she said. "You can hold my hand even when you are old."

He closed his eyes.

The old woman sat very still in the open tower, with the two small heads against her ribs and the small drum of three hearts beating together under one shawl. She looked up at the slow turning of the stars and did not feel cold at all.

Little mother, your body tonight is a shawl that the small one is sleeping inside. You do not have to make the world safe. You only have to make yourself warm — your voice warm, your breath warm, your slow steady hand on your belly warm. That warmth is the home they will remember.

No bitter night, no open tower, no long winter can put out the small light you are carrying. It is older than the cold. It is older than the wind. It is the same Light that the old woman in the tower kept burning, under one shawl, for two small boys, all the way to morning.