Chachi

Everyone was calling her Chachi. So I dared not ask or speak to her while she was smoking her beedi.

Beedi, what's that — you say?

Mohanlal Patel, a Gujarati, had a light bulb moment when he hand-rolled the leaf of Tendu tree, filled it with tobacco mixture, tied it with a thread, and started first commercial production in the nineteenth century.

Who knew more than a century later, a fragrance of dried Tendu and tobacco unwrapped from the pack of No. 88 beedi — her favourite brand — would be the first thing Bimlawati would smell as she wakes up perhaps with an understanding of the meaning of life.

Bimlawati! who dat — you ask?

I saw the name Bimlawati with a matchstick sketch of children tattooed on her forearm as she switched her Beedi smoking hand to take a puff.

I assumed her name was Bimlawati or could be the name of her childhood best friend when they had each other name monogrammed in a sisterhood pact.

Or it could be her daughter's name to show how much she loves her and that she wishes to be a child again so they can play together.

With all these thoughts, I reflected, she's not threatening at all — she's like a teddy bear — a beedi smoking teddy bear, that is!

Before I could gather the courage to ask — she had a moment of clarity and said —

(Find out what she said in the following video post)