The Blue Flask and Grandma

During a recent visit to my parents’ house I saw some very old stuff they had taken out of the loft after several years. And after nearly a decade I saw the Blue Flask, the first thermos flask I had ever known. A long, stripped light blue flask with the name Hammer Master written on it. I took the flask in my hands and the cap fell down. I laughed aloud, because the falling of the flask cap brought fresh memories of old times.
More than 25 years ago, my grandmother and I had carried this flask every day for a week to the hospital where my sister was admitted. She was a hardly four and she was hospitalized for an upset stomach. My parents stayed with my sister day and night and I was with my uncles, aunt and grandparents.
At 7 pm my grandmother would make supper and fill the flask with warm water and take them and me in an auto to the hospital. Being with grandma, even today can be embarrassing or amusing depending on the way one looks at the situation. She can bargain endlessly with any human to whom she has to hand out money. If she can do that emphatically now in her eighties imagine her vigour in her sixties. So she scolded and she cursed, she reasoned and she pleaded with the auto-driver to reduce the charges for our hospital trip. I can simply recite from memory the words she used for bargaining with the auto drivers, I chuckled then and I chuckle now. When the bargaining was over and the money actually left her hand (Phew! ), we got down from the auto to start moving towards the hospital. 'Tat-da da tat', there was a noise 'what was that Hannahma?' my grandma asked. 'The flask's cap','it has fallen down' I screamed. Together we crawled all over the auto and under it without letting the poor auto-driver drive away. The auto-driver would panic thinking my grandma would take back some of the money she had just handed him. After five minutes that seemed to last for an hour we found the cap and went into the hospital.
The next day, we would call out for another auto and my grandmother scolded and cursed, reasoned and pleaded for reduction in auto charges. And just when the money left her hands the cap left the flask. I started enjoying this. So I giggled, crawling up and down the auto in search of the flask cap as my grandmother lamented loudly and the auto driver accelearted his throttle impatiently. Then when we were back home I enacted the whole drama to my uncles and laughed so much. Grandma is a good sport so she laughed too but she ensured that the cap never fell off from the flask again.

Having relived those funny moments, I bent down, took the cap and screwed it back tight on the flask.

In a couple of weeks, the then four-year old sister will be walking down the aisle in church in bridal garments. Grumbling grandma will be gleaming grandma at her favourite grand daughter's wedding. Thanks to the many cars her sons own, some fortunate auto-driver will have a peaceful evening that day.