I remember Ajee’s hands. The forefinger and the middle finger on her right hand were deformed. They were shorter than their corresponding fingers on her left hand and had a lump each, like they had been cut and knotted. On one of my trips with her to the corn grinding mill, she told me their story.

Her fingers had come under the pestle of the dhiki, when she was removing corn from underneath it. But that’s all I know about the story. I never asked her if her bones had been broken then. If her fingers had bled. If blood had spilled over the corn that was

being beaten down into flour. Whether someone had helped her bandage her wound. How long it took to heal. If she wept. If she waited to gather the remaining corn or to finish grinding. If the corn was still edible. If the person who was footing the grinder had stopped and run to her aid. I never asked her any of those questions while she was alive. But I wonder now.

I remember the mill by the stream. Or was it a river? It ran under the road, near the Bouddha gate. I would stop sometimes at the bridge to look down. Water gurgled under the bridge. A bamboo grove rambled by the bank. And next to the grove was the mill. The mill was inside a large open space. The roof stood on wooden poles. No doors or windows.  The floor was always covered in corn flour, wheat, husks, leftovers of whatever grinding activity had gone on in the space.

If I stopped at the bridge, Ajee would turn around and motion at me to keep following, the wicker basket resting on her waist. I would follow. And then sit down on the mud floor of the mill, swept clean in red clay, and watch.

Dhyak. Dhyak. Dhyak. Dhyak. It would go, as Ajee shoved the corn under the grinder and cradled it out as it turned into powder. It was a tricky task. And one had to be deft at it. She had to be good at this. Ajee had to sync her timing to that of the woman who stood on the other end of the see-saw grinder, knocking it up and down with one leg. It was like they were at some game, making music, wiping perspiration off their brows, talking in phrases. There was conversation about the town and its folks. It was mostly small talk. Who brought what to grind that day. How much more to grind in the next few hours.

I wonder if Ajee felt a fear when she brushed the corn from under the dhiki. Would it come down on her fingers again? Did she fear that every time she went back to that place?

There was also a jaanto at the mill. Ajee used a smaller version of it at home. Two massive rounded stones piled atop one another. The lentil would go down the hole on the top of it and a wooden lever affixed to the stone slab on the top would have to be rotated to grind. Ajee moved it like it were a toy. I would watch in awe at how it went round and round and round, as she bent over them and moved them in concentric circles. The lentil would fall from between the slabs, now transformed into dust.

On some occasions, I would try to emulate Ajee at the grinder. I couldn’t even move the stone.

Ajee’s fingers moved swiftly.

She chopped on the back of a chulesi that was shaped like a tall bird. Sometimes on a bigger one that had a wooden bottom with a machete sticking out of it. She chopped fast, gliding the buffalo meat over the sharp edge. Sometimes I feared she would mistakenly glide her fingers against it instead. But I liked to watch her at these activities. Her fingers would be smeared in the blood of the dead buffalo when she cut meat. Or some other animal—whatever was on the menu that day.

But Ajee’s fingers were swiftest when she knitted. There were balls and spools of knitting yarn in a small wicker basket always placed at the window. When she wasn’t cooking or grinding corn, she would sit at the shop, doing business. And while she waited for customers to show up, her fingers would move swiftly to knit. The twin needles nestled between her fingers, her left hand holding the row that had just been pulled into a row of loops. Her right hand held the needle that was stitching the loops. She had a peculiar way of holding them. A technique I have never seen anyone else use while knitting. The yarn was always spun around the little finger of the right hand, and then anchored on her index finger. The index would tug at the yarn, to wrap it on the needle, so it could create a loop and interlock. As the knitting progressed, a new row of loops were pulled through the existing ones. The gaining needle became richer by loops as the stitching continued. There was so much silence in those movements.

Sometimes, her scarred fingers would bump against the needle, but she would pause and then knit faster to make up for lost time. It took her only a little more than a full day to knit a sweater. If it was a slow day at the shop, she would finish one, a day. The sweaters had all kinds of patterns. Some looked like snowflakes. Ribbing for background and Irish-knit and cable patterns embossed against it. Everyone in the family had at least one sweater in these patterns. In between knitting, she did brisk business, handing out items to her customers, collecting money, handing out change and settling down to knit again.

It is strange that when I think of the activities that were a part of Ajee’s days, I mostly see images of her hands. Her fingers, always busy. Her hands, always moving. Earning money and cutting down costs, so that her children could have a life, less harsh than her own. Ajee’s awkward fingers in movement, is my permanent memory of her. Her hands quietly weaving colourful patterns out of what was initially nothing more than a strand of knitting yarn, is my favourite. It felt like magic.