Krystyna · by Ankita Mahabir

No matter how far ahead you move in life,
Your travels are never too far behind.

Every now and then, my mind wanders back to the summer I spent as an intern in Europe. I was working in an old age home in a tiny city in Poland called Kielce, which is where I met Krystyna.

It was an odd relationship to begin with. I spoke no Polish and she could not speak English. There was a difference of over four decades between us. The one thing though which we had in common was our animated “Czech” or hello. And that is how we first became friends.

Gradually I began to pick up Polish, mostly out of necessity than for the proverbial thirst of knowledge. I understood that she liked hot tea, had never been married, her elder brothers live close by, her mother lived by the seaside and that this was the lifestyle she had chosen for herself and preferred.

She wanted to see what my parents looked like and in return carefully, showed me black and white pictures of the days when in her words she was “As young as me”. Occasionally we would need someone to translate for us, but for the most part we were perfectly all right. We were completely different shades of colours that create the perfect portrait. We would often have the most wonderful conversations, and at times we weren’t even sure whether the other person had understood us entirely, but that didn’t matter.

I remember this one particular day we took a walk together to the nearby stores. Krystyna, wearing her little hat with her cane basket in which she collected flowers and me in my night suit sulking about the bland polish food and how hungry I was. Being Indian, I am used to whole lot of spices and polish food was anything but spicy. During the walk Krystyna bought some Frytki, (Polish for French fries) and once we got back home we said our goodnights and I went to my room. A little while later, she called me from my room and took me to the dining hall. There I saw two plates, a bowl of French fries and chilly sauce in the middle (which I later got to know she had made herself) complete with two glasses of coke to accompany our wonderful meal. Just to add some spice in your life here she said. We sat down together to eat and she asked me whether I had a boyfriend, what I did back in India, who my friends were and told me about her friends, jobs, and all the men “she twirled on her little finger”. We giggled and laughed the entire night like two teenage girls at a sleepover.

There were several other people in the home who I cared for and about. Whether it was the World War 2 Air Force Pilot Henry, Alexander to whom I gave all the boiled pork off my plate to or Eliena whose hair I always styled. But Krystyna was definitely special. We were always looking for each other in the corridors or in the dining hall, to catch each other’s eye, wave animatedly and laugh at one of our latest jokes. The age difference, our nationalities or our lack of command over each other’s language just did not seem to matter.

It has been quite a while since I came back from Kielce and my mind always wanders back to that pale yellow walled building with the bright red roof. Krystyna will always remain close to my heart. Ours was not one of those much written about relationships where one person teaches the other the greatest lessons of life. We were friends, confidantes, and we touched each other’s lives little by little everyday. She was a mother to me in a city thousands of kilometers away from my own mother. Having no children of her own, she called herself my “Polski Mama”.

I promised I would write or at least call. Emailing is not an option for Krystyna’s generation as she claimed, and unfortunately letter writing is a near extinct option for me. An admission I am not proud to make. While the intention of writing to her is always there, sadly intention alone is not enough. As of now I have forgotten almost all the Polish that came to me so easily that summer.

Maybe tomorrow I will pick up a pen or dial the home’s number and ask for her. I often imagine our conversations. Maybe I will have to apologize or worse remind her who I am. Maybe it is the fear of knowing that holds me back. I know that no matter what, the bond we created that summer overcoming all obstacles was so strong that soon we will be talking again like before, like the friends we were and for a brief moment I will be back in Kielce. I often revisit our conversations and realize now that at the end of the recollection that the summer in Kielce will not just be close behind me, but forever within me.