She amazes me with her vigour. She astounds me with her zest for life. Only she happens to be eighty-something. She's my neighbour Usha's mother-in-law's mother-in-law -- paatti.

She can't see very well. And her hearing is worse. She is bent and shrivelled, but has all the energy to look after Usha's one-year-old daughter, Neha. Forget energy, she has the knack of keeping the baby happy and active - something Usha barely manages to do.

It is a delight to watch her with the baby. Quiet and introspective Neha listens intently as her paatti sings her songs and lullabies, carrying her on her hip all around the courtyard. The crow with the broken wing, the dull moon in the daylight, the passing car - all these become elements in Neha's education as her paatti points them out to her, crooning snatches of songs about them and introducing them to her.

Usha's in-laws always being away visiting their other sons and with Srikanth, her husband, away at work most of the time, Usha and the paatti are thrown together a lot. What happens between them, however, is another story altogether. Between being unable to trust her daughter to a half-blind and totally deaf old lady and her need to take out her frustrations on someone, Usha frequently vents her ire on the poor paatti, who being unable to hear most of what is said, and unable or unwilling to react to what little she can hear, quietly steals away to the courtyard, Neha on her hip. And thus begins another chapter in Neha's education.

I can hear her now outside my window - I think a crow is somewhere involved in the conversation between paatti and Neha.