An Ode to My Grandmère
Do you remember your grandmother for her culinary skills, or for her sharp, unyielding mind? My paati (my father's mother) could transform the simplest of ingredients into something unforgettable, her labor quietly sustaining everyone around her. But that is not how I remember her. To me, she was brilliance wrapped in resilience, a woman who thought deeply, questioned instinctively, and lived on her own terms long before such language existed. She was stopped from going to school but that did not step her from learning. With only fragments of help from her brother, she taught herself to read and write Tamil, patiently, stubbornly, letter by letter. She would go on to read books and quench her thirst for knowledge. She grew up with a single father, her mother having passed away in childbirth. Her father never remarried, very rare in that day and age for a man. Instead, he poured his quiet protectiveness into raising her. Perhaps that is where she first learned what it meant to stan...