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Till now, none of us knows why the Putheth home is famously called Ammachi house, and so as the mystery behind why the house’s front door is never closed.
There’s never been a dull evening in her house, and that’s how I grew to learn about my family. My grandmother has six sisters, and I surprisingly know one or more things about each one of them. From which color they find abhorrent for a saree, to one of their favourite tennis players, which one likes their pulisheri* extra sour or even which one occasionally hides a prawn pickle bottle in her cupboard. How do I know? It’s been sixty years since she’s been married. Till now, all of her siblings, children and grandchildren still drive up to her home and live up to the promise of brotherhood and sisterhood despite how life goes on. Now I have a huge family I grew close to beyond a Christmas party. Just like that open door, she showed loving never lies within that comfort zone.
She may never say,” I love you,” she never has to. We all just know. This may perhaps be the shortest chapter of them all. Only because Ammachi believes that love is pointless if only talked about or even boastfully shown. It’s something that ought to live in you.
Despite being in Kochi for five years and even though our homes were ten minutes apart, I wasn’t the granddaughter who always drove to my grandma’s place to be with her. She isn’t the grandma who dotes on me and shares stories into the night. She fascinated me with how she always kept herself busy and more importantly made it a point to be there for everyone family and friends. It was always a joke, that she has a solar panel on her back and she loves to be and learn under the sun. And every time I walked in with my pencil skirt, she’d have a thing or two to say. Or times I drove in very late after a long meeting at work, she’ll never ask why but have supper ready. Her warm eyes always say, “You deserve this after a long day.” And in her greatest company she always has the wittiest lines at the tip of her tongue, and then I remember why I started to write. My mother knows that I always have an odd connection with her and it’s only her who can only articulately say, “Her grandmother is always her secretive muse.”
See my Ammachi is not the woman, who’ll sit and untangle the knots in your hair, and sieve the comb through your worshipped hair, and she won’t braid it with some spare ribbons from the cut cloth by her sewing machine. She’ll leave it all to you.
“It’s all up to you,” you whisper to yourself.
Ten years, it took me to understand why she never handed me the comb.
Happy Birthday Ammachi
With love
Atheena - Molay (colloquial term for daughter)
79 IN TIME BY ATHEENA WILSON
01: PROLOGUE
02: WHEN WAS WHEN
03: TAKEN BY THE CURRENT
04: BEAUTY
05: IDENTITY
06: BRAVERY
07: LOVE
08: EPILOGUE
Run parallel, meet at intersections, skip a few lines, the line of thought has journeyed across a few latitudes and longitudes. To more miles before the big sleep. Cheers, Atheena
Its been a journey from being a young soul where I have felt only love but unaware of its importance in my life I searched for love all over and only felt pain, scars and reality but never true love I still keep searching.
If there’s anything that I have stolen from my grandmother’s shelf of knick-knacks is a spoonful of pickle and some sweet and sour sarcasm. And yes, thanks to that I landed a job as a writer in a magazine.
You wear a saree only when you become a woman.” It sounds like a sentimentally wise thing to say, but let me break it down to you. In other words, it also meant, “When you’re ripe enough for the marriage market.”
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KR Sunil goes beyond his frames to explore and discover soulful human stories. In this journey, he pursues a long forgotten life, that of a Tamil boy who endured the worst in a journey to Kerala. As the World Cup fever peaks, here is a story.
Presenting to you the most exciting project that we have worked on this year! A short film shot entirely on phone, this project has been a dream & after a lot of anticipation & hard work from all of us here, we are super duper excited to finally bring this to you!
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Life & Times of Amrita Sher-Gil
Amrita Sher-Gil, considered the mother of Indian modern painting, became known as the Indian Frida Kahlo. With her paintbrush she explored the sadness felt by people, especially women, in 1930s India, giving voice and validity to their experiences.
