Before I left to London, it was always a wish to gift Ammachi something special. She always said that only until I was a woman, I would wear sarees. I picked up the sarees from her wardrobe and visited some of the most important places in her life.
She may never say,” I love you,” she never has to. We all just know. This may perhaps be the shortest chapter. 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.
Four days before her sister’s wedding, they lost their mother. My grandmother had a wedding and a funeral on her shoulders. She put on the bravest face and a dull colored saree to the wedding, she was now the mother of all.
I once read, “A woman armed with ancestral wisdom is an unstoppable force.” Kerala was never easy, and she never made it easier. You may take this in the wrong sense, but my grandmother showed me the hardships of how a society works.
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.”
