[09] Is It Okay That I Grew Up?

06 Apr, 2024

My writing desk arrived. I know because I helped carry it up to the top floor. After sweating my way up the stairs, my fiancé (much stronger) and I placed it in the Perfect Place Where the Sun Shines Most Beautifully in the Afternoons (the lounge). Despite the huffing and catching of breaths, I beamed. I felt like a grown-up — and a bloody successful one at that.

While choosing things to put in it with surgical precision, my hands picked up the potli ¹ of kunkuma ², and my feet carried me straight back to the new desk. Carefully placing the bundle of holy vermillion in the centremost cubby, I noticed that I'd also included my grandmother's one and only letter to me.

That letter is over 10 years old, written on the back of some old French grammar homework. Ironically, I was learning passé composé (past tense) at the time.

Memory, Erased.

When she wrote this, I was just a child, but Nanamma was always my grandmother. She had the most curly hair I'd ever run a comb through — I remember because she never let me comb her hair after I let it get stuck in her curls. She prayed twice a day, with special madi ³on Fridays, when she would wash herself and her gods and remind me not to touch her without first bathing (I would always sneak behind her and poke her soft sides and run away as she feigned annoyance). She made the most delicious food for me and always prepared gulab jamun on my birthdays and payasam (without raisins) when I had exams. I know it was always for me because she said so. She always prayed before I left the house and would walk me to the front door after placing a small kunkuma bottu ⁴ under my regular sticker bottu to wish me well. I like to think that her prayers still protect me today...but perhaps I have no right to anymore.

I'd never known her to be anything else, but she'd known me to be an angry newborn, a naughty toddler, and a little girl who grew into a quiet teenager. Since she wrote this letter to me in Telugu, I only understood her words when my grandfather translated them. But it was written with love. I'm certain of it, actually, because she said so.

I wonder what it's like to be an elder. Do they know the kids in their care will metamorphose? Will they survive when those kids let down the side as they grow? Or will they be proud when the children change the method and do better than them?

Why Haven't You Called Us?

Sitting at my new writing desk, clacking away about the churnings of my heart, I wonder what they see when they see me. I removed myself from the fold almost 10 years ago, and now, an entire ocean separates us. I've hardly looked back. No matter how much they loved me, I knew my life choices would always be awkward to explain to them. We're a loving family that does not communicate.

They didn't communicate their expectations of me, but they were quick to dismiss my expectations of them. It was a lot of emotional labour, and my shoulders were bruised from the weight of unshared thoughts. I had to leave to grow up.

Moving unencumbered into the future, I was too far and too fast to catch up with. My life was full of new knowledge, forbidden experiences, and clandestine plans to move even further away. There were now months between weekend calls and years between anything new to talk about.

Until now.

January 2024

My grandmother still wears her thallibottu and nallapusalu ⁵. She still has tightly coiled curls that even old age cannot straighten. She sits next to my grandfather, who translates her letter, but now, she no longer recognises me. I have forgotten her voice, and she has forgotten my face. I am more a stranger to her than the ghosts in her heart. The dementia has devastated her identity and erased her agency. No more boorelu, jamun, or fresh avakai every year. She will never call me Bhattu again.

I wonder if my distance can be forgiven. I wonder if I can forgive them for maintaining theirs. 10 years is a long time to be away. Who are we now that I'm back?