Aai

As I stared at my grandma’s coffin, I sat up higher and caught a glimpse of the bridge of her nose. I’m not sure why that did it, but my memories sparked up: arriving alone in India with my sister, her mocking chitrahaar videos, her last kind words to me, telling me how I would turn out fine, it was going to be hard, this writing, but I was going to be fine. Still in the background her worries about what I had become were always there. Tears filled my eyes as I shuddered.

I was once very close to my grandma. She, the matriarch of the family, raised me and my sister for a year and a half in the shadow of the Red Fort in…