“Ammamma,” by Asha Rajan

I met my maternal grandmother when I was six months old. It was my first trip to our ancestral home, the youngest of her grandchildren, the last of the matrilineal line. Every Summer holiday after that was spent there.

I wish I could have known her as an adult. I wish I had had the foresight to ask all the questions that come to me now, to niggle out the details of her life, her ambitions, her desires, her disappointments. But that’s not to be. Thirty years ago, on the 9th of February, when I was 15 and she was 85, my Ammamma, my Mothermother, died. Hers was not an easy death, not a slow waning with time for goodbyes, not a death she had been prepared for in any way. I know this because I was with her in those last gasping moments. I was the only one of her family with her, and at 15, I was inadequately equipped to deal with all I experienced. Continue reading →