Tag: herstory

I watched with confusion and a guilty sense of disgust – maybe this was the way things were done in India? My aunt had reached across to the cluster of letters strung together by a single piece of wire twirled around a nail on the wall, and gently dislodged one of them. They were from my father to his mother. I didn’t know what to think. After all, she went on to say, Your father is so good with language; just listen to this, just how beautifully he writes, before reading out aloud a lengthy passage. She was a good reader; gentle, perfect cadence with pauses in the right places. But I wanted to turn away on this intrusion of privacy, on this emotional voyeurism, but then thought, Wait, just last evening and the evening before that, and the many evenings before that she had spent the only free time she would get – from the large extended family who, hearing of her generous spirit, had congregated in her home in Bombay, that city of big dreams but of tiny square footage (blissfully unaware that they were now indebted to her for life) – on her rudrakshamala, deep in meditation, in union with god. So pious a woman! So pure a heart! Such a giving soul! Surely then there can’t be anything wrong here. Especially if it’s to say something nice about someone you cared for. And, after all, those letters were right there in the kitchen above the dining table, weren’t they? Not tucked away in some corner of a chest of drawers hidden from sunlight.