Taking home with me

I sit on the porch at the front of my great grandmother's house in the village where my mother grew up. Staring at the intricate and multicolored Kolam my grandmother made this morning with rice flour and turmeric, I wonder where this is all going. My search for the woman I am today has taken a long, exhausting route. Yet,running amok between the chores of the summer and the stories i heard during its warm nights, I learned how my mother was a reflection of this life I had come to love. Severed from her as a newborn I found her love waiting for me in her village, in the arms of her loved ones and finally in myself.

Stepping into the heart of this home I saw no patriarchal or matriarchal head. There was an assumed air of Being where one could just as easily transform into her masculine persona or her feminine one. Strength was defined by what was needed moment by moment and the actual men were quiet souls living as partners with their women. It was frightening because this home was an island deeply removed from the life i knew so far. This village embodied the home i had come to live in this one summer but outside of here was a world I already knew. I came in here, a wounded soldier, deprived of love, safety and identity. Like my grandmother,I had learned to conjure the tough part of me when I was broken,but unlike her, I had never learned to carry it under my skin, like it was me.

My grandmother, this strong beautiful woman lost her husband when she was thirty six. To stand for herself and her children was a necessity than a choice really, but it eventually shaped her into a fiercely independent woman.She will give even if she doesn't have enough for herself and at the same time she knows where to draw the line. I have never been able to see through that strong exterior as a child. But walking as we did a few evenings ago, on the shores of Cuddalor, I saw a different woman. It seemed that the Tsunami that hit her town three years ago triggered it all and that hard exterior had been scraped away and the soreness of the raw pain became available for me to dip in. She quickly took the place of a mother, i truly yearned for. Why do we take lifetimes to understand the ones we love?

My great grandmother on the other hand was not maternal. Boisterous, loud and threatening she certainly was. When I asked her about the Tsunami and what it had done to people around her she shrugged and said that it was about time we love the present for what is. She was refreshingly bold and I wondered if it would take me longer to really know her. But instantaneously i saw the bond this mother-daughter duo shared. They were the yin and yang, supporting and mirroring what was not really on the surface of the other.

Our trips to the temple every evening to listen to the beautiful Vasantha raga played by our lovely Geetha enchanted me. Our daily morning sessions to teach me all about Pulli Kolam perplexed me. But I knew that even the painful process of washing clothes by the stone especially built for the purpose or drying rice crispy's on the verandah out front were all initiations to welcome me into a family I yearned to be a part of. Words dont say it with the same power as small acts of love does, and in time, I was one with everything and everyone around me.

I had come upon a sisterhood this summer and in the midst of it all I found myself. The healing I needed and deprived myself of until now found its way through the crevices of my heart. I began to see life's drama unfold and saw the beauty in it for once. There is magic amidst a group of women who love unconditionally and I found myself led into this sorority. My great grandmothers perfect rejection of all things sorrowful and her acute ability to see that shining layer of contentment in it all helped me manifold. She told me that life was after all lived over time and that sorrows were a mere result of this long life, just as much as joy was. The deep acceptance of this verity shone upon me each day this summer. The presence of perfection in the midst of a world I knew made everything that much better.

While staring at the kolam and watching the rooster conduct its proud walk across from me, the fear of departing gripped my heart and squeezed my insides. I allowed a drop of tear find its way to sides of my mouth. As I hear my great grandmother yell at her youngest sister to start her chores with the laundry and cleaning, I laugh at the reality that I am forced to see. I resolve to take this safe place with me, in my heart and my being. I realize that reality is a lived experience, strangely, different for everyone. My great grandmother would like it if I would just give up this search for who I am and just go on Being instead. And while thats exactly what I seek for myself, for now, I feel like a better woman and a better human being, for seeking out and sharing a part of me with these women who defined my mother and shaped me by their Being.