You can know someone all your life and only begin to discover who they are more fully after they are gone. The stories seem to flow more easily, less self-consciously, without the moderating physical presence, perhaps more detailed in the awareness that they cannot be challenged and the memory can retain its sanctity. Today is my parents’ anniversary, 62 years since their marriage that rainy day in Secunderabad when the monsoon used to arrive without fail on the 10th day of June. The family legend has it that it poured so heavily on the 9th (the evening of the nichyathartham or engagement ceremony) that water entered the storage room, soaking the provisions for the next day’s big meal, causing my maternal grandmother to faint. That turbulence however did not seem to affect the tenor of the marriage which, by all accounts and my own experience, was characterized by a calmness that suggested a harmony of purpose and personality. Not that my parents are/were alike in all way...
making sense of the everyday