Notes on my Grandmother

words by Anagha Chundury, art by Lanie Myaing

When I was twelve, my grandmother came to visit for the summer. We spent the summer playing games. One of her favorites was Pop N’ Hop, a game where you moved your pieces around the board with the objective of reaching the center. In the center of the board, a pair of dice stood, encased in a firm plastic bubble that we pushed down on to roll. Each time I reached up to help her push the bubble, she swatted my hand away. Her jaw clenched in determination as her trembling hands pushed it down, and she waited to hear the satisfactory echo of the “pop” in an otherwise quiet room. 

My grandmother and I spent most of our time submerged in the world of games. My very first visit to India as a child, we spent all our days sitting on her kitchen floor. We would play with rocks she had collected outside or makeshift chalk she made of talcum powder. Even as I grew older, we continued playing—like three summers ago, playing cup pong in my living room. With each game, she embodied a set of quiet, unwavering principles. According to my grandmother, the best way to enjoy a game is to play it with respect—to follow every rule to a tee, to never cheat, and to always always be a good sport. And while she had little patience for those who disregarded her sacred rules, when my crafty eight-year-old self slyly peeked at her Uno cards in the reflection of her clear-rimmed glasses, her eyes crinkled with joy and pride as she laughed.

—

I always knew it was almost time for her to leave back to India when the chill of the September air crept up on me. She is a small woman—her frame shrinking each time I see her— and her years spent under the sweltering Indian sun left her unprepared for the crisp bite of autumn air. On the night of her departure, she lined up all her suitcases by the door, and I begged her to stay, even though we both knew she couldn’t. She slipped her brown, fraying travel sweater onto her saree and carefully laced her shoes with slow deliberation, and then she was gone—as swiftly as the electric hum of the summer cicadas faded into the silent sounds of early fall. 

Her room was left spotless—untouched. With her bed perfectly made and every drawer tucked neatly in its place, it was as though she had never even been here.

Except for one thing. 

She left one of her sarees. Like my grandmother, it was unassumingly beautiful. It was a deep, reddish-purple garment, crisply folded into a small rectangle, with a simple design yet an ornate border. The fabric smelled entirely of her—modest yet fragrant, a blend of spices and lavender. And somehow, even after months in America, it still carried faint, unforgettable traces of Indian air. For months after her leaving, every night before I went to bed, I buried my nose into her saree, inhaling our shared memories, desperate to keep her with me in body, spirit, and scent. 

Each time she left for India, I thought I understood what it meant to say goodbye—to miss her more than I ever had before. But I really hadn’t. I didn’t truly understand those things until our final goodbye in January, realizing that the next time I returned to India, neither she nor the familiar scent of her sarees would be waiting.  

—

My trip this January felt different. Previous visits to India had been filled with the joyful anticipation of returning to my second home, to the familiar embrace of family, to the air thick with the scent of the groves of trees, sizzling street food, and an ever-present smokiness. But this was not a return to familiarity at all. This was an arrival to a place that housed my very sick grandmother. 

After hours of anxious travel, I reached my family’s temporary apartment. My father opened the bright red door, and there she was. I quickly blinked back tears as I saw my grandmother anew for the first time.  This frail, quiet, version of my grandmother was a shadow of the grandmother I remembered—the bold woman who loved avocados so much that she snuck a seed across an ocean in hopes of growing her own tree, who spent hours tending to her plants and capturing their sprouting growth in photos .But even in her fragility, when her eyes met mine, they lit up. I rushed to her side and we embraced, collapsing into one another. 

—

My grandmother loves telling stories. Last time she visited the U.S., I was 19, standing around the warm glow of my kitchen counter, soft shadows dancing on the walls as we spoke. She recounted a story about how she taught the many children who lived in her neighborhood—none of them her own. I readied myself to hear these familiar and beloved stories again, but this time it unfolded differently. Her eyes shone with pride as she recalled the time a local school offered her the position of principal. She brushed past what I was able to understand as the truth. The offer was never truly hers to accept—her husband’s word had sealed the door before she could even consider walking through it. I didn’t know my grandfather well—he passed when I was young—but the little I knew of him only sharpened my understanding of my grandmother. Her resilience bloomed in the shadow of his authority, raising three loving and courageous children with next to nothing. 

Tears pooled in my eyes as I thought of everything she wanted and could not have—everything she could have been if she had only been given the space and freedom to dream. With the same steady hands that had nurtured so many before me, she gently wiped my tears away and reminded me to always be “daring and dashing.” Despite her imperfect English, I knew exactly what she meant: never fear the unknown and never let the things out of your control bring you down. On the eve of her surgery this January, I asked her how she felt. She replied, steadily, “daring and dashing.” 

—

In the days after her surgery, she slipped into a deep confusion—her memories scattering. 

Entrenched in a psychosis deeper than the scars from her operation, she lay restlessly in the hospital bed. Her once steady voice tangled into a haze of incoherence, as she laughed and cried endlessly.

Navvistaru. Edipistaru. 

I watched my fathers face—his eyes dimming with resignation like the grey lights of the windowless room, his shoulders falling, sinking soundlessly into the mismatched tiles. He had never seen his mother—his rock—fall apart in front of him.  A few days prior, my mother had told me, “Everything good about your father, he got from his mother.” Now, as she couldn’t remember her name, her children, or even her manners, my father looked lost. 

When her memory finally began to return, one of the first things she remembered was the date she passed her qualifying exams. Even in the midst of her confusion and fear, each time someone asked her the date of her exam, August 14th, she announced it with pride. I imagined what she must have qualified for—graduating high school? College? A special certification? 

My father pulled me aside and told me it was to qualify beyond sixth grade—the last year she was allowed to study. In that moment, I understood why my grandmother spoke with such pride about education, why she urged me to pursue knowledge with such hunger. And although she was denied her education, she was never resentful of her children and grandchildren—who had more than she could ever want. Instead, she watched us proud and filled with hope. I hope I can carry on her legacy of being quietly curious and always hungry for more knowledge.

—

The night before I flew back to the US, she gathered all the strength and the love she could muster to sit in the living room and talk with me for a while. My head was swirling with unending thoughts of the finality of this goodbye—my last moments with my grandmother. I breathed deeply, wanting to etch her scent—of lavender, spices, and home—into the deepest part of my memory. 

Did she know how much I love her? How much I would miss her? How much I wish I could stay by her side for as long as time would allow? How I wished to absorb her pain?Did she understand my broken telugu, nuvu naka mukhyam—shards of love and care shattered by tears and a language barrier, glued together with a hope that she will understand how much she means to me? Did she know she was everything that I wanted from a grandmother—how I felt her love and support in every bone in my body, even halfway around the world, and how I could feel her just by smelling her saree?  

Did she know how afraid I was to live in a world without her? 

She reached for my hand, her feeble fingers intertwined with mine. Speaking softly, she said, “I know you will miss me. I will miss you too. But we can’t spend the rest of our lives crying for the things we miss, the things we lost, and the things we are not around. We are lucky to be around things that make us smile everywhere.” 

I thought about how, even in her fading days, she found joy in the morning sun’s warmth on her body, in my cousin’s laughter who came to play games with her every day, and in my moms astute attention to detail when cutting fruit. 

Nuvvu vaccinanduku nēnu santōṣistunnānu. 

And I replied, I love you.