Life is Beautiful

Light and Shadow      When I was between two and four years old, my chithi Santhi raised me. She wasn’t married yet, and my mother already had my elder brother to care for, so I was left with her. My father used to tease me, saying, “Chithi valatha la unku apdiye un chithi buddhi” —that I had inherited her ways. I always took it as a compliment, because I adored her.      One of those traits was her fear of the dark, which she unknowingly passed on to me. She would wake me at night just to accompany her to the restroom, and I followed, half-asleep but dutiful. Now, I see the same fear mirrored in my daughter.      Some of my sweetest memories with Chithi are from our visits to the Thirupparamkundram Murugan temple. The temple itself was part light, part shadow, carved into the mountain. We carried a pooja basket filled with lemons, oil, wicks, flowers, kolapodi, and kunkum. She would cut the lemon in half, clean a circle on the stone floor wi...

Every Drop Counts Sathya has always been one of my most unforgettable cousins—outspoken, filterless, and impossible to place as innocent or mischievous. We’re the same age, but when we first met as kids, I didn’t know how to deal with her. Years later, life took us in different ways: she studied nursing and worked in the Gulf, while I did engineering and was working as a software developer in Chennai. One vacation she was flying through Chennai, and I went to pick her up at the airport. On the drive back we stopped for juice. Sathya was bubbling over with stories from abroad—her patients, her adventures, her flights. At one point she grinned and said, “You can only see flights from the ground. I’m the one who actually flies.” I laughed, amused by how seriously she meant it. Just then our juice arrived. I drained mine in one go and reached for my wallet when I noticed Sathya staring at me, shocked. “You finished it?” she asked.   “Yes…?”   “Till the last drop?”   “Of cours...