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I Still Talk to My Dead Grandmother
Love can surpass death
My parents and I have been estranged for most of my adult life, yet my dead grandmother’s love sustains me.
‘Amma,’ my grandmother, lovingly gave me a second name, Mimi. She was certain I would have a life abroad, so she wanted to give me a name that would be easy to pronounce outside of India. From the day I was born, she was in my corner, setting me up to succeed.
My grandmother told me her story many times. She wanted to study more. Born into an educated and accomplished family in 1910s India, her parents were rich and progressive landowners who prioritized her education alongside her brothers. She did well in school and college and dreamt of being a writer, and she also wanted to teach and make a difference. In a sudden, tragic twist of fate, her parents passed away in a car accident. In one afternoon, her life changed. “My education was stopped when my parents died, and my brothers married me off before I could graduate,” she told me sadly.
Regrets of a different life never left her. Even at age eighty-three, she kept repeating how she wanted to study and live an independent life. She was arranged into a marriage she did not want and forced to immigrate from what is now Bangladesh to Kolkata, India. When India was…
