This one isn’t purely a travel post. Two years ago today, I lost my grandmother while travelling through Vietnam. It was very close to my return date, and even if I had changed my plans, I wouldn’t have made it back in time for her last rites.

I was in Hoi An then, a small riverside town in central Vietnam known for its beautifully preserved Ancient Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Its streets glow softly with lanterns, and its architecture reflects a rich mix of Vietnamese, Chinese, and Japanese influences that speak of its history as a trading port.

Hoi An is also famous for its Lantern Festival, held each month on the 14th day of the lunar calendar. Also called the Full Moon Festival, it has its roots in Buddhist traditions and is meant to invite good fortune, release worries, and celebrate new beginnings under the sacred light of the full moon. The festival also honours ancestors, and though it wasn’t a full moon day, I felt that by releasing a lantern down the Hoai river, I too could say my goodbyes. A special mention to the friend who was travelling with me then, and who, with quiet empathy, joined me in the small ritual. 

Much later, I wrote a piece about her, one that quietly marked the beginning of my journey back to writing. At first, I shared it only with her daughter, my mother, and her son, but today, I remember her by sharing it with everyone.

My Grandmother

My first foray in creative writing was an essay about my grandmother. It was also the first time I won a prize for something I wrote. I was about 7 then and now nearly thirty years later, I want to give it another go. A way to remember her by.

Ammumma, as we called her, was small at barely 5′ tall but I know now that she held a world within that frame. Never one to talk about herself, I discovered surprising little tidbits about her from the stories that others shared. As a teenager she wanted to pursue an education in music but was denied that opportunity because in the 1940s it would have been practically unheard of for a young unmarried girl to be at a residential school for music far away from family and home. So now when I hum a tune, I like to think it’s something I may have inherited from her. 

She instead gave up those dreams to care for her family and later my grandfather, mother, uncle and even later her three grandchildren. Practical to a fault, she would not have expressed affection very openly, but every summer vacation while we visited, the food would turn a shade blander, much to the chagrin of her husband and everyone else. But no matter how much they grumbled, she never surrendered, nor uttered a word in explanation but I know, it was for me. Because I couldn’t handle the spice. 

Far ahead of her time, she would not let ritual and tradition dictate terms and would tell me I could attend the pooja at home even if I was on my period. Something I know even now to be frowned upon in many households. I would often joke to friends that if she were born only 50 years later, she would have been a rebel with a cause – embracing diversity with equal parts tolerance and cynicism. Not sure where and how I formed this image – but I have imagined her dressed in all black, riding a motorcycle with a cigarette hanging nonchalant from her lips. This bit I know will shock many relatives. Sorry, Amma! 

I would have wanted to segue into some of the harder aspects of her life, the signs I now know to recognise as possibly her struggles with her mental health but I hesitate to assume and do her memory a disservice. What I can attest to is my admiration for her unyielding tenacity and endurance, silently weathering whatever storms may have raged within her.

Ammumma has been lost to the clutches of dementia for several years now, gradually fading from moments of recognition to bouts of belligerence, mistaking familiar faces for strangers – I was sometimes her niece, Priya, sometimes a stranger and in rare moments of clarity, her granddaughter Ujju. Her passing leaves a void, yet there is solace in knowing she is finally at peace, liberated from the confusion and fragmented memories that haunted her.

I too, will remember her as Ammumma, her saree bunched up so comically it would drive Amma mad, handing me her bangles to wear to a friend’s wedding because she didn’t quite approve of my minimalism, smiling at me shyly when I wondered at the softness of her skin and my mouth will water knowing I never again will get to taste her sambar and her aloo sabji that we have all failed to replicate, no matter how hard we’ve tried.