‘A companion in quiet corners of life’: My grandmother’s hidden rebellion in reading Taslima Nasrin

Thunderstorms crashed outside, and because of a cloudburst, our garden looked like a pond. Two live fish had entered my bedroom, a first in all my years of existence. The floor was waterlogged, the walls damp, the space unlivable. I carried what I could upstairs to my grandmother’s room, a room I had not stepped into in two years, ever since she passed away.

The air was heavy with dust and silence. The room smelled of old paper and disuse, of memories sealed away. On the shelves were the objects that had always surrounded her: jars of guava jelly, carefully labelled in her neat script; the gods arranged in quiet rows, Ganesh, Saraswati, Lakshmi; a laughing Buddha; and, incongruously, a Mario Miranda sketch I had once brought her from Goa. Every object was a story, a reminder of her meticulous care. She preserved not only recipes and rituals, but moments, laughter, principles, acts of generosity so subtle they could be mistaken for habit.

I remembered how she would call me in from downstairs, asking me to stay longer: Ektu ekhane bowsh. Stay a little while more. Our conversations tethered us across generations. Yet her last words to me were both tender and insistent: I...

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