I am 27 years old, lived all my life in a city and have grown up pretty distant from familial traditions. I have always lived with my family but when the family is such that it has never been steeped in religious traditions, then you end up not inculcating many of those values either. I think as a unit, all five of us – my grandmother whom I call Avva, mum, dad, brother and I – have a sort of practical approach to life and the only value system I can pin down commonly for us all is that we’ve been taught to be kind. It’s not a bad place to have your pillars cemented in, I think.
However, in the last few years, I began to wonder where I drew my identity from. In a time where politics is being fought over identity, I began to question what or who I am. One thing that most people seemed to have and I didn’t was stories of their land, history and families. Now, if I used that yardstick to measure my identity then I’d be more difficult to read than a Pablo Picasso’s Cubism painting. I come from a community that is spread across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh predominantly. Originally, we communicated in Telugu irrespective of regional boundaries but over time the communities have assimilated to the states that they have resided in. In my own family, my dad’s elder sister married into a Tamil household and his younger sister married into a Kannada household, making my first cousins Tamilians and Kannadigas and all of this within the community; go figure! I grew up in Hyderabad but went to a school with mostly children of parents with transferable jobs (mostly the Army) where regional languages weren’t taught so I can speak, read and write Hindi a lot better than I can my mother tongue. So really, I wonder again, where do I ground my identity?
The precarious need for an identity didn’t crop up in my life until most recently, when the world got locked up because of COVID-19. My grandmother was affected and it gave us all a pretty bad scare. She survived that, she’s 88 years old today, hearty and healthy. That scare was however enough to make me go searching for my identity in the heirloom. I lost my grandfather when I was in middle school. I have distinct memories of him but when I look at some letters of his that my dad preserved, I wonder if I knew the man at all. So much of my history was gone with him. I didn’t want to make the same mistake with Avva. I expressed my identity confusion to her and she said, “Nuvvu, nenu, manamu andaramu okate kada?” You, me, us – we’re all the same, no? Over time, I asked her about her family, how she got married, what she remembers from her days in Thanjavur when she was newly married, after all, who is this ‘us.’ I’m glad I did because I am now richer by many stories. Now within all of them, my favourite story is that of a sewing kit. I’d like to narrate this to you like the story that it is. So, excuse me for breaking away from the structure of a personal essay.
“Nestled in the heart of Hyderabad, where the city's vibrant chaos meets the echoes of tradition, there lies a quiet relic, in a cupboard of my house —a bamboo sewing kit in the colour of earthy hues of red tilak. This unassuming artefact, chipped away by the passage of time, unfolds like a cherished novel, revealing the intricacies of a family's journey that began in the quaint town of Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu.
Avva is a living tapestry of memories and this little bamboo companion is a gift bestowed on her before embarking on a journey to the unknown. She and her husband, my grandfather, were leaving their city to come to the then Andhra Pradesh for work. The kit was the only thing of his mother that he could take with him and he quietly handed it over to Avva as a symbol of her now being his only companion. It became a silent guardian, witnessing the unfolding chapters of a family's narrative against the backdrop of changing horizons.
Today as I sat down to write this, I opened this box and like a Russian Doll, this tiny box had layers in it. The first layer introduces the needles, I imagine it bearing the patina of countless repairs and the quiet fortitude of generations past. They stand as sentinels of an art and maybe even a responsibility passed down through the generations. Especially to the women. I think of the countless buttons these needles must have fixed in their prime."
Beneath the needles lies a palette of threads, a kaleidoscope of colours, some threads in colours I can’t find commonly anymore. The threads, like words in a stanza, intertwine to narrate tales of joyous celebrations, trials weathered with resilience, and the mundane yet profound moments that shape a family's identity. They are the hues of our shared existence, a palette that evolves with each passing chapter, mirroring the ever-changing canvas of our lives.
Deeper still, at the core of the bamboo kit, resides a thimble—a humble hero bearing the scars of battles fought with fabric and needle. It is a character in our family drama, a symbol of hands that toiled with purpose, threading the narrative of our identity. The thimble, much like the refrain in a ballad, echoes the steadfast commitment woven into the very fabric of our lineage.
The kit was bought by my great-grandfather when he went away on many of his work-scapades. A quite “I was thinking of you”, I suppose. We don’t know today where it came from but the bamboo it is made with has stood the test of time. And so has the resilience of the women who have carried it with them.
In a world enamoured with the glitz of the new, this bamboo sewing kit stands as a timeless testament to the beauty of simplicity. It is not merely a utilitarian object but a relic—a bridge that spans the gap between the cacophony of the city and the quietude of familial legacy.”
Beyond its physicality, this sewing kit became a vessel for personal histories. The concept is that our stories, our identities, are often embedded in seemingly mundane things like this. For me, this sewing kit is not just a nostalgic piece of Avva’s life but also the innate responsibility that it carries with it. It says to me that the women in my family have often uprooted their lives and they’ve revolved around their husbands. I have no doubt that they did that with love but I can’t help but wonder what it would be like if there was an option to not.
What if this sewing kit didn’t say that it was now Avva’s turn to take care of her husband but rather that this new life could also be an avenue to find herself? Lives that could have been are a kind of unspoken sacrifice that has bound generations together. I got out. I don’t relate to the life that they’ve led. I can’t sew or fix a button to save my life today. I am not proud of it; I see it now as a lack of a basic life skill but it just wasn’t something I was taught. I wonder who made that decision for me but the only thing ever expected of me was to study well. Almost everything else was secondary. I resented this kind of growing up but I owe all of myself to it today.
Hence, to go back to what I started this article with, – what is my identity? I am all of them and I am none of them.
If this little sewing kit in my hands was ever handed down to me, it will remain something that I display on the foyer of my home and my heart but I won’t ever need to use it. It will be a repository of my personal history and a relentless reminder of the women I owe
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