by Advaita Raghavan

As the daughter of two very different yet similar cultures, I’ve never had the chance to fully immerse myself in either one of them. Neither Tamilian enough, nor Marvadi enough, I’ve always felt a little out of place. Especially when I found myself roaming the small Rajasthani town of Ramgarh, the home of my great-grandfather.

Hearing my mother and her cousins reminisce about their summer vacations spent on haveli rooftops making achaar, eating mangoes and sneaking mithai, I was hit not only with an intense pang of hunger but also a creeping sense of unease which compounded exponentially when I saw what was left of my great-grandfather’s heli. 

The intricate murals were faded, scarred from repeated attacks by the weather and covered with graffiti. The detailing on the scaffolding was cracked and chipped where it wasn’t completely broken. In short, it had been reduced to rubble. And it made me wonder, if it had been kept in better condition, its beauty preserved, might I have been more connected with this part of my identity?

But that night as I was sitting in some distant aunt’s living room drinking some of the best chai and eating the most delicious kachoris I’ve had in my life, I noticed that despite being unable to understand the language or the lifestyle, I felt a sense of belonging and familiarity. 

Maybe my ancestral home is in ruins, but my family’s culture has been preserved in the way my aunt puts another roti on my plate or the way my grandfather asks me if I want water for the fifteenth time. My culture also persists in how I am able to see my grandmother when I look at my mother, or even in the mirror. And it got me thinking about how perhaps we don’t need to lock away artefacts in museums or spend millions on restoration projects to protect a culture. The mummification process happens naturally, simply in the way we exist as societies, communities and families.