21 March, 2020: S. Niroshini

Surrey, United Kingdom

I call my eighty-nine year old grandmother in Colombo. ‘They have put a curfew,’ she says, ‘because of the situation.’ The word I associate with curfew in Sri Lanka is war and the prachanai that lasted several decades on the island. I guess war is not such an incomparable analogy. I feel a sudden sadness for everyone.
 
I have to yell when I speak to Ammai on the telephone but this only seems to apply to English. She can hear me just fine when we talk in Tamil even though she’s perfectly fluent in both. The telephone calls replaced the aerogrammes which she used to write and now the occasional Whatsapp video call. On these, she loves to teach me things like how to make rasam and sambar and how to temper onions correctly with kaṟiveppilai 
 
At home, I think to practise my Tamil. I write out the names of the people whom I love. It was originally a way to memorise the script but now it feels important. They seem bigger and bolder than in the English on the page and closer to me. It is almost incantatory, a small consolation for distance.
 
நிரோஷினி
Niroshini
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S. Niroshini is a writer and poet based in London. @niroshinisoma