Gopu M. Sunil
The Inheritance of Hands
My grandmother never wrote a book.
She folded mornings
into banana leaves,
measured salt
with the memory of her fingers,
and knew the hour
by the slant of light
across the courtyard.
Her language
was not the one
I learned in classrooms.
It lived in the way
she welcomed strangers
before asking their names,
in the cup of tea
already waiting
when grief arrived,
in the silence
left for elders
to finish a story.
Elsewhere,
Cultures are gathered
inside museums,
behind careful glass.
Ours survives
in recipes
with no written measure,
in songs
that forget their authors,
in names
carried longer
than the people who first spoke them.
Even now,
I catch myself folding a leaf,
offering water before questions,
calling home not a place,
but a gesture
passed
from one pair of hands
to another.