My intention is simply to bring to your notice that the women you critique are the ones shaping the coming generation

The months of silence that sometimes pass between the two of us mean nothing because we have eaten and walked and sung together and in having done so, we have become similar. You have tasted my mother’s spicy food and I have tasted your mother’s, my aunty’s, unrivalled cauliflower. In having loved each other’s mothers we have loved the thing that make all mothers similar, irrespective of backgrounds and communities.

When quite young Arya, my son, developed a frightening curiosity about death after watching a movie involving a dead dinosaur. During the movie it struck Arya that death was a place from where one could not return, and the absoluteness of the situation disturbed him. It frightened him, perhaps, because over and again, over weeks, he questioned my husband and me about the meaning of death. Why do people die? What happens to them after death? Where do they go? My husband and I tried our best to give him gentle answers. It is not something you need to consider yet, we said.