The Museum of My Grandmothers draws me

to the Fashions Gallery, where here, in glass cases –

Exhibit 1: A saree. Mysore silk, peacock blue and shot with gold.

Exhibit 2: A cardigan. Marks and Spencer, wool blend, also blue.

Please do not touch, say the placards, say the

folded hands of the room guide, say the dim

lights of preservation. If I were to unravel these

threads and tie, end-to-end, 5225 miles,

across seas, also blue, through the skies, also blue,

between the birthplaces of my grandmothers.

This is as the crow flies, further still by fate, surmounting

peaks shaped to the relief of other tongues.

Historians do not know that both garments were

worn by the same one, all the colours in one churchyard,

a celebration in the both of it. In the living museum

of their grandchildren, the little ones can say Yr Wyddfa,

say Udagamandalam. When they left us, they left threads

in many colours, two copies of the same wedding photo,

a shoebox full of postcards from the other.