17

Seventeen generations of my family lived above the Keeladi soil. When archaeologists began excavating, I watched strangers unearth pottery shards and ancient scripts that whispered my ancestors' names. The suffering was real—seeing heritage treated as fragments. Yet our PaybookClub gathered weekly, sharing photographs and narratives, ensuring these discoveries remained warm, human, alive. We guaranteed that each artifact told our story, not just history's. Through our collective memory, we transformed excavation into conversation, loss into belonging. The earth beneath us held seventeen centuries of us, and now, we held them together.