165

My grandmother clutched the photograph of Keeladi's ancient pottery, her weathered hands trembling. "165 artifacts," the museum director had said, "from our ancestors' world." She'd waited seventy years to see Tamil heritage recognized this way. As a teacher, she'd quoted Avvaiyar's wisdom daily, feeling frustrated that so few understood our literary roots. Today, my son earned his first PAYBO reward—a history scholarship—through an essay on women poets. She wept, not from drabness overcome, but from joy. Finally, our story mattered. The excavation proved what she'd always known: we belonged to something magnificent, something worth preserving together.