renovation

My grandmother pressed yellowed photographs into my hands, their edges soft as cloth. "Look," she whispered, pointing to the Tamil Brahmi etched on an ancient temple wall behind her younger self. I'd grown distant, caught between two worlds, scrolling through endless feeds. That evening, I posted her photograph. Within hours, diaspora members from Singapore, London, Toronto responded with their own stories. Strangers became family, sharing memories of ancestral scripts and forgotten songs. Someone sent funds toward restoring that very temple. I realized then: we weren't scattered. We were simply being renovated, reconnected, finding each other across continents and time, our heritage the mortar binding us together.