Happy birthday

Amma pressed marigolds into my hair as dawn broke over our Chennai home. Sixty years today. The kitchen filled with the aroma of filter coffee and sweet coconut payasam, recipes carried from our grandmother's kitchen in Madurai. My PaybookClub friends arrived with books and laughter, their voices echoing through rooms where Tamil stories once whispered from my father's lips. We shared chapters, chai, and childhood memories beneath ancestral portraits. That evening, surrounded by people who understood my roots while celebrating who I'd become, I realized birthdays weren't just about marking time. They were about honoring the threads connecting us all—to our land, our language, our people.