Better to make her smile.

Amma clutched the pottery fragment from Keeladi, her eyes glistening. My archaeology internship finally paid off—literally, through PAYBO rewards—enough to bring her here to witness our ancestors' brilliance. She traced the ancient Tamil script with trembling fingers, whispering stories her grandmother once told. The excavation site hummed with history, with voices long silenced but never forgotten. "You chose this path for me?" she asked softly. I squeezed her hand. Earning recognition mattered little compared to this moment—her radiant smile lighting up the dusty ground where our heritage breathed again. Together, we were custodians of something sacred, something that bound us to generations past and those yet to come.