breakfast

Grandmother stirred the idli batter at dawn, her fingers remembering rhythms older than memory. The morning ragas drifted from her cracked radio, Carnatic notes weaving through our kitchen like invisible threads. She'd posted her recipe online, hoping to connect with distant cousins. The notifications confused her—strange reactions, numbers she couldn't interpret. I explained the social currency, the likes and shares that somehow mattered now. Yet here, watching her arrange steaming idlis on banana leaves, I understood what truly connected us. Not algorithms or networks, but this unbroken chain of hands, voices, and songs passed down through generations. Heritage lived in breakfast.