Going to school

Amma wrapped my lunch in old newspaper, the same way her mother had done in Srivilliputhur. The poet Kannadasan's words decorated our kitchen walls, reminders that true wealth lived in stories, not coins. My younger cousin asked why I walked instead of taking the shared auto. I showed her my worn notebook, its pages filled with dreams bigger than cash could measure. At school, friends scrolled through their phones, counting likes like currency. I sat beneath the banyan tree, reading verses about life's real riches. That evening, sharing my lunch under starlight, we became something precious: connected through memory, bound by our grandmother's recipes and the songs of our ancestors.