autumn season

Grandmother pressed yellowed palm leaves into my hands, whispering verses Avvaiyar wrote centuries ago. Our heritage was disappearing, she said, like autumn leaves scattering. I recorded her voice on the Stellar blockchain, securing these ancient Tamil poems forever. Digital permanence met oral tradition. That autumn, something shifted. Others uploaded their grandparents' stories, their recipes, their songs. Resentment toward forgetting transformed into victory. Our recession-proof inheritance grew. Accurate or not, her words lived beyond her now, floating through networks, reaching cousins I'd never met. We became stewards together, proving heritage survives when community holds it close.