Frangipani

It was a cold winter evening in New Delhi and we were busy thinking what to cook for dinner. We had to give it more thought than usual because Aju and Aie (my maternal grandparents) were visiting us and they wouldn’t relish a quickly cooked up dinner. While we hummed and hawed about it in the tiny kitchen, we had left Aju and Aie in the living room. Both of them were covered from head to foot and Aju was also wearing his woolen cap. The TV was on and the news reader was talking about the falling temperatures in the city with images of the homeless on Delhi’s streets. We went into the room just to check on them if they were comfortable. Immediately, Aju freshly influenced by the images on TV and the growing coldness said – “Let’s have bread and soup. And don’t spend too much time in the kitchen in this cold.” While we thought that was unusual and he wouldn’t really relish it, I knew that Aju had thought of all of us being together in the warm room and so that we didn’t feel the guilt of...