The Seed (2017)

 When Ashraya Became Home

Some intentions don't arrive with a plan. They arrive as a feeling — quiet at first, easy to set aside. For me, 2017 was the year that feeling took root.

That was the year Appa and Amma moved from Dosti to Ashraya. From an independent home they had built their life around, to a community setting — a different rhythm, different neighbours, a different kind of daily life. It took some adjustment, not just for them but for all of us. The Ashraya family didn't come pre-fitted into our world; they had to become part of it, and we had to become part of theirs. Slowly, they did. That extended family is now simply family.

And with that came something else — the address of celebrations shifted. Appa's 80th birthday. An anniversary. Family get-togethers. The place for all of it was now Ashraya. A specific, named place where they were, where we gathered, where the texture of family life was now rooted.

Before Ashraya, "being close to my parents" was an idea spread across many spaces and memories. After Ashraya, it had an address.

I don't think I said it out loud then — not clearly, not as a plan. But somewhere in watching them settle in, in learning to belong to Ashraya the way they were learning to belong to it, I started asking myself a question I couldn't quite shake: what would it look like to actually be close at hand to my makers? Not just visiting. Not just calling. Present. Available. Close enough to matter on an ordinary Tuesday, not just at a milestone.

That question has followed me for eight years now. It has survived a pandemic, a profound loss, two near-misses with internship plans, and the quiet accumulation of life's reasons to defer. But it started here — in 2017, when Appa and Amma made Ashraya their home, and something in me decided I wanted to find my way back.