Awarded third place in the 2020 William & Mary Literary Awards in the Nonfiction category for a memoir piece, titled "Materials." I was judged by writer, Rachel Monroe, and I will be featured in the awards booklet. An excerpt of the piece can be found below.
Materials (EXCERPT):
Wall to wall, my grandfather’s study—my Nanaji’s study—is covered in plaques. From the side window with the blinds turned in, the sun graces the inscriptions on the gold, silver, and bronze plates, basking them in a yellowed beam.
My grandmother’s shrine of awards for pastoral counseling are located in the spare bedroom of their apartment in the nursing home. My mother would scoff at the wall, since my grandmother was only a volunteer staff member for 25 years and completed the minimal schooling, but I always thought it was nice Nanaji dedicated this whole space to her. Every time he came over to our house since she passed away, he wanted us to all sit down on the couch and watch my grandmother’s filmed retirement video; it made me realize how much he loved her.
Standing in his study, it’s strange to think that all of these plaques will end up in taped-up brown boxes where the sun can’t reach. Medals with emblems from societies I have never heard of will be locked away in storage units. Proudly framed school photos of his grandchildren gifted from his children will return back to their senders. I know I’m getting ahead of myself – I had just been sent upstairs to fetch watermelon chunks, the only thing that seems to bring my grandfather any sort of comfort. A man who once spoke at the greatest endocrinology conventions all over the world and completed breakthrough experiments in a laboratory is now reduced to the confines of a bed in a rapid month’s decline of hospice. He lays there mute, his palms rounded and swollen, his eyes closed but not quite sleeping.
All of the rooms in the nursing wing are void of color, so much so that long-time patients often wheel themselves out and sit at the doorway of their rooms, just to see the dark shade of green of the hallway carpet. There’s a single TV in my grandfather’s room, which is rendered useless, since he cannot open his eyes to see it. I was used to this retirement facility, but this is a different side of it. I was used to playing pool or ping pong with my father upstairs or seeing elderly people getting excited to watch La La Land much delayed but in the public recreation room with popcorn and low-calorie movie theater butter. Being used to his apartment with colorful Indian antiques of elephants and ancient gods and goddesses I struggled to recognize, my grandfather seems to me a fish out of water. My mother, Anita, and I just sit there, pretending to read books we brought on the plane, but really keeping watch to make sure he’s still breathing. There aren’t even any plants in the room, much in contrast to his apartment where he almost militaristically maintained a single plant to remain a bright green shade of alive – this plant was one that was bought specifically for his wife’s funeral four years prior. It, too, it seems would appreciate the green of the carpet outside. It’s unclear if my grandfather is even hearing anything that my mother and I say, but occasionally, he smiles when fed watermelon.
My uncle had told us that, since we were only in town for a short while to say goodbye, we should spend some time looking through the apartment to see what we could want. There’s a lot to choose from, since my grandfather had previously lost two of the closest people to him. He still keeps their possessions, their watches that smell of dust and musk although they seem unused, their wallets with unspent dollar bills still inside, the receipts, peppermint candies, a pink jeweled Ming Tree he made for his daughter – after people are gone, it is so much harder to discard their belongings. Thus, this beloved scientist has kept alive the memories of his wife and child through their material possessions, and now it was up to us – to continue with the hoarding and packing away of things in boxes for the next generation to sort through or to get rid of it, putting memories we didn’t quite understand into black trash bags to be donated or brought to the nearest landfill.
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