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When the author was a young boy, his parents shifted to the city leaving him with his grandmother. They were good friends and spent all their time together. She woke him up each morning, bathed him, dressed him, plastered his wooden slate, gave him breakfast and walked him to school. While he sat in the veranda learning, the grandmother sat inside the temple reading scriptures.
When they had both finished, they would walk back together. But once in the city, there was a turning point in their friendship. The only thing that remained unchanged was their common bedroom. She could not accompany him to school as he went by the school bus. He now went to an English school, where they taught science.
She could not understand English and did not believe in science. The fact that they were not taught about god made her unhappy. His learning music in school made her feel worse. When he went to the university, he got a separate room and this snapped off their ties even further.
This was not deliberate but the demands of the situation had this effect on their relationship. However, their feelings for each other never changed. When the writer was going abroad, she went to the railway station to see him off but did not speak a word, she only kissed his forehead. The writer cherished this as their last physical contact as he was going away for five years. But when he returned, she was still there and was delighted to see him back.
In the evening she, for whom music had lewd associations, collected women from the neighbourhood and beat the drum and sang for hours of the homecoming of the warriors. For the first time, she missed her prayers to celebrate the author’s homecoming. The next day, she developed a mild fever and died; it was almost as if she had been waiting for the author’s return.