Thread on my deceased grandmother on her birthday

She was one of a kind, I have gotten my curls,looks(my uncle has a black and white picture framed of me which most people mistake it as Achchi) ,personality,habits, love for food , wine obsession,soda bottle anger, compassion, understanding of people from a mile away.

appreciation of jazz , basically everything except her OCD.
The woman couldn't finish school due to her asthma but was homeschooled. This led her to read voraciously everything she could place her hands on. This eventually made her a know-it-all who was always in libraries

and read all the books and papers delivered to her, an added advantage over her contemporaries back in the day. The woman used to write lyrics in books, write stories, write letters to loved-ones for their bdays(a habit that I have picked up)

and maintained diaries of fashion/music and even murder cases as explained in the newspapers). Later when I asked her why she didn't publish them her only response was I wrote them because I loved to write not for fame/wealth or recognition.

My father naturally another bookworm like his mother remembers reading about the Mathew Peiris (According to Matthew FYI ) case from her diaries. The wit ,the dark humor, the blunt brutal hathara wateta nelana- honesty I have is all from her.

While some revered her, others despised her for her mile-away bullshit spotting meter and her bluntness. Like her I have 0 tolerance for nonsense or hypocrites. Those qualities back then was looked down upon but she was always called during disagreements for her honest reviews.

My father wouldn't raise us so independent or practice feminism if he didn't get it from his mother. She never relied on seeya, she would pick her boys from swimming lessons and take them to try out stage dramas,new restaurants etc.

She converted my well brought up, shy, silent mother into a independent woman that amma is today. And naturally it was her idea to build me a library and kindly requested ppl to gift books instead of dolls or other options.

Being raised abroad led us to always gravitate towards her on our vacations and practically live with them hence the intensified reading obsession. She wasn't decent or shy in her usage of words and maintained a grace and class which I try to uphold everyday.

From late night dancing (even when my father was a teenager) to attending and abandoning a swinger party she would lay it all out for her grandchildren and daughter in laws.

The woman dropped some epic truth bombs like" Batti (my nickname) you and I aren't meant to rub men's egos we're built this way to rub other things" or "why be well behaved when you could be interesting?". The only person who truly understood her was Seeya and Thaththi.

She would take up different things from time to time and self learn be it from playing the guitar to knitting handbags to cooking (horrible cook btw) to driving and crashing and using the railways alone. Naturally she passed away soon after her husband.

She passed away in 2018 & I in my grief blasted in a way that I have never done before (I would like to believe she transferred her strength to me) because I threw 5 narcissistic friendships & dragged an abusive man out of my life and closed the door (LITERALLY)

She always had a hunch about things before they happened( something that I realized I have inherited ) and months before her death her final words to me was "Dont let this mediocre society break you,

publish your writings and end up with someone who compliments your brain not someone who is insecure and threatened of it and dont waste yourself on egoistic idiots." She would have loved the Manussaya. She would have been a trailblazer if born in a different era.

In her honor I shall go on to be more than she ever was because I truly believe we carry a part of our ancestral women within us and it is our duty to go ahead than them FOR THEM.

The song seeya always used on his lil ladies (achchi and dedicated to me )