祖母留下的纱丽有新用途

This I believe. Objects hold memory. Often, when people inherit a family heirloom, they do all they can to preserve the object to keep it looking the way it did when the memories were created. This I believe essay Priya Chandrasekaran , decided to honour her ancestor through an act of a destruction and creation, making a quilt of her grandmother's traditional Indian garments.

I’m no seamstress, but when my aunt showed me my grandmother’s saris, I knew I was going to make something. The saris, new and old, were stacked tight in two columns of brilliant colors. When I told my aunt my intention to make a quilt, she was incredulous. These saris were valuable, meant to be worn, not cut.

Until then, I’d never seen my grandmother in anything but a sari. As a child visiting India, I couldn’t understand how she could sleep comfortably on sweltering nights wrapped in six yards of material, or how she could still look impeccable when she woke. Now, bedridden and on oxygen, blind in one eye, and having recently had a stroke, she wore nothing but a loose nightshirt that flapped open, exposing a degree of nakedness I’d never imagined she had.

When I began the project well after her death, I didn’t wash the saris. The stains and scents were evidence of the life she had lived, so different from my own. Hers was a life of cooking curries, wearing turmeric, walking barefoot on dusty floors, participating in Hindu rituals, drinking milky coffee after afternoon naps, and clutching loved ones fiercely to her chest.

But when it came time to cut the cloth, I found myself resistant. It wasn’t my mother’s allegations of blasphemy, so much as the fact that this fabric–so soft, so luxurious–had caressed my grandmother’s skin, reflected her modesty, embodied her womanhood, shielded her from the sun, and made her feel beautiful. That her hand had pleated the folds of seamless silk countless times, and that my cut, once made, would forever alter that sari’s potential to live a similar life.

"Do it," I finally commanded myself. So I did.

After that, the work became straightforward. When the quilt was finished, one could see that the edges of each panel didn’t quite match, that the soft lavender and deep crimson from one sari clashed slightly with the brilliant yellow and green from another, that the stitches were crude and uneven, yet beheld in unison, these imperfections fashioned something only I could have created, beautiful in its own way.

I believe we are entitled to cut our grandmother’ saris, that they were not meant to hang in dark closets collecting dust. I believe that what we create from them should make us proud, and also humble us. I believe that not every stain needs to be rubbed out, and cutting the cloth can help maintain its integrity.

I believe that to love, and to bare the boundless depth of our love, we must have the courage to reshape what we inherit.

Priya Chandrasekaran is a doctoral student at the City University of New York. She's the author of a collection of essays based on a year in Peru. The essay was produced by John Gregary and Den. Gadman Next week, found some Jury Duty from a judge in Colorado. If you like to write an essay about the core belief that guides your life, submit it to our series. Go to the website: thisibelieve.org.