From the memoir: Novelist B Jeyamohan writes about the matriarchal family system he grew up in

At Thiruvattar, at my father’s ancestral house, apart from the popular portrait of the Maharaja half-turned and in his bejewelled crown, the only pictures that hung on the walls were of the two matriarchs. The elder one looks as though she were commanding the photographer to get it done with. She stands bare-shouldered, a gold-bordered dhoti tied tightly around her chest. The lobes of her ears are stretched in the fashion of the day, with heavy, traditional earrings. The other matriarch, her daughter, my father’s mother, wears a jumper with a fine dhoti casually thrown over her shoulder. She looks into the camera, her head slightly tilted, scornfully dismissing the cameraman.

When she first visited the house, after walking along the length and breadth of it, exploring the rooms, the verandas, the courtyard, the kitchen and the attic, Arunmozhi asked, “Why are there no photographs of the fathers?”

I had asked my grandmother the same question when she was alive.

Her response was, “This is my house. Why should I keep their photographs?”

When grandmother went away into the house, her current consort, Kaipalli Gopalan, slammed the coconut he was dehusking on the digging bar, took off the towel he had tied around his head, wiped…

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