India, Oct. 29 -- Now, my mother lives within me in fragments. The day she breathed her last, she left a large hole in my life. A hole that can't be sewed and covered up. That's one of the things we did together. Sewing. With little needles and threads. Black, white and colours.

I still remember her on a Sunday afternoon. Clad in a beetroot coloured saree. Squinting her eyes and threading a needle. I don't remember how old I was then. But I remember being a little girl because it was Sunday, a holiday for both of us. She was a teacher.

I was a little girl then

She asked me to hold one end of my father's lungi. She then held the other end and started sewing the torn chequered lungi. I always thought it was easy. Her hands were always qu...