Just One Thing with Geetha Iyer

Geetha Iyer’s essay “Money” gives us a shining glimpse into her grandmother while examining what it means to create a written portrait. Here she shares just one thing about the piece:

“There’s a version of my grandmother in my head that resembles a slumped over, melted-and-hardened candle, a posture of defeat because her body has defeated her. This is the person I mourned when I started writing ‘Money.’ But there’s this other version of her—I’m eighteen, she's visiting our house in Dubai, and I’ve come down the stairs to the kitchen in what I think is the coolest outfit in the world. Green khakis, a black, tight-fitting top with a glittery Chinese dragon on the front, long sleeves that have been slit to the shoulder so they hang loose under my arms like streaming ribbons. I’ve got this pendant on, it’s a brass medallion thing, enameled with some elaborate floral pattern on its convex side. She beckons me close. Picks up one of my dangling sleeves, pinches it back together again over my arm and makes a motion like, ‘You forgot to sew this up.’ Then she flips the brass pendant over to its concave side and says, ‘I could eat my dinner off this.’ She was too sharp for self-pity, too practical for elegies. ‘Money’ could be the length of a novel and I wouldn't come close to capturing who she was in life. ”

“In the spirit of grandmothers and grandkids: my three-year-old and my mum curled into each other on the sofa, trying to take a selfie. My kid's arm obscures her face because she's trying to press the camera button. My mum looks bemused.”