Angel within the walls

What Were Your Dreams, Paati (grandma)?”

I asked my grandma once.

Her answer was simple: “Family.”

And for a long time, I couldn’t understand—

How can “family” be the only dream?

Isn’t a dream supposed to be something of your own?

My mother explained:

“They weren’t taught this.

They watched. They observed.

They saw their mothers crying when someone was hurt,

smiling the widest when someone succeeded.

They learned—

That happiness is stitched to the thread of the family.

She remembered birthdays without reminders.

She knew everyone’s likes and dislikes.

She cooked, cleaned, prayed, planned rituals—

Not out of duty, but love.

Not because she had to,

But because that was her way of saying ‘I care.’

I know I can’t live like her.

I want independence. I want to work.

But she found freedom in routine,

found purpose in the same walls,

found joy in tiny moments.

Her world tour? A pilgrimage.

Her party? A family wedding.

We call devoted men “family men.”

But what do we call the women—

who devoted not just time, but their entire being?

She wasn’t just an angel in the house.

She was the house.

So tell me—

Was she conditioned into it?

Or did she choose to love this way?

We often measure dreams with careers, passports, degrees, or independence.

But sometimes, someone’s dream is not louder—it’s quieter. It lives in the kitchen, in the soft fold of a saree, in prayers whispered for every family member before sleep.

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And yet, she asked for nothing

Not even recognition.

Her reward was a smiling dinner table,

a house that felt like home,

and the quiet knowledge that she was the soul

no one ever noticed,

but everyone depended on.

- Thresha Ravikumar (Thresha is an observer of life’s quiet corners, I find strength in solitude and stories in silence.)