Ammamma measured rice with her hand, never the cup. One fistful per person, plus one for the pot, plus one for whoever God decided to send. That last fist was not negotiable. Even the year Appuppan's pension came late and the rice tin echoed when you tapped it, she cooked for a guest who might not come.
I thought it was superstition. I was fourteen and knew the names of superstitions.
You waste it, I told her once, watching the extra rice go grey and cold by evening, scraped into the yard for the crows.
She did not look up from the fire. When your mother was small, we had nothing. Some nights only that one fist between the three of us. A man came to the door — a stranger, walking to Guruvayur. I gave him the pot. All of it.
And we starved?
And the next morning your Appuppan found work at the timber yard. Twenty-two years he worked there. She stirred. I am not saying the man was God. I am saying I have never once regretted the fist of rice I could not afford. Only the ones I kept back when I could.
She died in October. We came home for the ceremonies, the house full of relatives I half-remembered, and my mother cooked for all of them in Ammamma's blackened pot. I watched her measure the rice with her hand. One fist. Then another. Then, without pausing, without ceremony, one more — dropped into the water for whoever God decided to send.
She caught me looking.
I know, she said, before I could speak. Her eyes were wet and she blamed the smoke, the way her mother always had. I know it makes no sense. Let me keep it anyway.
That night a boy came to the gate, a cousin's driver who had missed his bus and was too shy to ask. My mother fed him from the extra fist without a word about where it came from, and I understood that some things are not passed down in speech. They are passed down in the hand.