I remember the feeling of not being at ease on visits to Nellore, the stark difference between that and the joy and comfort of my other grandparents, as I grew older, the guilt of feeling that way. I remember everything being slightly stifling: the weather, the lack of real bookstores or cable TV, the badly lit wallpapered bedroom, the unbearably hot front room where the women socialized, and the cordial but formal interactions with my grandparents.

 I remember that the afternoon shadows against the wooden furniture -- cabinets and chests of drawers -- at my uptown grandmother's house were like nothing at home.  She had patterned gauze curtains, which we didn't, and the patterns cast their light shadows against the slightly tempered sunlight on the peaceful wood surfaces.  The curtains would sway just a little, which would make the shadows seem not so much to move as to modulate their lightness, make the lightness feel even more essential, made the wood seem there to be the perfect surface for these modulations.  It wasn't quite hypnotic, but it did make the whole room, not only the "visual room" (as Wittgenstein calls it) but the room around me, the windows and curtains and walls and the courtyard outside and the buildings around the courtyard and the sky, seem a single, calm, unhurried afternoon space, as unhurried as the modulations of the shadows on the smooth, seasoned wood.

 I remember my downtown grandmother, who had an enlarged heart, wasn't allowed to eat salt.  There was a bakery near their building that sold salt-free bread.  I loved bread more than pretty much anything, but the salt-free bread was terrible.  I couldn't believe that something that looked like bread and smelled like bread could be that disappointing, that undesirable.

I remember my grandmother would collect jokes from magazines, which she'd retell at bedtime during our Hyderabad visits. I think those were the only times I've ever laughed to sleep.

I don't remember if she clipped them or copied them out, but there was a notebook. When I started to learn to read Telugu, I'd clumsily try reading them, but with the great effort it took, the punchline was usually disappointing.