Window Watching
A drawing of my grandmother’s window grille, engraved on the surface of a sour pomegranate.
The average American kid draws their home with a triangle roof, a square base, a rectangular door, and a square window with a grid-like grille.
In India, all the homes in my family have decorative window grilles. The more I see of the Eastern world, the more I recognize these grilles. They are traditional gratings made from wrought iron. I saw them everywhere during a trip I took to Switzerland and Paris. I notice them in photos on social media of homes in Vietnam and Morocco. I’ve seen them in magazines and foreign Architectural Digest videos. I’ve always wondered why they’re so common around the world but so rare in the suburbs of America.
My sister and I spent many summers in India visiting our family, without seeing much else of the land. We are women, we stay home. I used to sit by the window in my grandmother’s prayer room, watching and waiting for someone to pass by. I knew that if I woke up early enough, I’d see my grandfather or an uncle ride up on a motorcycle with fruit for us. They would bring mangos, guavas, custard apple, carambola, jackfruit, and my favorite, pomegranate. They're sweet in India and sour in America, I prefer the sweeter kind. The seeds are large, juicy, and a deep blood red. They stained my fingers and clothes, but I didn’t mind. Separating the seeds from the skin at least gave me something to do.
Grandma’s
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