My grandmother was not a good cook. Her curry contained everything necessary: salt, spices, freshly ground masala and chillies. Plenty of vegetables swam in it, usually accompanied by fish. However, her curries tasted of nothing. Her meals remained bland and unmemorable. But she never gave up cooking.

I lived with my grandparents as a child while attending a convent school. Granny used to sit with me in the kitchen while I attempted to eat her overcooked rice, insipid vegetables and flavourless curry. While she waited for me to finish, she told me stories.

Of her Keralan village by the sea. Of her people who waited month after month for the money she would send. Of the family and relatives she had left behind in search of a new life with her husband.

Twenty years have passed since she died.

As a child I would cunningly dispose of her inedible meals under old newspapers in the dustbin. Her stories, however, aren’t so easy to discard. In surprising clarity they still linger, in celebration of a life that should not be forgotten.

That lives on in the exceptionally vivid stories she told.