Out by the coast, along the Bay of Bengal, they harvest salt beneath the sun from the sea’s swirling water. Big square flats on Tamil Nadu’s red earth, full to the brim with seawater. The sun evaporates the water and leaves behind its salt in crystals. Women walk with bare feet over the square flats and scrape and stir the water so that the salt is evenly distributed. The glare from the sun on the salt burns in their eyes. The crystals pierce their feet, fill their lungs. Salt crystal, salt crystal; buried in their organs and below their skin. 

By the village of Pichavaram two rivers meet: Vellar from the north and Kollidam from the south. At the river mouth that joins the two, a forest of mangroves spreads into the water’s depths. The village islands are bound by the different species of mangrove that knit them together underwater. Especially the gray mangrove, with its hollow and airy branches that rise above the ground from their long, horizontal roots. The bark is yellowish, and the leaves shine emerald green. The flowers are bell-shaped, yellow or orange with four petals on each stem and they resemble small stars on an emerald green sky. This mangrove forest sprawls, creating corridors in the river. It is easy to get lost here. What the mangroves share is their tolerance of salt water. Only a sandbar separates the forest and the village from the Bay of Bengal; as the sea levels rise, the water intrudes. 

At the foot of a mountain, amma takes my hand for the first time. We walk up the mountain, warmth streaming between our palms. We sit down on a rock and amma takes a comb from her bag; she fixes my hair and tells me with a stern smile that my hair is too short. She combs it back and tries to tie it in a knot at the back of my head, securing it with a pin and a sprig of jasmine. My hair is too short and too smooth, so the pin won’t stay. It keeps falling from its knot and into my face. “You be Indian lady,” she says with a laugh as she strokes my cheeks and finally gives in. The soil here is red—in part from the weathered old crystals, metamorphic rocks and high iron content; later, the deciduous forest.

Farther up the mountain the neem trees tower above us. The path we’re on winds through trunks and tall bushes. It leads us up the mountain where the trees finally make a forest. Neem trees can reach a hundred feet tall; their tops are round and dense, and their leaves are feather-like from their stems. Their flowers are white and smell of honey, and their fruits are glossy, olive-shaped—nearly round with a pale yellow skin stretched taut over their flesh. Here in this deciduous forest, leaves fall from the trees in the warm, rainy winters. The trunks crack like the skin on my dry legs. Yet another fruit I can’t seem to swallow. 

Amma walks in front of me in a lilac sari. Dust rises at her feet with each step. She picks honeyed flowers from the trees and tucks them into one of the folds of her sari. She picks the leaves and collects the loosened bark. “Chellam, later we make flower rasam,” she says, showing me the leaves. The neem tree leaves can be eaten fried in oil with the flowers sprinkled on top in a warm rasam, just before serving. In some places, the tree is considered a weed.

I gather the flowers that have fallen from amma’s sari and put them in my bag. “Look, chellam, temple,” she says, pointing ahead of us. The temple appears, painted emerald green, lilac, marigold, blue, as close to the blue of the sky as you can get, the colors of peacock feathers and ocher. Amma takes my hand again and leads me onward. 

Inside it is cool and dark. Water runs across the floor; soot and rose petals float on its surface. The rose petals resemble boats on a small river. We hear the water dripping down the mountainside, and in here, deep inside the mountain, candles flicker all around us. We have water poured over us from brass lota. This is the first time we’ve met. On a mountain, where the earth is red, in a forest of honeyed flowers, deep inside a mountain with flickering candles. Amma says, “Itayam, itayam,” and points to where the heart is.

I mimic amma’s motions at each altar, shape my hands into a bowl over the glinting candles and gather the smoke from their flames like water from a stream, pouring it over my forehead. Amma follows me with her gaze, shows me how to offer my hands which are still folded into a bowl. I accept rosewater on a small gold spoon; I put it in my mouth and swallow. Accept the oil, put it in my mouth and swallow. Accept the milk and swallow. She takes my hands and lays rose petals on my palms, signals with her hands for me to put them in my mouth. I tear them with my tongue, let them rest against the roof of my mouth before I swallow. 

Dear child 

you have jasmine in your bonnet 

cloves in your hand 

is it you that lit all these candles

Out by the coast, along the Bay of Bengal, lies the town of Vedaranyam. On April 28th, 1930, one hundred and fifty people reached the town on a fifteen-day salt march protesting the colonial empire’s tax on salt. Those fifteen nights, they slept on the riverbanks, hidden from sight, away from the roads. In the emerald green quiet. Because the Brits had written in the papers that anyone who offered the protestors food and shelter would be put in jail. On the fifteenth day, they set up camp by the coast, wandered into the ocean to harvest salt. The next day, all the shops in Vedaranyam closed their doors. The townspeople joined the march, leaving their work behind to gather salt with the protestors. Their feet on the large square flats, scraping and stirring the water so the salt would be evenly distributed. Salt crystal, salt crystal; swirling waters of the sea.

There is a garden in Vedaranyam. In this garden only halophytes grow, also known as salt plants. They thrive lush and well in salty earth and water. They grow in tidal marshes, along coasts and the mouths of rivers. The garden attempts to cultivate these salt-tolerant plants. Caspia, samphire, saltbush, sea purslane, rice cutgrass. In all that is drowning, we will find plants to sow. Amma picks some sea lavender and wraps it in a piece of silk. She crushes its small blossoms between her fingers and runs her fingers over my mouth, behind my ears, strokes my forehead. Where the sea drowns the coasts we will grow what we can. The towns and crops will be sown in the salt and the emerald green. Salt crystal, salt crystal; intruding on our roots and letting us stand.

Dear child 

this is a still room 

I will try to hand you landscapes 

all that grows here is ours 

I want to hand you all that  

we gather in our baskets 

night-blooming jasmine 

emerald green flats 

deep and long breaths 

all that once blossomed  

and now withers in the red soil 

I will try to make it ours 

twigs, cardamom, vines and lilac 

I have forgotten the tongue of my mothers

As a child I walk barefoot through the grass. Butterflies hum around the butterfly bushes. I learn that the one I find most beautiful is called the brimstone, and that the wings are lemon-colored or pale yellow with an orange spot in the middle. They are more drawn to the dandelions in the grass than to the bushes. I squeeze dandelion juice from the stalks, collecting the small drops on my dry legs. Imagine the drops hardening in the sun and turning into white, smooth stones. Stones to gather in a basket. Stones to skip by a coast. Now my leg is a river and the drops are stones to leap between, across the river, from one country to another.

In my first tale, I came to life in a water lily because I had forgotten lotus and jasmine. Back then, I covered all my school books in paper, put them in my backpack and was accompanied down to the fence lined with large rose bushes. I would carefully consider the roses before selecting single petals from single roses that I hid inside my mouth or between the pages. Back then, I sang in Tamil and would point at the roofs in the city—“look, temples”—and back then I was read aloud to in a language that I didn’t understand but would soon become the only one I spoke.

The garden faces south, and next to the apple tree are two blackcurrant bushes. The berries burst on my tongue. I don’t like the taste, but they color my lips and go along with my game. Elder and nettles line the house; I pick them and put them in a pot. Pour water over them, stir and stir and stir and imagine a fire. I sing the Tamil songs I used to know. The image of a fire, a pot full of weeds, a tongue I’ve since forgotten.

In the back of the garden the lilac bushes grow, winding over the fence and out onto the path. I imagine the path is a river. Beneath the river the asphalt glitters with dark colors. Has there been a flood or is this just how the riverbed looks? The garden is a country, separated from other countries by this glittering river. The hops grow into the stream and over the fence. They grow up the lilac, coiled around each of its branches, holding the twigs together with their lianas. They are difficult to disentangle. I pick the small lilac flowers, drop them into a jar of water, let them sit in the sun. I can’t handle the hops, try in vain to free the lilac from their grasp, but for each branch I crack another grows.

The stems of the hop plant are green at first, or more rarely, red, and later grayish brown. Its shoots are lined with hooks that latch onto the surrounding plants, and whatever else gets too close. Hops grow in alder carrs, along woodland edges and glades. They have conical buds, yellow-green crowns and contains sulfureous compounds; they’re sticky and bitter. The colonial empire transported hops in large barrels from one country to another. Let the hops wash over the coasts. It grows along the jasmine, coiled around every single branch. It is difficult to disentangle. 

The bones cleave against each other 

the ribcage is hollow 

there is salt in both of my lungs 

Now I’m dusting things off and arranging them in a room 

everything has its place 

out of boxes, out of shrines

Where the sun falls on the wood floor, I attempt to make an altar. I place the emerald leaf on a gilded aluminum tray, stack flint stones and crystals around it. Pour water into a lota, light candles and incense. I imitate all of amma’s movements—the way she pours water from the lota over the tray, which hand she uses to light the candles—while humming the songs in my head because they haven’t dared to cross my lips. The Tamil words that are still only sounds in my ears. The incense smells dusty, and the candles keep going out; the sunlight is already falling elsewhere on the wood floor. Do I move the whole altar? I’ve read about how to plant a mango tree; I’ve read about all the gods, but all that I’ve read hasn’t settled in my body yet and what has settled still doesn’t have a language.