Breaking Tradition My mother told me the story of her family slowly over many years. It emerged somewhat gradually and spontaneously as I grew older and my base of knowledge grew as well. She loved to ponder, think aloud and talk as she went about her daily routine, while I sat reading or working on something in the same room. She would be looking through her wardrobe for a suitable sari for an occasion, carefully tying and draping her sari, sometimes changing her mind and replacing the sari with one more suited to her mood, combing her long hair and fastening it into a neat chignon at the back of her head, looking into and posing before the three long hinged-mirrors on her low dressing table. She would talk as she carried out her household chores, ironing, folding and putting away laundered clean clothes, making the beds, tidying up her dressing-table with the three long mirrors, arranging flowers, picking through raw rice or semolina, shelling peas or stringing green be