An Inheritance of Time

Written by Nina Behl from North Shore Country Day, Chicago, USA

I. The Question

I take a deep breath. Incense mixes with the smell of frying spices as Nani, my grandmother, sets a plate before me. It is heaped with piping hot dahl and steaming naan. Heat bites my fingertips as I grab the bread. The first bite hits the back of my throat, and my face goes red. 

Nani grins as I pant. She watches me desperately push my own breath onto the offending naan. Her gold bangles chime against the glass table as she sits down across from me.

“Beti, the naan is not going anywhere. Slow down.”

I smile, but I don’t slow down. 

Nani looks at me, bemused, all the while her mind moving. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

I tear off another piece of naan and consider. “A lawyer.”

She chuckles. “Did you know nearly everyone in my family was a lawyer? My father, uncle, grandfather, brother.”

I look up at her in surprise. “Really? I thought everyone in our family was a doctor.”

“Nope. In fact, I was one of the few people in my family who even wanted to become a doctor.”

I laugh at the irony. “Everyone on my side of our family is a doctor. My mom, uncle, aunt. And I am the only one who wants to become a lawyer.” Then it caught up to me. “So why didn’t you become a doctor?”  

Nani’s expression turns serious. She sets down the serving spoon, and her eyes drift off somewhere past me, somewhere farther than this kitchen. She fidgets with her bangles and presses her knuckles to her mouth. 

I don’t know what to do with my hands. I tear off another piece of naan, but I don’t eat it. Above the stove, the clock ticks. Between us, the naan cools.

II. The Wanting

“I had wanted to be a doctor since I was ten years old. When my cousin announced to the whole family that she would be a doctor, all the aunties and uncles praised her. They talked about how dedicated she was, how hard she worked. I remember thinking, if she could be admired that much, why couldn’t I?” 

I grin. “That’s the reason you wanted to become a doctor?”

She looks back at me. “At first,” she admits. “I was ten years old. I wanted recognition. I wanted people to look at me that way.”

Then, a smile ghosts across her lips, faint as steam. “One day, I was at my cousin’s house when I saw a biology book on a shelf, thick and covered in dust.” She pauses. “I looked around. No one was there. The house was completely quiet. So, I took a deep breath and slipped it into my bag.” Her eyes sparkle with the same look of mischief she must have held sixty years ago.

“From then on, I memorized. I memorized anything I could. I did not know what I was doing, but I felt the wisp of a goal forming. I wanted to prove that I could do it too. That I was smart enough.”

Proving she was smart? Stealing a book? At ten, my only scheming was across a chessboard, screaming at my brother over our weekly game, with nothing at stake but bragging rights until the next game. Nani, meanwhile, had taken a dusty book from a shelf and carried home the beginnings of a future. 

“From sixteen onwards, I completely dedicated my life to my studies. Day and night. Weekday and weekend. Summer and winter. If I had the highest marks in my state on the biology track, I would automatically get accepted into medical school. 

We lived in a small town, and the power would often go out. When that happened, all my cousins would sleep. But I, I would light a candle and continue studying.”

I try to picture her at sixteen. The house has gone dark without electricity; the candlelight flickers on the paper as she turns each page slowly. Her knuckles rest against her mouth–the same way they do now whenever a thought takes hold of her–as if her whole future hangs on what this page contains.

“By the age of nineteen, I had completed my Bachelor of Science, with the highest marks in my state. My place in medical school was guaranteed. Everything I had worked for was finally coming together.” 

The memory softens her features; her eyes lift, and for a moment, she seems nineteen again, standing at the start of everything she had imagined her life to become.

“I remember coming home to my family and being greeted by the aroma of fresh kheer and gulab jamun, my two favorite desserts. The whole house smelled like celebration.”

III. The Night

“One night, my family had just finished playing Teen Patti.” Her shoulders drop. She opens her mouth, but the sound is trapped by the firm grasp of trauma. Her fingers move to her bangles, turning them slowly around her wrist. “And then…” Her gaze drops to the floor. “It–it happened.” 

The clock above the stove ticks once, subtly. Then again. The silence gathers between us, heavy with all she has not yet said. Sounds that would usually be only murmurs now fill the room.

Finally, she whispers, “We were robbed.” She raises one hand to the left side of her forehead, her fingers resting there as though the wound still remains beneath them. “They hit me here.” Her hand falls back into her lap. Her voice firmer, she explains, “I was unconscious for fifteen days.” 

My mouth falls open before I catch myself. I press my lips back together, trying not to let my shock interrupt her. Her voice softens again. “They did not know whether I would survive.” 

Tears slowly gather in her eyes. She tilts her chin towards the ceiling and blinks quickly. “When I woke up, my memory was terrible. I would have conversations with people and completely forget them within a few hours.” She swallows. “I had always kept the biology book tucked away in my nightstand drawer. I would try to read it, but by the time I reached the bottom of a page, I had already forgotten the beginning.” 

I picture the book lying open in her lap, its words refusing to remain with her, the same words she had spent years melting into her mind by candlelight.

“After two or three weeks, small things returned. A name. A conversation. Something I had studied. And I began to think, maybe, just maybe, I still had a chance of becoming a doctor.” 

For a moment, I let myself borrow the hope she must have felt fifty-five years ago.

“We went to countless doctors,” she continues. “All across the state. My parents wouldn’t tell me what the doctors were saying, no matter how many times I asked.” She looks down at her hands, continuing to fidget with her bangles. 

“Eventually, they told me.”

My heart pounds against my ribs. I knew this story, but hearing it from the woman who lived it gave it so much more.

“They–they told me I couldn’t go. I couldn’t go to medical school. The doctors advised against it, so my parents decided I could not.”

A small laugh escapes her, but there is no happiness in it.

“In a few words, my dreams evaporated.”

My hands curl into fists beneath the table. Nani had spent years studying, memorizing page after page, building her whole life toward a future. And in a few violent minutes, strangers had taken it from her. Why her? Why should the person who had worked so hard towards healing others be the one left carrying wounds?

IV. The Life After

“What did you do after?” I ask tenderly, nervous to disrupt the silence.

“Well, I was not going to give up on education. Or on life.”

For the first time, she looks up, and her steady eyes meet mine. My hands unclench. The room exhales with me.

“I took a few easy courses in social sciences and earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in geography. I became a high school teacher in India. Then, my marriage was arranged, and within three years, I had my first two children.” 

She says it so simply, as though an entire life can be folded into a handful of sentences. A different future built from the remains of the first. 

“It wasn’t how I intended my life to go,” she inhales. “But the world works in mysterious ways.”

“Looking back, do you think you could have gone to medical school? Maybe if you were given more time?”

She ponders the question, but I can tell she already has an answer. “Whenever I go to doctors’ offices, I know that could have been me.” 

Her fingers grow still around her bangles. “I just needed time. Time and support.”

V. The Inheritance

Time and support. The two things she was not given. The two things I have in abundance. For me, time looks like the hours my parents spend sitting beside me, helping me work through problems or find new opportunities to pursue my interest in law. Support means that they have never once questioned whether my dream is possible. Instead, they ask how they can help me reach it. I have access to books, technology, and courses, all at my fingertips whenever I need them.

Most importantly, I have the freedom to choose my future, rather than having a circumstance or another person decide it for me.

Had Nani’s accident happened to me, the aftermath would have been extremely different. My life still would have changed. I might have missed months of school. I might have struggled to remember lessons I once understood. But one doctor’s warning would not become the final sentence of my future. My parents would seek another opinion. My teachers would make a plan. I would be given time to recover. 

The question would not be whether I had to surrender my dreams, but rather how much time I needed before returning to them.

Nani did not suffer so that I could succeed. What happened to her was senseless, but she refused to let it erase her belief in education. She carried that belief into her classroom and then into her children. She gave them the support she once needed, and all three of them became doctors. Eventually, through Nani and my mother, that belief reached me.

Even though Nani never entered medical school, her ambition did not disappear. It lives on in the opportunities her children received, in the possibilities they created for their children, and in the freedom I now have to say, without hesitation, that I want to become a lawyer. And I know that I will.

I once thought that my desire to become a lawyer was just a personal choice, a pivot away from my family’s medical legacy. Now, when I look up at Nani, I see the threads connecting us. I am not repeating her path or completing it for her. I am carrying forward the freedom she wanted: the freedom to choose a future and have the time and support to follow it. By pursuing law, I am studying to become the shield she never had, ensuring that an act of arbitrary violence cannot become the final sentence of someone’s future. 

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. The clock's hands keep moving. Time, the very luxury Nani was denied, rests before me. Time, which I have now been given—given to recover, to study, to make choices and to pursue a future of my own.

Across the table, Nani’s bangles chime as she reaches for the serving spoon. I realize that the future she lost did not disappear entirely. Some part of it crossed the table and found its way to me.

“Eat, Beti,” she says, her voice light again. “Your food is getting cold.”