It was 4 p.m. on a Saturday when I received a short message from Amma, my mother-in-law, which read: “Molu, ammama has passed.” I called my husband, booked the earliest flight to Kochi, and rushed to Noi Bai Airport in Hanoi. At 10 a.m. on Sunday, we entered our home in Cheruthuruthy. Throughout the 14-hour journey, my husband barely uttered a word, lost in his thoughts.
My husband is a Malayali, who has spent the better part of the past 10 years working in Vietnam. He has been married to me, a Vietnamese woman, for five years. This was not the first time that he has been through a rough time like this, while being alone in a foreign land.
Over the years, he has missed countless family gatherings, rarely being able to celebrate Onam, Vishu, Pooram, or even follow cricket tournaments from Vietnam. Vietnamese do not celebrate the same festivals, and I doubt whether our TV channels even know what cricket is, let alone broadcast it.
