What Priya Knows About Her Grandmother

Priya is a Year 10 student at Westwood High School. She agreed to be interviewed after her English teacher introduced the project to her class. She arrived with two friends, who waited outside the classroom during the conversation.

She is articulate, funny, and completely honest about the gaps in her own self-awareness. She is exactly the kind of person this project needs to talk to.

What She Knows About Her Nani

Priya's maternal grandmother — her Nani — lives about ninety minutes away. They see each other at Diwali and sometimes during school holidays. They speak on the phone roughly once a fortnight.

I asked Priya to tell me what she knows about her grandmother's life.

She listed: she can cook everything, she lives with Priya's uncle, she used to work but Priya wasn't sure at what, she has a small garden she is very serious about, she has arthritis in her hands.

Then she stopped.

"That's not very much, is it," she said. It was not a question.

I asked if she knew her grandmother's first name — not her title, but her actual given name.

Priya thought for a few seconds. Then she put her hand over her mouth.

"I don't know," she said. "I've always just called her Nani."

The Conversation That Followed

Priya was quiet for a moment. Then she said: "She must have had a whole life before she was my Nani. I never think about that."

I asked what she imagined that life was like.

"I don't know. She's from Gujarat originally. She moved here with my Nana when my mum was little. She must have been — I don't know. My age once, right?" She laughed slightly at this. "That's a weird thing to think about."

She paused again.

"I should ask her."

On What Gets in the Way

I asked Priya what stops her from asking her Nani more questions.

"I don't know. It doesn't occur to me? When I call her it's just like — how are you, how's school, have you eaten. It's comfortable. Asking real questions feels like it would be weird somehow. Like, she'd wonder why I was asking."

She thought about it more.

"I think I'm also a bit worried she'd get upset. She had a hard time when she first moved here. My mum mentions it sometimes. And I don't want to make her sad."

This came up in several other youth interviews too: a reluctance to ask older relatives about the past out of a fear of causing pain. A form of protection that also, inadvertently, closes a door.

What She Said at the End

As we were finishing, Priya said something that stuck with me:

"I feel a bit guilty now. But in a useful way? Like I want to do something about it."

She called her grandmother that evening. She found out her name is Kamla. They talked for forty minutes.

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First interview in the Youth series. Names have been changed.