Page 18 - Memorial Book Thilaga Mylvaganam

From the grandchildren – Narmatha,

Haran, Aranee, Shankari, Brannavan and
Gaithri

As you’ve heard from the Mylvaganam siblings, our
grandmother was a great woman and she and Patta
sacrificed so much to get our family here. Aside from her
many contributions to the community, we are particularly
grateful for the lengths that grandma went to, to ensure
that we all had strong links with our culture and heritage.
But what we loved most about grandma was her playful
and mischievous side and that’s what we’ll be talking about
today.

Despite her traditional upbringing, grandma was
unexpectedly quite progressive. While she encouraged all
her grandchildren to read the classics, grandma herself
would most often be found with her nose buried in a large
print Mills & Boon romance novel. When grandma was told
that one of her grandchildren had recently ended a long-
term relationship, we expected grandma to be pretty
downcast about it. However, without skipping a beat, she
responded, “don’t worry there are plenty of fish in the sea”.
It was clear to us that at the end of the day, all she cared
about was our happiness.

Being a teacher, it was only natural that grandma found it
necessary to bestow upon her grandchildren a number of life
lessons. In addition to teaching us the importance of good
grammar and the value of education, she also taught us the
important things: like how you should always drink rasam
off your plate after you finish eating and that the key to
making food taste good was adding lots of butter and sugar.
Coincidentally, a lot of our memories about her revolve
around food: whether it was the daily porridge, the tuna
macaroni topped with Weetbix, the essential after lunch
Late Mrs. Tilakavati Mylvaganam 17