New Delhi, Oct. 17 -- The anjarai petti didn't come to my mother by chance. Ammachi (mother in Malayalam) was meant to inherit it. A round box carved out of teak wood, it was used to store whole spices and had been doing so for more than six decades.

Traditionally, when a woman gets married and moves to a new household in Kerala, she is gifted a spice box by her mother. My mother had one too. She gave it to me when I got married and moved to Bengaluru in 1998. For years, I didn't think much of it. It was packed away with some old things and, for a while, I even used it to store foreign currency coins. It is funny how objects can sit quietly in a corner of your life until, years later, they suddenly begin to mean something.

The box itsel...