Legacy is a strange and interesting thing. If you ask anyone what their greatest fear is, some might say failure, or dying, or losing their loved ones — but I think, subconsciously, we’re all afraid of one thing: being forgotten. We all want to be remembered. That’s why people rush to have their names chiseled onto a monument, a road, a temple wall, or even have a slew of children, particularly sons — anything tangible or materialistic to secure their name. It’s the overarching “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”

But I’ve always seen this lens of legacy as something created and propagated by men. Women historically had no real way to 'secure' their future, except by marrying into a good family, and in this context good usually meant higher class and higher caste. Leaving inheritance, itself, holds a lot of power in South Asian cultures. It perpetuates the notion that children will forever be indebted to their parents — not just emotionally, but materially. The idea that “we did all this for you” becomes both a promise and a burden. But this cycle has never been gender-neutral.

For generations, sons were positioned as the rightful heirs, the ones expected to carry the family name and, in turn, inherit the family wealth. Daughters, on the other hand, were often written out of the story entirely. Even their children were not really theirs in terms of legacy, because they carried their father’s name. And until as recently as 2005, daughters couldn’t even inherit ancestral property like sons could. So, as with any other gendered predicament, women found ways to pivot — to carve out their own forms of remembrance.

From gold bangles worn every day as women ran their households like well-oiled machines, to a 'nath' (nosering) passed down from one generation to the next, jewellery, often labelled as either a frivolous purchase or a status symbol, became a medium through which women asserted power and agency.

But legacy isn’t held only in objects; it lives in the cultural and emotional traces we inherit too. I see it everywhere — in the painted portrait of my great-grandmother, and in the saree passed down from my grandmother to my mother and now to me. Women’s wardrobes are parts of their legacy. They live on, telling stories far beyond their immediate utility. These items weren’t just fashion; they were repositories of memory. And more often than not, for the women who came before us, these were the only things they could leave behind; objects that offered not just a sense of agency, but also a form of security if they ever needed to leave their husbands or step away from traditional family structures. These possessions became a silent kind of insurance, a backup plan in a world where there were no available structures left to support them.

I lost my great-grandmother this year. Years ago, after the early death of my great-grandfather, she became the matriarch of the family. She lived an incredibly long, full, and disciplined life in her nine-yard sarees. And that is how she will be remembered. Almost everyone in our family — children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren — has a dhupti, a blanket made from one of her old sarees. Woven together with the same care and precision she once poured into singing her ragas early in the morning, there are still days when it carries her scent. Her sarees will never appear on a will. They won’t be counted as assets or entered into any registry. Yet they are the most profound inheritance she could have left us, one that collapses generations into a single fold of cloth. My great-grandmother may have never owned land in her name, but she left behind something far more profound and enduring: the quiet proof that a woman’s life, her labour, and her love can outlast time itself.

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