Grandmother Knows Best

The light in the Indian South is a slow burn, a deepening brown that washes over everything. From the mahogany branches of the jackfruit trees, gnarled and heavy with fruit, to the rich Burmese teak of the Nalukettu homes with verandahs slick with petrichor each monsoon—the landscape is a palliative motley of sepias. 

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The hands of the matriarch—paati, Tamil for “grandmother”—who holds court in the verandah each morning are no different. Wheatish and weathered, they hold the secrets of self-care and regimens of nurturing, passed from one generation to the next, as natural as breathing. It is in this quiet, unspoken tradition of care, rooted in the earth itself, that the true weight of South India can be found. 

Nethra Gomatheswaran moved to New York in 2019, a city where the seasons change abruptly and the sun disappears for weeks. The designer and Coimbatore native longed to care for herself the way her grandmother once did for her. She recalls her grandmother being very particular about how she and her siblings were raised. Her paati likened taking care of oneself to duty and often said, “If you can’t put it in your body, you can’t put it on your body.” And so, Gomatheswaran began calling home, asking questions, piecing together fragments of a language she’d once spoken without effort. She traced her grandmother’s lessons, the way one might trace the outline of a shadow on a wall. 

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As she spoke with family members and Ayurveda practitioners, she learned that many of these practices were often lost in the folds of time or to the oral tradition, so she began writing them down. “My great-grandmother did not pass them on to my grandmother, and my mother knows even a smaller percentage,” the author explains. She called the project Love, Paati, a coffee table book which debuted on November 14. 

Gomatheswaran recalls the first time she saw a “golden latte” for sale. “It was familiar yet foreign,” she says. “No one mentioned where it came from… It broke my heart to see our rituals reduced to yet another wellness trend.” Haldi doodh, or turmeric milk, has been a staple in India for nearly 5,000 years, revered in religious texts, valued for its spiritual and healing properties, and given to the sick for its restorative qualities.

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Love, Paati showcases a life attuned to a quieter rhythm, one that understands the body as both fragile and infinite. There is holy basil juice, a salve for the hot nights, and moringa-infused water, green and faintly bitter. Probiotic congee simmers on the stove, an antidote for an unsettled stomach, while a pepper-and-milk hair mask dries in the afternoon sun. 

These ingredients, ranging from familiar flowers, fruit, and spices to rarer elements like saffron, gold ash, and powdered pearls, are meant to guide you on a journey, one that promises to awaken something inside, to help you glow from within. It’s a subtler, lasting transformation, the kind that comes when you tend to what is most essential.

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For the face, there is a natural wax and inknut powder, the kind of ancient, unhurried remedy that feels like a whisper from another time. Each ritual is a promise to the body that it will not be forgotten. These are not quick fixes but deliberate, practiced gestures—an intricate map for healing from the inside out.

“You can buy a salad from Sweetgreen or make one at home with the same ingredients, but it won’t be the same,” Gomatheswaran says. “I’ve always thought the same about skincare products.” She pauses, adding that she ruled out less accessible ingredients in the book, and most of these products are available at places like Trader Joe’s. She recalls a story about how an acquaintance's great aunt would mix powdered pearls with rose petals, giving it to the kids each summer to cool their bodies and boost calcium.

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The visuals in Love, Paati are deeply personal, too; they feature real people and spaces that resonate with Gomatheswaran’s life story. In keeping with this slice of the subcontinent, the cover is the deepest of umbers. With art direction by Actual Friends and photography by Vasanth Kumar, the book captures subjects: family, friends, and her beloved paati against majestic Chettinad architecture, Bengaluru’s colonial mansions, and Kerala’s verdant backwaters. 

Actor Poorna Jagannathan penned the foreword for what she describes as “not just a pristine coffee table book,” but one to routinely dog-ear and leave fingerprints on in the kitchen. For her, this specific imagery of relationships creates a profound intimacy. “I can almost hear the conversations, the laughter… I can see time pass. I smell the fragrances,” she wrote. 

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Gomatheswaran chose to present these images as not just aesthetic choices but as emotional records of a life shaped by history and custom. “I wanted to show that being South Indian doesn't necessarily have to look like me… dusky skin and dark hair, but instead a variety of people,” she offers. 

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So, who is Love, Paati for? Gomatheswaran believes the book is for “anyone with skin and/or hair.” These practices don’t merely belong to one gender or generation. In South Indian culture, self-care—whether through turmeric masks to soothe the skin or the meditative catharsis of massaging oil into scalps—was never an exclusively feminine pursuit. 

“The idea that only women can benefit from looking after themselves never made sense to me,” she says, adding that she saw both her grandmother and grandfather practicing oiling routines. “Self-care and wellness have always been a part of your physical health,” she says, “you’re given your body and you’re supposed to take care of it.” 

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Through more than 100 rituals, the book does more than document. For Gomatheswaran, it isn’t merely a wellness manual; it is a piece of South Indian heritage. Its pages present the space between the personal and the public—those moments in the kitchen, in the verandah, in the kitchen again—that embody a life lived intentionally. The angular folds of sari fabric, the spiced scent of chaiya rising from a steel glass, the stoic grace of the author’s own paati, a woman who has always known that her presence is enough.