RED SAPPHIRE - INTRODUCTIONS

 

My name is Supriya Sita Rutherford Ramachandran, and I am the Guardian of Memories. 

 

I am the modern heir of an ancient legacy, as old as humanity itself. Until recent events, it was considered by some as religious doctrine, by others as folklore, but by none as fact. Like all stories, it will begin as a mountain of real events determined by real people who made choices that changed the world. Yet, inevitably, in time it will be left to erode into a folkloric echo as generations forget the details, left only to contemplate their meaning and question whether they happened at all.

 

I have not always been as I am now. I began as we all do, as an unsuspecting child, surrounded by a world that I could not possibly comprehend. Like it happens for most, I grew up, and things changed—so much so that it is hard to tell now what changed inside of me and what I can credit to the outside world. But, in the end, such details don’t matter. 

 

My head is filled with memories now, memories that I must keep alive. Some are mine, and some are not; some were given, and some were taken by force. It is my burden and my fate to keep the truth burning, not just while I remain on this earth, but in the minds of countless generations to come.

 

It is this duty that I fulfill now and that I pass to you, the soul who is reading this, to carry for me where I cannot go. You are the memory keeper now.

 

As I write this, I must begin by reflecting on a long journey that spans beyond my brief time on this earth. The journey begins with dreams of details too ancient to be recorded but enters my consciousness in the modern world with the extraordinary life of my grandmother.

 

Grandma Sabrina, a life-loving firecracker of a woman, disappeared along with my father just weeks before I was born. Because my mother refused to talk about her, I first came to know her story through an impeccable stack of letters in an exotic silver box that I rescued from the attic late one night while my mother was away at work. As I naughtily sifted through the forbidden treasure trove of the attic, the box’s elaborate engraved elephants called out to me, their sparkling red and blue sapphire eyes catching my attention from across the dark room and beckoning me closer with an unseen force. Before I knew it, I was sneaking the box down the creaky stairs and hiding it under my bed as a secret link to a past that my mother didn’t want me to know. 

 

For years after that fateful night, when I was all alone and the damp cold crept into every corner of the dark house, I would dive into the fantastic world of Grandma Sabrina’s adventure moving from England to India in 1938. She took the world by storm, reveled in adventure, found love, and ignored those who told her not to. She was perfect.

 

As I read the letters over and over again, I began to worship them like an altar to everything I could and should be. I absorbed their contents into my fantasies, and eventually, Grandma Sabrina became a part of me, a guiding light through years of triumphs and tribulations. Little did I know as a starry-eyed young girl that those letters held the key to an unbelievable destiny. 

 

Now, it is only with our storytelling together that we can create a new verse in an epic that transcends the ages. This story is dedicated to Grandma Sabrina and all the silent heroes who have saved the world through secret sacrifice, generation after generation. May they rest in peace.