It begins with my mother. Food always begins
with my mother. It tires me when people ask if I can
cook a curry. As if all we eat is curry. As if
a country the size of a continent, could ever, only,
feed itself on curry.
I began to chafe at that word, long ago.
When it boxed my mother in. When there was never
room to explain she is Parsi. Zoroastrian.
A portraitist, arranging food on a plate, the way
she carves paint onto canvas.
Her palette is sometimes pastel, sometimes oil,
a mix of ochre, mustard, turmeric or rai,
coriander for greens: peas, lime, okra, French beans;
purple aubergines. Eggs for any day,
any possible way.
Her grandmother, and mine,
both believed in butter. Their girlhoods
were for sali: salty potato matchsticks;
sev mamra: puffy rice popping; and ice
cream cones, for cool Sunday mornings.
Now, on special occasions, or just for love, hours
of building biryani, sifting, sieving daal, and preparing
every roti. Pomfret, if she can find it, lightly fried
with salt and pepper. And on the side, cachumber.
Cachuber? (Here the rare parental disagreement.)
Every birthday, garlanded, with a carefully burned
palace of semolina, milk, sugar, petals, raisins.
She calls it rava, or ravo, depending.
A small tribe, the Parsis, in a vast civilisation;
in a country swooning in flavour, they make their
meals as moreish as my father's people did.
The Bedouin desert tribes still thrum within
the meat that hangs off girded steel.
You have to garment your fingers to really taste
your food, and share a single thali
without disturbing the portions.
When I was a boy, he begins, but the memory
is too much for a cold November day in England.
I remember, he tries again, his fingers curling,
savouring mutton as it melts, paya, haleem,
falooda with chiku, thick buffalo cream.
It is May when he speaks, gulmohar season.
In the heat, scarlet tiger claws watch the drip
of mango run down his chin – King Alphonso,
the best – and bursting her stays, sitaphal –
Custard Apple Queen.
Quinoa is recommended to the girl with the wolf
disease: mashed avocado, maca, kale, apple
cider vinegar. Cacao helps to sweeten spinach,
chia, goji, but even as I juice and blend, my heart
belongs elsewhere, on someone else's palate.
In her conservatory, she tends to bougainvillea
and hibiscus, coaxing Indus valley plants
to befriend their European compatriots.
And up from her kitchen, magic weaves
her spell. Food never tastes so well
as when my mother makes it.
Shaista Tayabali
food prompt, at dverse poets
