the news came early morning. he was coughing again. a dagger plunged sharply just below her heart. maloti jolted with the pain, a clenched breath pummelled through her lungs. monai, her eldest son, was coughing again. no, it was not just a cold. he was coughing blood. panic caught at her throat and squeezed, she sat up bolt upright. she could feel a wail starting at the base of her stomach. maloti stood up without thinking and rolled the thin…
Many many years ago, so many that I no longer remember how many, I remember writing an essay for my school magazine. During a train journey, a thin little girl had sung while holding her infant brother in her arms. The coins that people threw into her tin bowl had held strange haunting music of their own. I must have seen beggars before, but this girl had felt real. Real enough that I had written about her. My teachers had…
i keep thinking of her face. the naked helplessness. her expressions are almost gone, the suffering robbing her of that too perhaps. she’s saying something in telegu. i don’t understand what she’s saying but her vulnerability is making my heart hammer in a strange way. that’s real, that’s so real, no fudging in it. once in a way her voice shakes and she trembles a little as a sob escapes silently, a tear drops from a vacant tired eye and…
i took these pictures when i went to the kitchen for my second helping this afternoon. i looked at the methi chicken, boneless slivers of chicken cooked with fresh fenugreek leaves, and thought in what way is she less than a chef? an adept, bright, inventive, innovative, fearless cook is she. there’s nothing she is not willing to try and learn to make. between us we call dishes concocted over our little confabulations and cogitations… experiment (pronounced ex-perri-mane). like this…