Amma can’t cook by Nila Lenin

Amma can’t cook

Nila Lenin

Overcooked rice sprinkled with leftovers from yesternight carefully crammed into her little lunch box, spared no effort to embarrass themselves among lip-smacking pickles and spicy Mughlai from Devi's and Aisha's, adorning the lengths and breadths of their classroom lunch table, whose flavoured aromas sculpt another dimension with no friendly facades to hide behind and smirk. She lowers her head, a matter of utter shame, her Amma can’t cook.

Too much spice or too little salt, never too perfect, for the taste buds had a tough time dealing with her mixtures. A hair strand uncaressed for so long, that jumped to death or a tiny pebble eloped from the ration shop, a souvenir unasked-for, two meals a day provided a shelter home for the undesired and the lost.

From braving the breadline to breaking the bars to make it, class, caste, gender, you name it, Somewhere between leading dawn to dusk, mining multiple jobs to make ends meet and customary yielding to nocturnal liquor-scented slaps and choke marks that cling like a tattoo around her long scrawny neck, day-to-day offerings in vain for their only child's sake, Amma kind of forgot to tend to frowns, giggles and get-together belly laughs that forever mouthed,

"Amma can’t cook.”