on Grandmothers and dessert

Imagine, if you will, a little six-year-old girl. Her grandmother is visiting, from a hop, a skip, an ocean, a continent away. She hasn’t seen her since she was one, celebrating her first birthday in India. Her grandmother brings with her a million little sweets, and even though she doesn’t know her, this little girl loves her, just a little.

It is 2012, and my grandmother is cooking in the kitchen while my brother cries in the background. Even though I am a picky eater, as my mother often complains, even now, years and years later, I have never not enjoyed her cooking. And so, my grandmother is cooking, and I am the helper, even though I can only just see over the countertops. Today is a catchup day for the kitchen because we are out of ghee and paneer, and so the stove is commandeered in an effort to make it all at once. I watch from behind, standing just on my tiptoes, as my mother is called over to hold one side of the pot as paneer is poured into a cheesecloth, draped over a strainer, and left to drain out the whey in the sink. Because I am six and ever-impatient, I steal a bowl and reach for some paneer, still soft and warm as I hide away with it.

My grandmother loves to cook. Or at least she loves to cook for family, loves to feel useful. When I was six, my brother was three and possibly the worst three-year-old to exist. He was a menace, pouring flour into every nook and cranny he could find, taking fistfuls of rice and making shapes and patterns out of it on the floor. So while my grandmother was in town, she forcibly took charge of the cooking and general household chores, while my mother slept, and studied, and pinned my brother to a bed and forced him to take a nap. And I ran around underfoot, a nuisance who was only slightly, sometimes helpful.

And this, it must be remembered, was the first time I had met my grandmother in five years, and many efforts were made to connect. Unfortunately, these efforts were largely one-sided. This was because my mother, overworked, tired, and doing grad school a second time, had essentially foisted me off onto my grandmother. Now this was nothing explicit, but when you come to your parents’ room a third time to talk about the most important things in the world, obviously, and are turned away, also a third time, you come

Tempura i was a gentle human

Come morning light, you will be gone forever, Another idea lost to the spinning sky. Your heartbeat will fade into oblivion, And I will be left here alone.

You are the truest culmination I see, Of every mistake that I have ever made. Just another sin, seared with rage into flesh, By the hands of my restless peers.

But they will never know the pain that I feel, Looking down at you now, so small and so warm, Knowing that in mere seconds, that pulse will fade, An olive pip, ground into dust.

And while I will not cry, or tremble, or mourn, For a moment I will allow myself this: A consideration of what could have been, If you would’ve grown beside me.

I think you would have champagne hair, The type that shines when it falls into a sunbeam. And your eyes would glow with the moon, A beacon of light in this terrible world.

And I think you would be happy. God, I wish this was a time where I could make you happy.