FRAGRANCE OF FIRE

We are startled awake at five in the morning to the crowing of the rooster.

I see that a large portion of the second-floor veranda of our university campus flat has been fenced off. I think to myself: What is the matter now?

A brood of chickens leisurely strut along the balcony, pecking at husks and brans. Armies of snails and mollusks have emerged, only to be captured by my grandfather. He takes a spoon and scoops out the insides, feeding them to the eager chickens. As I catch a glimpse of the soft body, I wonder if this is the soul of the mollusk.

After he has finished feeding the chickens, my grandfather collects the mollusk shells, grinding them with husk. It seems that if the chickens eat snail and mollusk shells, they will have harder eggshells from the chalky calcium carbonate! Mollusk shells have three layers for extra strength. The iridescent inner layer in some bivalve mollusks is known as the mother-of-pearl, though we just saw the mothers and never the pearls!

We keep our chickens for their fresh eggs; although we are non-vegetarians, nobody eats the pet chickens! There are some fluffy yellow hatchlings too scattered around the veranda. They roam amidst the mayhem.

To go back to his roots, my grandfather planted many fruits and vegetables in his garden, a memory of the village he once lived. We lived in a university campus- but that didn’t matter.

My grandfather planted banana trees, which we picked and ate in our backyard. My grandmother, the greatest cook in the world, used the banana flowers and hearts to make delicious medleys. She cooks the banana hearts with ghee and mixes it with mungdal (yellow gram lentil). She adds squared pieces of potatoes and sprinkles the raw rice. Then, we feast!

Our garden has everyday vegetables too, like potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, cabbages, cauliflowers, flat beans, long beans, and spinach. There is also this gandhapatali vine, a winding vine with clusters of leaves, leaves which we dip in tempura batter to make savory pakoras. We eat our fritters with ghee and rice. Life’s little pleasures of the tongue are addictive.

My grandfather grows lots of lemon and lime trees in his garden. There are small and juicy kagji limes, and fragrant Aroma King lemons. The lemon tree also gives us leaves, which we use for many things. Whenever my little sister Shyama or I get any kind of stomach ache, my grandmother believes somebody must have cast their evil eyes on her beautiful and precious granddaughters. She immediately polishes the lemon leaves with mustard oil, and touches the leaves to our tummies. She then throws the leaves on the fire of her stove, and evil is warded off.

It seems like cooking and eating are the main activities in our household, so my grandmother has many different types of stoves. She has earthen stoves that use wood as fuel; she has a stove that runs on kerosene oil, and an electric heater whose sides are insulated with mud. My mother has a baby belling oven too, which she got from London.  

Oil laden lemon leaves crack loudly in the fire.  My grandmother blows softly on our foreheads, whispering ‘Run along now. You will feel good again soon.’

These soft, cuddly, and roly-poly doctors who burnt lemon leaves and blew gently on our foreheads to cure us of all our sicknesses have left the world forever. But they have left behind the fragrance of mustard oil, lemon leaves, and fire.

My grandmother is cooking in her earthen wood stove while my cousin Pritam is dangling from her shoulder.