Food Memories
Words by Purbasha Roy
1. Memories
Known as petha. The raw sounds of the fibrous
body as it broke down. Kach-kach. Rice pumpkin
sweet has a fanbase greater than Michael Jackson.
When we went for the yearly autumnal ritual of
touching neighborhood grandparents' feet. They
offered us a plateful of these sweetmeats. October
wind pleasant around us. My siblings enjoyed them
the way a tree branch holding a singing cuckoo does.
I, unlike them felt no joy biting them. To avoid the
awfulness of its taste I chew it fast. And gulped
down the way a whirlpool takes down all the
floating things on the water surface. Generations
have grown to this off-white beauty. My tongue a
weird thing couldn't accept tastes' algorithm spread
upon it. The tongue rolled back against this serving.
To not be disrespectful for the elders who loved us
like we were a lost summer they refound. I ate. If my
tongue could be photographed, it would be an elegy.
For a window unwinding into a dark cave mouth.
2. Tal Palm
Sometimes I remember the way my father
blamed me for buying tal palm. To make sweet
bitter cutlets is not a simple task. How it's
thick skin after removal needs constant
shredding for the fibre and the syrup to fall
apart. Like butter and milk. Barely ten. I didn't
understand the word labor. My mother with
no domestic help forever on her quick. When
she asked father why he bought it. He pointed
towards me to prove his innocence. I was close
taking off my socks that had patterns of boats
those never met rivers. This incident seems
another life. I felt ricocheted between strangeness
and receiving. The space synonymous to waking
to homelessness. I rummaged the folklore in which
grief of autumn leaves while they hug the tree trunk.
Without intentions after all these years have multiplied
to it. My tongue returns to the bitter sweetness like
a paid debt that still seems scrappy.
Purbasha Roy is a writer from Jharkhand India. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Channel SUSPECT Bluestem DASH View magazine Bayou Review Long Con magazine Hive avenue Hills Hoist and elsewhere. She attained second position in 8th Singapore Poetry Contest 2022. Best of the Net Nominee.