to market, hanging on at the tail-end of
my mother’s saree
Sacks of jute at the grocers stood
high as my chest —
some packed firm with kidney beans
some with beads of forest-green mung
or yellow mung, delicate and pale like winter sunshine
I trickled them through my fingers pebbled river-smooth a susurration
like the rustle of wind through palms
In the kitchen, Ma sat low on a stool with a platter of seeds
in her wide-spread lap
I leaned my weight
against her side, settled in to watch
her fingers flick like needles
pick out scabs, bits of stone and straw
She told me a story about the discards how they travelled all the way
from a field beside a hut in a village where the children run barefoot and laugh in the dirt
She washed, and soaked the beans, and washed again
until the dust and the footprints of the children drained away
Scoops of turmeric and coriander from the spice box
made their way into the pot the passion of red chilies the stoic balance of salt
Then the boiling, the puffing, the scream
of the pot-bellied cooker, its contents pressed
into soft-bubbled lava seasoned with a sputter of
hot oil and cumin a lime squirt, clenched in sour-bitten lips a fistful of cilantro
I pouted pretended escape eager for capture by her gentle arm
Ma mixed boiling daal with buttered rice scooped with her fingers taste
of her skin lilt of her tale in my mouth as she sang, bite after bite:
one for the village children one for you
