Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 4, Number 1. May 2021. ISSN: 2581-7094
Mine. Yours. Do Not Cross
All I have ever wanted in my life is a blender. Chipped. Half
blunt. Desecrated by a thousand chutneys that came before. Preferably 850 watts
or more and a Tefal brand. Just like the one the women who made me made food
with. Where I come from, the length and quality of a bloodline is measured in
kitchen appliances. Rice cooker. Pestle and mortar, Knife and chopping board. A
sacred passing takes place. When a child reaches a certain age, old enough to
feed mouths beyond their own, the right tools are bestowed upon them alongside
specific instructions beyond the manual. Panne. Satti. Pots and pans, seasoned
with sufficient decay for the flavour to continue. Naaku. Ecchi. Sambhar Podi.
Tongue. Spit and Powdered Curry. Residue of unspoken recipes cling onto the surface
of non-stick and infiltrate an entire generation with the memory of lineage.
Burden has taste. I arrived in this country with a Hush Puppies suitcase of
worn out clothing, my father’s mug and brother’s plate, with no more space for
a blender. Nearing 29 years old, I was determined to start my heirloom
collection with a blender from Best Denki in Singapore’s Hillion Mall. It was
15 minutes away from the apartment I shared with 3 Singaporeans and their
parents’ furniture. Our fridge shelves were divided both horizontally and
vertically with an invisible line of mine, yours, and do not cross. We had a
gas stove, a convection oven that was never hot enough for baking but burned
the tops of dishes, leaving the insides cold, or worse, lukewarm. Countertop space
was a game of monopoly and risk. Each day, one of us would take turns to see
how long we could leave something on the surface until it became an accepted
habit. This is a game I consistently lost to their toaster, their egg basket,
their protein powder and our dishrack. To win, if only once, I decided to
declare my intentions for a blender. With the efficient persuasiveness of a TV
shop saleslady, I announced to the house: The KitchenAid food processor
is smaller, Kenwood is collapsible, Tefal has a cord that winds under
itself. By this point, I knew every blender by its body, brain and
serial number. My housemates summited around the spot of where my blender would
be, suffocating every exit with How often will you even use
it? Will it sit on the counter everyday? You won’t be living in this house
forever, do you really need a blender right now? They
interrogated me with the vigour of citizenship. Dragging a measuring tape
across the flat, breadcrumb dotted surface, marking squares of our existence in
masking tape according to the size of our waistlines would be a less militant
manner of establishing territories. Instead, we tiptoed on eggshells, wiped out
families of ants from surfaces and violectly shifted other people’s belongings
to the side. They granted me permission with a grunt and I hurried to the mall
thinking about the first dish I would make to season the device: mutton
biryani.
My grandmother starts every mutton biryani with a secret
paste, an alchemy of spices, ginger and garlic in the same turmeric stained
blender, that her son and grandson grew accustomed to. It was her struggle
meal. No matter who you are to her, on the worst day of your life, you can
count on my grandmother to grind two hours into a pot of biryani and spoon the
first bite into your mouth. It was her tangible way of caring, of maintaining a
life. Sometimes she cared so much that she would place the tip of her thumb on
her tongue using her spit as an elixir to wipe a stubborn smudge from the faces
she loved. Sometimes it was my face.
Sometimes it was the sides of her blender. My grandmother
never parted with her recipe to any next of kin, when dementia took her
hostage, only a machine was able to retain a semblance of what she used to be.
Naaku. Ecchi. Tongue. Spit. Salt and memory. When I arrived in this country, I
smuggled my grandmother into every room I can afford. Quietly, she exists here
with me, through favourite brands of ghee. Invisibly, I exist here to continue
her. Her appetite for living, her meticulous palate and the way she believes no
one is truly broken, only hungry. The blender I purchase must match my
threshold for tantrums in tight spaces. The Best Denki salesman does not
understand this and asks if I can pay with NETS.
I carry my Tefal Blender DPA 171 with 1000 watts, one year
warranty, seven days return policy out of the store. My feet walk up and down
escalators with an urgent joy and guaranteed security of a citizen. Everything
I want now feels within reach. My shoulders tense and ease as I build a menu in
my mind and conjure my grandmother’s choreographed choices in the kitchen.
Blend. Mince. Crush. Negotiating the form of every vegetable. Tasting every
morsel it eventually became. She moved without seeking sanction and feared
nothing but the casting of evil eyes. Kannu. No praises. Kannu. No staring with
wanton intentions. Kannu vaikuthai! She would command the end of my sight upon
her, and today I inherit her fears to keep Kannu away from my blender. On the
bus, I shield myself from glaring passengers by placing my unboxed device onto
my lap instead of giving it it’s own seat, as if it were a child, as if it were
a part of me. When we alight, it starts to rain, pour, hail with a vengeance.
Hitting the aluminium roof of the bus stop. I hug my blender tighter, using my
entire torso to protect it from water damage that isn’t my doing. The rain
spits louder, unleashing an auditory wrath upon the radius of the bus stop. And
that is when it hits me.
Noise needs space. I realize that no shared countertop is enough
to accommodate the sound of a blender. The whirr, chop, grind, naaku, yecchi,
tongue, spit and slash, blade to flesh, in repetition. Repeat after me. Noise.
Needs. Place. Once I plug in this blender, my fate is sealed. I imagine a life
of waiting on my housemates to leave each day, and as soon as the front door
clicks shut, I would tiptoe with my foreigner toes onto the tiles I pay rent
for, to avoid asking for permission, to turn my food into smithereens. I
wonder, how long can my body be an apology?
My blender and I sit on the bench, waiting for sun and thicker
skin. The rain riots against our union. My housemate texts the group chat. I
read it in her voice. It is a declaration of necessity for a KDK standing fan,
for our house with five air conditioners. It is more worth it than
a blender, she says, because she detests how much it costs when we
turn on the aircond. I think about biryani and a life without. I think about
space and what it takes to hold. There is no winning. I notice a smudge on the
box and fight the natural instinct to use my thumb against my tongue and spit
to care for it. Naaku. Ecchi. Paati, your taste ends with me. I search for the
receipt, holding the body of the blender to my chest one last time, we walk to
the bus stop on the other side, and return to where we came from.