1001

 

This is a screengrab from somewhere

I forgot to note, apologies. My mum's

was different, it had a domed top 

made of glass, slightly more decorative. 

The principle was the same of course. 

I.

Mother’s first kitchen had a bamboo screen,

a four-slice toaster shaped like a carousel

the elements exposed, the frame in stainless steel

a knob of Bakelite to make the bread swivel,

small, birdcage like and nothing automatic -

the slices had to be turned, attended to,

each side evenly browned, equally crisped.

Every dish made there had something to do

with a larger mindfulness, constant presence,

a more hands on approach, a more involved love.

Mother insisted on four-slice models

through the sleeker, automatic pop ups

with regulators and covered elements

through all her relocations, all her travels.

~~*~~

 

IV.

She’s long gone, yet I sit thumbing her presence -

her pistachio green, Usha table top fan,

her progression through her successive kitchens,

her toasters and her taps in which cold water ran.

She’s long gone, more than thousand days at rough count

 and yet what I count aren’t the days of her absence,

instead dream up her transistors, and the sound

of signature tunes, the beeps at starts and ends.

They’re all gone. Pistachio green and stainless steel.

The nine o’clock siren that she set clocks by,

the clocks themselves lost in time, lying unwound.

Her hanger with her mauve georgette tie-and-dye.

I close my eyes, touch that edge and somehow feel

she’s not gone far. She’s somewhere here. That’s what counts.

~~*~~

VII. 

She’s long gone, but she’s here, not just on and off

like air that’s breathed, fluid that fills up each cell.

Constant, low grade grief’s also some sort of love,

I wouldn’t even call it grief. Hard to tell

where it ends, if it does, and breathing begins

and which exact bits of her have I inhaled,

if I forgot to breathe out what I breathed in

and how her taps, tunes, smiles and linens dovetailed

into me somewhere and can’t be prised apart.

Can grief end if love does not? does this deserve

a different name? how often our language fails!

An immense bandwidth reduced to just two words.

To binaries. With neither heads nor hearts.

Grief and she don’t quite fit, match standard thumbnails.

1001 is a charged number - the best known is the storyteller Shahrazade from the Arabian Nights.  This 1001th one is for my mother who was, no is my very first poetry teacher and one of the finest storytellers it's been my privilege to encounter. 

I've been travelling, happy travels after what feels like an aeon - I went to meet up with a schoolfriend after some 40 years at her son's wedding in Bali. Am back now and back at full attention at M-i-V as well as WEP, where the winners' post is live, go check it out to see who and what won the June Challenge, the creativity was exceptional this round. So blown away!

For the rest, I've been writing this series for the better part of June, I thought the milestone should be dedicated to her who I celebrate and miss everyday with a greater intensity than the day before. This doesn't in any way feel like grief, just a quiet teasing out of various memories that give shape and meaning to my life overall. It started with that vintage toaster and moved through various other stuff from half a century ago to now and got embedded into this series. So I thought I'd post a few of them here. 

That's not her first kitchen of course, but that's the very first one I remember, which was in New Delhi in a three storey stand-alone residence and at least twice, probably three times the size of her last kitchen in her flat in Calcutta. Do you remember your mother's kitchen from your childhood? Any particular gadget come to your mind? 

Hope your summer/season is going smooth and well.