Amlanjyoti Goswami
Volume 4 | Issue 7 [November 2024]
Panchami
Photo – Abhishek Jha
The day before Shasthi
Before the goddess is consecrated.
There’s a gathering of food – bring your own, potluck
Money on the table.
Each-one-bring-one.
Fish chops, kochuri aloo, chicken biryani & mochar chop
Dal roti and ghugni
All finger lickin’ good.
The payment is made with utmost discretion.
Not like a restaurant, but with more grace.
What did it take to make these dishes?
How much time, energy, how much passion?
And could I ever recompense you in any way?
That’s the intent.
Guests go round the tables and chat over a meal, standing.
Faces from long ago meet, as if for the first time
And greet each other, as if for the first time
And that kid, now grown, looks just like his father
Even his built, and that voice
As if the father has grown a little younger.
Daulat ki Chaat
Photo – Abhishek Jha
Ever tasted wandering mist?
Soft as foam, delicate as feather
Melting the moment the tongue feels it.
Standing at Dariba
By a cart, his treasure covered in a veil.
A faint memory –
Strawberries and cream in Wimbledon?
Nothing compares to this.
He scrapes a little yellow from the sea of white
And places inside a cup.
It will all disappear in a moment,
Will the winter air take all?
Will it evaporate like moisture?
But it stays in your tongue
Long after the last meal, lingering
Your insides like a passion.
He shows his number, and as you move on
There are more like him
Standing with little carts, each claiming the original recipe.
Who was Daulat? The inventor, the chef
The one who saw wisdom in a dish,
Who learnt it from a traveller, a shocked lama or ibn batuta
Or perhaps just grandmother?
Daulat is wealth, and you need not look for more
Once the chaat is tasted, once your tongue savours meaning.
Why chaat? There is no salt here, except your tears.
No chilly or garam masala.
Perhaps the inventor smiled at the irony.
You lick it, that’s what chaat is about.
You let your tongue run through it
And let it disappear without looking
Without opening your eyes.
Your heart, if you have any, gets it.
When you look to pay,
He smiles, says it’s just eighty rupees
As a token.
The rest we know is priceless.
The Emperor’s Sweetshop
Photo – Abhishek Jha
He sells time for a living.
The past looks at him with bone dry eyes.
An old photograph blurs the sides
Real as the girl next door.
An ailing emperor passing the street, on his favourite elephant,
Stopping at his favourite sweetshop.
The elephant has his fill of rasagollas
Memory is squeezed into syrup.
The sweetshop closed a year ago.
A metro line runs overhead, telling time now by digital hand.
But something refuses to go.
The elephant ate those sweets.
The sweet seller’s secret recipe is still a mystery.
He yawns, lies down by the tree.
The tree knows better.
He dreams fresh rain leaves.
The story will grow a new trunk and head,
When he wakes up dressed as an elephant.
