Goat’s Ear
Volume 4 | Issue 4 [August 2024]

—Appadurai Muttulingam

Volume 4 | Issue 4 [August 2024]

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Translated from Tamil by Thila Varghese

When I came home from school that day, I threw my books all over the floor. No one looked back at me.

With her head bent down, Amma was cutting vegetables with a billhook. My older brothers were nowhere in sight. My older sister was muttering something with her music notebook open. My younger sister toddled across the room towards me without wiping her mouth, stuck her hand into my mouth, and then moved away. I made my announcement.

“Starting today, I will not eat meat. From now on, only vegetarian food for me.”

Even then, Amma didn’t look up. I was eight years old.

Artwork – Rashmy, 2024

The story that my teacher with a tuft of hair tied at the back of his head told us that day when he conducted the class was imprinted in my mind.

“Without comprehending anything, we memorised and recited Thirukkural that day also. My teacher then narrated a story. Once my teacher fell into the sea. He knew how to swim but he was injured, and a drop of blood spilled into the water. Sharks started coming towards him. Sharks can smell blood a quarter of a mile away. They have four rows of teeth. It seems that when a tooth is lost, another tooth would fill the space. With their fins folded together like praying hands, the sharks had circled around the teacher four times and went away. You know why? It was all because of the Thirukkural couplet that proclaims, ‘All living creatures fold their hands in prayer in front of the one who neither kills a living being nor eats meat.’”

My younger brother was an insolent boy, who just couldn’t stop wagging his tongue.

He asked, “How did the sharks know that the teacher was a vegetarian? With four rows of teeth, why didn’t they bite him and tear him apart?”

“You dimwit, they came because they smelled the blood. Don’t they know that it was vegetarian blood. Go away!” I pushed him away.

Irritated, he retorted, “Sharks not only know how to smell, but they are also familiar with Thirukkural.”

A surprise awaited me when I sat down for dinner that night. We were seven in our family. Everyone was seated on the floor with their plates full. Fish curry on their plates smelled so good. A few spaces away from their plates, a small banana leaf was placed on the floor. On it, idiyappam, sambal and eggplant curry were served. I looked at Amma. She nodded her head gesturing me to eat. That’s how I became a vegetarian.

Since then, Amma started cooking separate meals for me. Separate pots and pans, separate banana leaf. It is indeed hard to believe if I say a separate stove was used to cook my meals. If my older sister mistakenly used the coconut shell ladle meant for my vegetarian food for non-vegetarian dishes instead, Amma would throw it away and buy a new one.

My stature at home suddenly shot up. The special care and attention I received from Amma when all of them were sitting down to eat irritated them. Once Ayya said to Amma, “Instead of taking a stick and giving him four whacks below the knee, you are spoiling him.”

Amma responded, “The teacher did the right thing after all. Isn’t killing a sin? If I stop him, that sin will catch up with me.”

Artwork – Rashmy, 2024

Ever since I became a vegetarian, my glory continued to rise. If neighbours came to our house, Amma would not send them away without extolling my virtues. She would speak highly of me as if I had won a first prize at school. She would say, “It seems that if a person ate vegetarian food, even sharks would worship that person. That’s what the teacher had said.” This created a major storm in the house. It was my younger brother who turned everyone’s irritation into action.

Twisting and curving his body in front of me, he would say, “Oh, today it is ribbon fish curry for us. Green banana stew for poor you!”  He would laugh out loud holding his belly. The next day, he would say, “Shrimp fry for us. For you, mustard leaf fry. Poor you!”

Another day, staying far from me, he would wiggle his back at me. Then he would come forward and curve his body towards all four directions. I’d jump and grab hold of his hands and threaten him. When I let go of him, he would unfurl like a measuring tape reel and run inside.

“Poor you! Pumpkin for you. Mash it well with your hands and eat. We are having goat meat fry.”

I couldn’t stand it. All the fame that I had garnered was being ruined by him.

Later, one day, Amma was sifting flour using a sieve with both her hands. Perfect time! Since both her hands were occupied, I figured they were not going to come to her aid for hitting me.

Modulating my voice to a begging tone, I complained to Amma. “Nice meat curry for them, but only pumpkin for me?”

As I kept talking, without saying anything in response, Amma kept sifting the flour carefully with her hands fully extended forward to avoid the flour getting sprinkled on her body.

That gave me courage. “If they’re going to have meat, I want potatoes.” At that time, potatoes were priced highly, and their taste was incomparable “If it’s fish for them, brinjal curry for me. If it’s shrimp fry, plantain fry for me. Drumsticks would be a fitting match for crabs.” I made a long list and stuck it on the wall with rice paste. Amma, who looked at it, didn’t say anything.

After that, there was a slight improvement in my diet, although there was no major change. Still, my mind was unsettled at times. One day I opened the wooden gate of the house and stepped inside. The smell of crab curry entered my nose and went into my stomach. My mouth started watering. I remembered eating crab legs as Amma broke the shells one by one and gave me the meat. I rushed into the kitchen. Had Amma said, “It’s just crab. I’ll break a small leg and give you the meat. Eat some,” my resolve would have crashed to pieces. When Amma saw me, she immediately closed the pan as if she saw a local dignitary and made sure that the smell of crab curry didn’t waft towards me. As I had demanded in my list, drumsticks were boiling on the side stove.

One day, Amma encountered a huge challenge. In our town, the grey cuttlefish would be available only very rarely. Its taste was very distinct. Amma had a special talent for cooking cuttlefish. Ayya never ever complimented Amma’s cooking. But if she cooked cuttlefish, she would receive compliments. On that day, using all her culinary skills, Amma cooked the cuttlefish that Ayya had somehow painstakingly hunted for and brought home. Two handfuls of drumstick leaves added to the curry while cooking would elevate the taste. Amma went around the neighbourhood, searching high and low to get some drumstick leaves and finished cooking the cuttlefish. The aroma coming from the kitchen confirmed that the curry was going to have an exquisite taste. Amma never tasted food while cooking. She would know by the smell what it would taste like.

On days she cooked cuttlefish, Amma would never make any other curry. Just cuttlefish curry and white rice. Only then, one could absorb and relish the curry’s full flavour. If it was a cuttlefish curry day, Amma would cook an extra cup of rice because that was the day everyone ate twice as much. It was only after she finished the entire cooking, Amma realized with sudden panic that she hadn’t thought of what to cook for me. She looked at the long list pasted on the wall. There was no cuttlefish on it. Amma got agitated. What to cook? Time was running out.

That afternoon when everyone sat down to eat, Amma had served me white rice on a banana leaf with some type of curry poured on it. My younger brother who was sitting next to me had made my porcelain cup with a broken rim his own. As though a large crowd had gathered for a meal, they all ate, relishing the taste of the cuttlefish curry very noisily. I didn’t know what was placed in front of me. I had never eaten a nameless dish until then. I took a mouthful. I had never ever tasted anything like that in my eight years of life. Not before, and not anytime afterwards either.

The curry had something in it that was cut into squares just like the cuttle fish pieces. It was smooth yet stretchy. Biting into it made the chewy taste last longer. The same texture as cuttlefish. The same flavour and taste. I just couldn’t believe it. That taste remained on my tongue forever. After that day, I never experienced such a taste again in my life.

Artwork – Rashmy, 2024

My reign went on like this for a few years. Then Amma died. Ten years later, my older sister told me the secret of what happened that day.

Amma had stormed out of the kitchen like a mad woman. Time was running out. She couldn’t decide what to cook for me. Whatever she cooked had to have the equivalent taste to that of cuttlefish curry. There were about 20 to 25 coconut trees in the land adjacent to our house. She had 12 tender coconuts brought down from different trees. Then she herself cut them open one by one and examined them. Some of them had very thin and watery inside layer that was just starting to form. Some of them had hardened flesh inside, having turned into mature coconuts. Amma found a coconut with an inside layer of flesh that was in between the two extremes and dug it out carefully. It was cushiony like leathery skin. She touched it five times and made sure that it had the texture of a goat’s ear, not too hard and not too lithe. She cut it into squares and prepared the dish skillfully like cuttlefish curry.

That’s what she had served me after everyone sat down to eat a plateful that day. I ate that curry for the first and last time. I never had anything like that since then because no one knew that such a dish existed. It disappeared like a fruit fly on the same day it was born.

I look back and think about it now. Without saying a word, how tirelessly a mother bent over backwards to please her 8-year-old son. In the world, children may be different from one another, but mothers are all the same.

Artwork – Rashmy, 2024