MATCHBOX

Karia Co.

 

Karia Chettan delivered carrot, beans, beetroot, onion, garlic, ginger and lemons in the mornings. I was five years old when I saw him and his cart. For two decades, his customers never complained of rotten tomatoes or spoiled fruits. “Fresh!”, he always said when we paid him, the “sh”, bold and honest. I am twenty-five now. Karia Chettan marked his sixtieth year last Monday. His sons, settled in the U.A.E, had bought him a car and renovated the house.

Last day, I asked him casually, “Karia Chetta, why don’t you take rest? The cart is unnecessary now; your sons can provide for you”. He looked at me, eyes glazing like those of that big, black spider’s, when I cleared off its web and said, “Mole…this cart stays till the end. It was our bed, mine and my younger siblings’, after our parents died. I brought my Elsa to our shack on these wheels! I sent my sons to colleges, built a small house, and found food with this trade. How can I give up life and memories so easily?!”

As he pushed the cart to the next door, I could not help but salute the wooden board firmly placed firmly on it: Karia Co.

                                                mapping memoir

                                       a cartography of survival:

                                                   humankind.

(first published in Qissa)

Cracked Feet

The women in my village cover their heads inside our church.

They come wrapping their pain and joy in light-shaded clothes,

pallus or shawls or scarfs on their heads,

before they step inside the holy place.

These women fast on Sunday mornings.

“Not a drop of water before the church ends!”, hiss mother-in-laws at daughter-in-laws

and teenagers at home.

The Bread and Wine in the priest’s hand quiver,

witnessing the weight of steadfast faith and humble hearts.

They baptise their tongues in saliva, as the last act of sanctification

before partaking in the Eucharist.

I stand watching the altar-pew.

Mothers discipline their saris to cover every inch of their skin;

all of it goes in, except the cracks on their feet,

like tributaries which criss-cross memory-maps,

of varied ages- thirties, mid-forties, sixties, eighties.

Those fissures which started showing the day

when they treaded the distance between the place where they grew up

and the village they were married off to.

Those fissures which cracked like eggs, then birthed into many,

as those feet walked across sooty kitchens, thorny fields

and carried them through births and deaths, flood and famine,

squabbles at home, bruises on bodies,

nights when a few of them kneeled down on verandas

a child or two held close to bosoms

because the drunken men of the house had kicked them out.

While haggling for the monthly chitti, (so that children can be sent to school,

get the roof repaired, a daughter or son sent to ‘Dufai’ for work,

 or a cow be bought to tide over the debts,)

those feet stood strong.

Shooing away the spirits-of-the-deceased with a Qurielaison*

and walking back on lamp-less streets after a day’s labour,

those feet never faltered.

For them, Sundays were the holiest.

In the broken bread and dripping wine -the maimed body of Christ-

which the women shared on their side of the pew,

they tasted themselves

while the feet rested for a while, on red carpets.

*Chitti– a local savings scheme where people are enrolled as subscribers, the money collected as instalments and paid in lump sum to the named person (sometimes on the basis of picking up a lot).

*Qurielaison– Lord, have mercy upon me, a sinner. A prayer often repeated by Syrian Christians.

Breaking the Sabbath

The lunch box, scrapes on the door, every morning, before it closes behind: ding! The belfry has given the cue.

Salt and pepper trickle down to tickle green chillies. Tomatoes deepen their blush with each passing minute. The sugars mwah tea leaves so loudly that the left-over milk turns quite steamy. Onions, shallots and garlic push and pull at each other – a herd of unruly children on the playground. Lemons in yellow uniforms, merry-go-round the fruit basket. Ripe bananas wink at the green ones, sighing how long! Powders of all sorts breathe deeply within the containers. Fresh curry leaves turn their heads, slightly, to the window.

Inside the stony fridge, butter and cheese sneeze on the carrots. A bowl of curd holds a silent vigil. Beetroots blush in their dreams, and egg-heads shine in contentment. Sauce and vinegar contemplate quietly on bread and pork.

The burnt pans yoga their way to eternity. The cookware on a rack rest with the neighouring,  torn packet of mustard seeds, leaning against a bottle of coconut oil. That coffee mug with a chipped edge reminisces his lost glory. The saucer yearns to edge closer to comfort.

The soap solution at the sink bubbles a conversation with the abrasive dish scrubber. A true lady Prufrock, she waits forever to ask the right question.

The grandfather clock chimes six times. As if an intrude, you walk in to the cosy kitchen.

 Lights on; that late-evening-kitchen aroma punches you, like a boxer who waits for the right moment in the ring. Ah how it explodes in your nose.

You reach for the wine.

The Kitchen Plants

Leaves opened to the sun

like snakes, hoods raised.

Outside the kitchen door of her maternal house

stood the plant, its name long forgotten.

Every morning,

 Ammachi made tea for the men of the house.

They wanted it black and sweet,

flavoured with cardamom.

She’d strain the Red Label tea-powder

and dump at the bottom of the plant which stood like a sentry,

guarding the secrets of the bungalow.

The young masters asked for boiled eggs at every breakfast.

So, crumbled bits of egg shells were also ditched at the roots of the plant.

Sharp-tongued patriarchs

ruled the mansion.

Each time, her mother was pushed into an Ambassador car,

and herself shoved into its front seat

her uncle impatiently honking at the wheel-

they being forcefully taken back to her father’s house

from where they had fled a fortnight ago-

two small eyes would look at the young, red pair

through the rear-view mirror.

The daughter now lives in a rented apartment in Bangalore.

At the kitchen door,

she nurtures a snake plant.

Indoor. Tamed. Leaves slithering up.

Never worshipped with egg shells and tea powder.

“Modern times”, her mother says at every visit,

shooing away memories of ancestry.

*Ammachi       – grandmother in Malayalam( regional language of Kerala, India).

Fridge

The women in my family are grateful

to his heavy machine

standing tall in their kitchens.

For years, they have frozen their wounds within:

squabbles with neighbours,

snaky, slithering gossips,

signs of wild, male fantasies on thighs

and purple bruises on breasts,

arthritis and backache,

forced abortions and miscarriages.

Every secret tucked inside containers

and tins of various sizes and shapes,

shut with cream and white lids.

The women

freeze the burden of hush and shush

in their canned hearts.

Excerpted with permission from Kitchen Poems by Nithya Mariam John, 2025. Published by Red River.