Tiffin Carrier

After the textile mill in Rajkot (where he worked as a mechanic) shut down, my grandfather worked in a forge, beating iron. Each pounding stroke of the hammer searing through his head. Not one of six children (two of them girls) dropped out of school. Three twelve-hour shifts during festivals, eyes plucked open by fire so the family could celebrate, without him.

I know him only in the still-polished-perfection of the dented aluminium tiffin carrier my father (or one of my uncles) would have brought to work for him at the exact minute the whistle would ring for lunch, or change of shift. My mother, obedient daughter-in-law, measured her days by factory whistles.

The food inside cooked with the exact measure of ingredients he set down. A modest meal, but a full one. Rotli, a green vegetable, dal, small salad of tomatoes and onions, green chillies and pickle. The green chillies as accompaniment to be fried in a spoonful of oil before the same oil was used for waghar, to flavour the vegetables.

I think of him when I fry green chillies, sprinkle salt and cumin powder, move to the sink to drain oil. I taste ash as I drain away blood. Mother says he played with me, only a year old, for an hour before he died. He had called out to her to take me away from him and I had cried, or I like to imagine I had.

**

I have never seen this photograph of my mother under a newspaper headline: banner raised, head cover slipping off, mouth open in a slogan against the closing of the mill. The photographer catching her in that moment of letting lose, exasperated with a silent crowd unable to find its momentum at a protest.

That morning there was furore—young vav had appeared in a newspaper, head uncovered, sloganeering at the protest. On their behalf, they forget.

Ma always tells this story with glee, returning to the person she could have been—not failed housewife.