The Kitchen

My grandma didn’t have a kitchen
for a year and a while more.
She hadn’t become my grandmother yet.
A just-retired husband and
dwindling family income
brought her pots and pans
out on the courtyard of the
one-room hovel they had newly
rented. Rain-water mixed
with the gravy she was cooking.
Her tears she reserved for
another day and time.
She still had the promise of
tomorrows; she’d only lost
a kitchen.

Decades later when
she built her own house, she
had lost much. Her tomorrows
had heaped upon overbearing
todays that kept creeping
up the sockets of her dry eyes.

But she had a kitchen.
A barely sunlit one that
occupied a scrap of her
160-gaj plot. It was where
she garnished my childhood
with the delights of her own.
Syrupy. Fiery. Tart as unripe
amraa and
girlhood mischief.

In that shoebox of a cooking
space, she sliced and reassembled
histories. She stirred geographies
into mapless oceans of seasoned
gravies untainted by rainwater
dripping on an open courtyard.

*
Gaj/Guz: A guz or the Mughal yard; a unit of length used in parts of Asia.
Amraa: Also known as hog plum; a small, oval shaped fruit with a sweet-sour taste.