MY MOTHER'S PALETTE

 

It begins with my mother. Food always begins 

with my mother. It tires me when people ask if I can 

cook a curry. As if all we eat is curry. As if 

a country the size of a continent, could ever, only, 

feed itself on curry.

 

I began to chafe at that word, long ago. 

When it boxed my mother in. When there was never 

room to explain she is Parsi. Zoroastrian. 

A portraitist, arranging food on a plate, the way 

she carves paint onto canvas. 

 

Her palette is sometimes pastel, sometimes oil, 

a mix of ochre, mustard, turmeric or rai, 

coriander for greens: peas, lime, okra, French beans; 

purple aubergines. Eggs for any day,

any possible way.

 

Her grandmother, and mine,

both believed in butter. Their girlhoods

were for sali: salty potato matchsticks; 

sev mamra: puffy rice popping; and ice

cream cones, for cool Sunday mornings.

 

Now, on special occasions, or just for love, hours 

of building biryani, sifting, sieving daal, and preparing 

every roti. Pomfret, if she can find it, lightly fried 

with salt and pepper. And on the side, cachumber.

Cachuber? (Here the rare parental disagreement.)

 

Every birthday, garlanded, with a carefully burned 

palace of semolina, milk, sugar, petals, raisins. 

She calls it rava, or ravo, depending.

 

A small tribe, the Parsis, in a vast civilisation; 

in a country swooning in flavour, they make their 

meals as moreish as my father's people did. 

The Bedouin desert tribes still thrum within 

the meat that hangs off girded steel.

 

You have to garment your fingers to really taste 

your food, and share a single thali

without disturbing the portions.

 

When I was a boy, he begins, but the memory 

is too much for a cold November day in England. 

I remember, he tries again, his fingers curling, 

savouring mutton as it melts, paya, haleem,

falooda with chiku, thick buffalo cream.

 

It is May when he speaks, gulmohar season. 

In the heat, scarlet tiger claws watch the drip 

of mango run down his chin – King Alphonso, 

the best – and bursting her stays, sitaphal – 

Custard Apple Queen.

 

Quinoa is recommended to the girl with the wolf 

disease: mashed avocado, maca, kale, apple 

cider vinegar. Cacao helps to sweeten spinach, 

chia, goji, but even as I juice and blend, my heart 

belongs elsewhere, on someone else's palate.

 

In her conservatory, she tends to bougainvillea 

and hibiscus, coaxing Indus valley plants 

to befriend their European compatriots. 

And up from her kitchen, magic weaves 

her spell. Food never tastes so well

as when my mother makes it.

Shaista Tayabali 

food prompt, at dverse poets 

 

Images via Parsi News, The Bedouin Blog, Persian Food Tours