Mango Chutney: An Anthology of Tasteful Short Fiction. (11 page)

“Eggs must never be eaten raw,” Aruna repeated, with a relentless surety.
At the thirteenthminute, she walked to the refrigerator, a blue single-door
LG one that they had bought last year. As she opened the door, her large
nose wrinkled as it caught a whiff of unpleasantness that Madan referred
to as “the LG blues,” the odour that permeated the tiny kitchen every
once in a while, when food was left to forget inside this modern, cold
larder. Both of them subconsciously held their breaths ever so slightly
every time they opened the door of the fridge, as if screening the frigid
air before allowing it inside their nares. Aruna tried to locate the miscre-
ant. Was it the onion soup? Or the vegetable broth that she had prepared
just in case they made more of the soup? Neither had looked appetizing
nor had tasted very good but they had eaten half the soup nevertheless. It
had tasted chalky and raw. Pureeing it hadn’t helped either; now it was just
a brown mass of soft blandness, ashamed with itself as it sat, for days on
end, inside one of the Tupperware boxes. The box deserved better, she
thought, making a mental note to gulp down the soup for breakfast the
next day. She knew the maid would not so much look at it.

“Remind me how much the saucepan cost us?” asked Madan, standing
up and closing down on the distance between him and the kitchen. He
walked inside and peered into the saucepan. On the outside was engraved
Williams Sonoma with a sharpness that made a statement, very much
unlike the dotted, apologetic, engraving of Madan’s mother’s maiden
name on the sides of the now ancient utensils she had passed down to
him. The egg actually seemed delighted to boil away in a saucepan of its
calibre; bobbing up and down, buoyed by the bubbles and by Aruna’s
saucepan sentiments.

“Not much. Remember how Rama went to Italy with her son on a holiday
last month? She found this pot being sold for a third of the original price
at a smuggler’s market. She knew I always wanted this and she almost
gifted it to me,” said Aruna. She wheedled the door of the refrigerator
back and forth trying to recall what she wanted. Water, was it? She pulled
out an unopened Qua bottle, a brand, that like many others, boasted of
packaging its bottles with the water of a random stream off the Hima-
layas. Aruna smirked at the brand graphics as she removed the seal. Yet,
she liked the look and feel of the stately bottle. She emptied a quarter
of the water into a large steel tumbler, one of the many jaded ones that
belonged to Madan’s mother. In another three minutes the boiled egg will
have to be dunked into the cold water to ‘freeze the cooking process’ so
that the yolk doesn’t turn algal.
“Almost gifted it?” repeated Madan? He saw her staring, with renewed
concentration, at the supposedly sparkling mountain water in the tum-
bler. Perhaps he’d rather not press her about the price of the saucepan.
She rarely ever threw away money. He browsed for another choice of
conversation, one that was preferably less traumatic than having to repay
utensil debts. He dragged his chair from the threshold of the kitchen, and
placing it near the fridge, settled down comfortably, cross-legged.

Aruna’s three minutes were up. She removed the egg from the tumbler
and tapped it lightly on the counter. She smiled at Madan while rapidly
shelling the egg, a process that the cold water had made quite easy. He
grinned back at her. He collected the fallen chips from the shell and
crushed them in his hands, without her looking. He slyly deposited the
white dust in the dustbin under the sink and returned by Aruna’s side,
dusting his hands.

“Shall we eat proper Andhra food tonight, for a change? The
pulihora
is
still in the fridge,” said Madan. “It keeps for a long time because of the
tamarind,” he added. He opened the refrigerator and looked for the sim-
ple yet delicious fare his wife had made a couple of nights ago. She had
stored it away in a transparent, air-tight box that had on its label, a smiling
woman holding up fresh vegetables by their roots. With a muted snap, he
undid the flippers holding the lid and the box together and sniffed at the
once- gorgeous meal that now resembled a heroine past her prime. Smita
Patil, perhaps, if she lived now.

“Alright, I can reheat it for you but are you sure you don’t want to eat a
selection of eggs tonight? All made in different ways?”

 

“This one egg took nearly half-an-hour to cook.”

 

“I am making a poached egg next. It will take less than five minutes, re-
ally.”

 

“I am aware of just one meaning of ‘poach’.”

 

“I will show you how to poach an egg. It is one of the healthiest and nic-
est ways to eat them. But poaching is a tricky process.”

Aruna emptied the warm water from the pot and examined the streaks
of salt that had formed on its sides. No new utensil could escape the
ceremonial scaling that the hard water of Vizag performed on every steel
vessel, Williams Sonoma or otherwise. This new pot was now branded
as one of the rest. She frowned at it and refilled it with more water. As it
started to boil on the stove, Madan noticed that she looked rather flus-
tered. She had enjoyed boiling the egg earlier; all she had had to do was
pop in the egg and wait. This business of poaching an egg, whatever that
was, seemed a tad dramatic, like boiling milk. One could never be too
cautious while boiling milk. You look away and at that precise moment
when your attention is caught by the ungrateful money plant in the bal-
cony, the milk decides to puff up and explode. But it does so very quietly,
with such deliberation that you are allowed to see the drama only after
it happens: a stream of sticky, creamy, yellowish liquid, draining into the
sink but leaving behind a distinct, slightly sickening smell.

“I have never poached an egg before,” said Aruna. “I only know what it
should look like after it is done. So if you don’t like it, it means I did not
do it well,” she added. The tiny kitchen had, by this time, become warmer
and steamier. Madan stationed himself right by the side of his wife. He
stared at the opened box of tamarind rice and wondered if he should eat
a few spoons of it, just in case the poached egg tasted like it sounded.
The rice would have thawed by now, but he decided against it.

Aruna had assembled all the properties she needed to perform the poach
-
ing. The water was simmering rapidly, and resembling one of the calendar
goddesses with multiple armed arms, Aruna furiously stirred the hot wa-
ter with a large spoon. She continued to stir until she created an unstable
vortex right in the middle of her shiny pot. Madan gazed at her bright
eyes and dishevelled hair, wondering what he could do to help. Realising
that the vortex was very important to her, he grabbed another spoon and
continued to stir the water. She chuckled quietly and brought the egg
high above the vortex. He stopped stirring the water. With a fork, she
cracked open the egg and pivoted her hands gently, careful not to disrupt
the yolk. The yolk first hit the surface of the water but then got caught in
the vortex and started to swivel down in rapid circles. The white followed
the yolk and threatened to envelop the yellow blob from all sides. As the
vortex gradually started to slow down, white froth formed on the surface,
making it difficult to get to the heart of the drama.

Neither husband nor wife took their eyes away from the spectacle of the
white ambushing the yolk. After Aruna siphoned the excess froth with
a spoon, the couple saw what looked like a delicate embryo in the water.
Madan badly wanted to squeeze it but he knew that if he did do that, he
will exile himself to spending the night in the balcony, underneath the
money plant. He placed both hands behind his back and knotted them
together. After two minutes, when Aruna decided that the egg-foetus
was firm enough to be handled but not too firm to have been cooked
through, she carefully removed it from the pot and ladled it onto a small
porcelain dish.

“Can we eat it? I want to pop it,” said Madan, with a cruel two-pronged
fork in his hand.

“Allow me to garnish it so that it resembles something edible.”
“It is enough if it tastes good. Just add some salt and pepper.”
“The chefs use cayenne pepper and chives”
“What
are
they?”
“I am not sure. Herbs and spices I could not find in Vizag.”
“So salt and pepper it is.”

Aruna stared at the eggy contraption wondering what could possibly
make it look less scary. It looked like an ugly baby: something that you
would not want to hold because you’re both scared both of dropping it
and of getting the slime on your hands. Endearing yet disgusting. Since
coriander tended to brighten the most inane of foods, she chopped up a
few leaves of the fresh herb over the egg. Madan resolutely sprinkled salt
and pepper, albeit sparsely, over it. She did not bother to stop him. Both
of them held a fork in their hands and sat cross-legged on the floor of
the kitchen, with the wronged egg in between them.

Aruna first ventured to prod the surface of the egg, ever so lightly with
her fork, followed by Madan. They took turns to probe the yolk, neither
daring to puncture it. After almost a minute of groping the egg thus,
Madan decided to get dirty. He held Aruna’s forked hand away from the
plate, for this was his moment. He got close to the surface of the plate
and focussed the two fangs of the fork right at the centre of the blob,
mercilessly impaling it. Nothing happened. Aruna looked away for she
knew that a perfectly poached egg had to have a liquid, runny yolk. She
started to get up. The next moment, Madan held her hand and brought
her back to the floor. From the ominous bite-mark on the yolk was ooz-
ing a yellow liquid that trickled out onto the plate, like an unending stream
of glorious magma.

12.
Sawai
Arjun Bhatia

*****
“But all it means is one and a quarter.”
“No, it means so much more...”
***

Mehhh.

“Surili! Don’t go there,” said Nand Lal, listening to the sound of the bell
tied around his beloved sheep’s neck. She had drifted off the path being
followed by the flock.

“You’ll get caught in the thorns!”

Surili didn’t respond to his call. He rapped his stick – a crooked branch
of a tree – on the ground, directing the other sheep to come to a halt. He
paced in the direction of the ringing sound and probed a bush with his
stick till it hit the sheep’s legs.
Mehhh.
Her bleat was so meek that it would
have been inaudible to anyone but a shepherd. He surveyed the outline
of her body to determine how badly she was trapped.

Thorns had pierced her rump and paunch. One hind leg and one foreleg
were tangled. If it were an inanimate object, he could have shaken the
bushes violently to free it. But doing that now could only hurt her fur-
ther.

He traced the thorn that he figured had penetrated the deepest and pulled
it gently. He had to be gentle because he couldn’t grip the bush; it would
prick his hands too. The thorn barely moved. He clenched the bush and
pulled. It moved up a little but not enough. He held the bush harder. This
time the thorns pierced his hand but he extracted it in a single jerk. The
sheep winced. He felt a drop of a liquid trickling down his palm that he
knew wasn’t sweat because sweat didn’t sting at its source. He patted her
with his other palm.

“Only a few more, Surili. And then it will be over. We’ll stitch you up
alright.”

Thorn by thorn – there were nine of them (one for each sheep that must
be staring at Surili, saved from her fate, thought Nand Lal) – he set her
free from the spiky clutches of nature. He stroked her with his hand
and tugged at her to ensure that no thorn was left. After an hour-long
struggle he rescued her. He wrapped his arms around her neck, burying
his face into her. A mixture of his sweat and blood further soiled her
blood-stained fleece, making indistinguishable the points at which she
had been pierced.

Nand Lal got up. He took a deep breath and bowed to the Gods above.
He carried Surili with his unhurt hand and signalled for the flock to fol-
low, by rapping the stick with theother, leaving a trail of crimson drops in
his footsteps on the dry soil. Anyone could have connected the dots.

***

 

Nand Lal’s mother’s hand shot back to lift her
ghoonghat
when she saw the
blood dripping at her son’s feet.

 

“Nandu! What happened?”

She ran towards him, took the sheep from his hands, and gasped. She
rushed them both outside the hut to the veranda where a
matka
was kept
in a corner. She washed the wounds – first her son’s and then the sheep’s
– with glassfuls of water.

“Where did this happen?”
“At the foothills of the Shiva temple.”

“Why didn’t you ask for help? It’s less than five minutes from here. Why
do you have to do these things by yourself, Nandu?” his mother cried as
she bandaged the wounds.

“Isn’t it obvious, Kamla?” a man with a bushy white moustache that
coiled around his cheeks and wearing a
pagari
said as he entered.
“
Babaji
, he always listens to you. Why don’t you scold him?”
“Nandu, wouldn’t you get some milk for your old man? Go, get some
for all of us.”

Nand Lal and his grandfather grinned at each other as he left, this time
requiring no stick. He knew his house and its surroundings like the sound
of his sheep.

“
Babaji
, why do you do that? I’m worried that someday he’ll get hurt
badly. I have lost count of the number of times he has gotten himself
injured because of his unnecessary heroics.”

“And what about the injuries you do not see?”
“What do you mean?”

“He is seventeen now. You can’t walk him around holding his hand for
-
ever. He is growing into a man. You know how much he hates people
pitying him. The boy wishes to earn respect by being self-dependent. Let
him be.”