Elementor #2036

Whispers of Winter: A Taste of Home and Childhood

I’ve got my Quantum Mechanics book open on the table. But can I stay seated? No way. There’s a ticklish feeling in my nose. The tangy aroma of raw tamarind and red spinach sour curry is wafting from the neighbour’s house! Does smell travel in photon form? I don’t know. These calculations are complex. Such thoughts don’t enter my simple mind—or maybe my brain isn’t ready for them now. My cerebrum promptly reminded me:

One afternoon, after playing in the field, I came home, and my mother said, “Go pluck a few raw tamarinds from the tree. I’ll make sour curry with red spinach in the morning.”

I went to our tamarind tree by the pond, broke off a small cluster of raw tamarinds with a stick, and left them in the kitchen. The next morning, my mother uprooted dewy red spinach from the yard’s vegetable patch. She sat on a stool near the well, carefully chopping the greens. Later, she cooked on a clay stove fueled with dry straw, placing the pot of curry on one side and the rice pot on the other.

I woke up, brushed my teeth, and walked to the porch to soak in the warmth of the winter sun. My mother said, “Go and bring the pot of date palm sap from the tree. Let’s see how much sap we’ve got.”
Behind our house, there’s a single date palm tree in the corner. That one tree produces just enough sap for our small nuclear family. We’d drink the sap, make jaggery, and even coat dried plums with it. I went to the tree and saw bees buzzing around the pot and rope tied to the tree. I brought the freshly collected sap back to the house.

My mother poured some raw sap into a glass and handed it to me. Drinking that cool, sweet sap on an empty stomach in the morning was heavenly for my stomach!

A little later, my mother served me a plate of steaming rice with telakucha leaves and tilapia fish curry.
In our area, tilapia is like the national fish. I especially love the large, aged tilapias from our pond cooked in a simple onion-based broth. The best part? Tilapia has fewer bones, so it’s quicker and easier to eat. Or maybe I’m just biased because it’s found at a cheap rate.

After that, my mother brought a bowl of bright red spinach sour curry.
Ah, the sweet and tangy delight!
I need just a hint of sugar in my sour dishes to enjoy them. My mother always says, “If you’re eating sour, eat it as sour!” But I love a subtle sweetness in my sour curry.

These memories bring back so much. Ever since I left home for college in 2012, I haven’t experienced winter mornings like those again. I no longer see dew-drenched mornings or touch the delicate dew on the tips of grass blades. Nor do I gather the drops of dew collected on taro leaves to playfully smear on my face. It feels like it’s been an eternity.

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