Bionote by K Srilata

Very briefly then,
I am middle class
and very Madras.
Born and raised in
West Mambalam –
the other side of the railway tracks
where fabled mosquitoes turn people into
elephants.
Went to college in
Khushboo sarees stripped
right off the absurdly voluptuous mannequins at
Saravana stores T.Nagar Chennai 17.
To weddings I wore,
in deference to my mother,
silk kanjeevarams with temple borders.
Every other girl
was a designer-sequined shimmer.
I thought nothing of
throwing away
my dreaming hours on
MTC’s 47 A,
sitting beside women who ruined my
view,
leaning casually across to
spit or
chuck
through the grime of windows
spinach stems they didn’t fancy
in their evening Kuzambu,
hurling motherly advice at
young men who dared death by
swinging,
two-fingered,
from other women’s windows.
My idea of a holiday
was rolling down the hillsides
of Ooty,
dressed in white
like Sridevi.
Objects of love-hate:
the auto annas.
And of course it is coffee that defines
the limits of my imagination.
I never could think of it as
cappuccino or mocha or
anything other than
decoction coffee,
deep brown like my own Dravidian skin.
Lunch:
10.30 sharp: sambhar rasam curry
Tiffin:
5 sharp: idli dosa vada
My idea of arctic winter:
twenty-six degree centigrade.
And so on and so forth
as they don’t say in Tamil.
Never mind this new upstart Chennai.
Madras, my dear, here I come!
About me, rest assured,
there is
no Bombay, no Delhi, no London
and certainly no New York.
I am all yours,
Madras, my dear,
wrap and filling!

And since he is a Bombay man with an avakkai heart,
mother-in-law stands on creaking knees and says,
the hope still alive in her eyes,
“Do you want me to teach you how to make them?
Mango pickles of various sorts: Avakkai, maagai …
Let me show you how to pluck the mangoes
before they fall in summer,
the shapes and sizes in which to slice them,
and just how to subdue them –
in what spicy, salty, oil-pools.
It isn’t hard.
Woman, you who sit at your desk all day long
and read and write. I have caught you often
staring out the window.
Learn from me how to make pickles,
and sashay, without a stumble, into my son’s heart.
Wrap your fingers around kitchen-knives, not pens.
Books aren’t bad, I know, and there’s nothing the matter with pretty views,
but they are nowhere close to pickles when it comes to certain things. I should know.
I have lived on this earth longer than you
and have three grown children all raised on pickles.
But first things first: the chili should always be a bright Guntur red.”
K Srilata is a poet, fiction writer from Chennai. Her collections of poems include The Unmistakable Presence of Absent Humans, Bookmarking the Oasis, Writing Octopus, Arriving Shortly and Seablue Child. She co-edited the anthology Rapids of a Great River: The Penguin Book of Tamil Poetry.