Thakuma, Paratha & Other Drugs

by Avantika Bhowmik I.

At any given instance, if I were to fish out a memory buried under layers of perplexing kombols (blankets), I would pick this one. My thakuma (grandmother) adjusts the ends of her sari as she flips the paratha (Indian flatbread). It’s this time of day where ma and baba have found their way to the bank and didi (affectionate term for sister) is absent. I dare not move, sitting still behind my grandmother as she spreads butter on the paratha. It is her speciality. It isn’t round. It is a triangle. Then as she always does she would sprinkle these crystals of sugar on top. I have yet to find these crystals of sugar elsewhere. Just as calmly as she’d come into the kitchen, she’d make her exit. I would carefully carry the plate to the hallway and sit cross-legged on the floor. It was everything. The slow burn of time and alienation. Thakuma’s hands shuffling to make paan, slow tears would follow suit and I’d bite into it and we’d sit in the very last light of a Monday afternoon, her with her paan dabba (leaves of the betel plant wrapped around tobacco, fruit, etc. and chewed, especially because they have a pleasant effect like a drug) and I would cradle my steel plate with the paratha. article continues on page 7

We wouldn’t speak. We hardly ever did but in the silence that travelled between us, I would realize that in my red sari she would be the only one to hold me. We are polar beings reliving different realities in the small revolutions pickling in empty apartments in Kolkata. Whether in silence or as an afterthought I would recognize that if this isn’t the purest manifestation of love, little else is.

"We are polar beings reliving different realities in the small revolutions pickling in empty apartments in Kolkata"

Ask me about my favourite shape and I’ll tell you the same. It is a triangle.

My grandmother hates soap operas. My grandmother also watches them with great intent at exactly 7 pm. The living room would be cleared, guests shooed, the table wiped clean and Thakuma would find herself on the sofa in her white sari, her glasses in tow. The soap opera would begin and she would almost seem unbothered, as if she is almost compelled to watch it.

When I would inquire, she would always say “Kitty, I don’t even care what happens. I’m just watching it because I always have”.

The answer would never perplex me. Nothing about her ever did. I would sit next to her for what would seem like the end of a summer con