Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu. For Jashvina and her mother, living together, somewhere nearby, up on the Eunice Street hill. They made them together--these two dishes--a kind of cauliflower with cumin, and a container of small brown mushrooms, tender and whole, prepared with thin spinach leaves. Improbable colors, in their respective bowls (one of them the same as I use here, with a dark blue lid). Why was I so taken with this? Maybe the way Jashvina took the two dishes out of her bag--carried over so casually, as if the bringing of food were the world's most natural occurrence--which of course it is. I imagined them side by side, Jashvina and her mother, in a small kitchen, in a rented apartment, here in Berkeley. Not the preparation itself, but their closeness. Shared this way, with something from home... 

The taste? Simple and unadorned--yet not without a certain hint of spiciness--also simple in it's own way. As if everything else were overdone, too melodramatic (not that South India lacks for melodrama. How did Jashvina put it, "People can be  very direct...")


To be included in this--who could not love...
 






(Painting and writing, both from  2014)

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