As Sweet as Honey

16




We asked Meterling once if it was true that there were magicians on the island, like Rasi said. She thought a moment and said, “There are thirty thousand magicians on Pi, if not more.” Who were they really? She said, “Cooks and maids, bricklayers, sages and artists, writers, musicians, architects, outhouse cleaners. The sorcery they practice is a deep one, akin to the healing arts. Doctors, too, and mathematicians. And engineers and carpenters. All such magicians and workers—not a charlatan in the bunch.” Gardeners? “Of course.” Teachers? “Yes, those too.” So they don’t wear hats and have wands? “No, not like Merlin from your storybooks.

“These magicians create transformations however they can. Heal a broken bone.”

“That’s not magic,” said Sanjay, deeply disappointed.

“It is. Remember when Auntie Shobana broke her arm, and she wore a cast, and then the cast came off, and the arm was healed? That’s magic.”

“That’s science, Auntie.”

“Well, who is to say science isn’t magic, too?”

“I don’t know,” said Sanjay afterwards. “I think Auntie Meterling is crackers in the head if she thinks science is magic.”

“Maybe,” said Rasi, also doubtful. “But maybe she just means there is no magic in the world except what we make of it.”

“Of course there’s magic,” said Sanjay. “Real poof-wow magic.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

“What do you think, Mina?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I believe Aunt Meterling. She knows everything.”

“Not everything.”

“She does,” I insisted, and burst into tears.

“Mina!”

“Mina, come back—don’t run away!”

“Mina.…”

But I did run away, run from them, and run out of the compound to the pond where women washed their clothes. No one was around, because the heat was so strong. I didn’t care, I was upset, but I wasn’t altogether sure why. Reaching the end of the road, I planned merely to turn around and go home before anyone noticed my absence, but I saw my aunt. She stood in the middle of the pond, slowly swaying. Joy burst into my heart and I began to run toward her. Then I thought I’d surprise her, and crept up quietly. I thought she meant to bathe her feet. But she sat down, and now my heart began to beat fast. I felt a wave of fear come over me, because something seemed very wrong. All of a sudden, I thought she meant to drown the baby inside of her. I rushed up to her, shouting all the while, my feet splashing noisily. She turned around, and her eyes were vacant. I was afraid she wasn’t going to recognize me, but she didn’t say anything, merely reached for my hand, and stood up, and together we walked home. I realized that I wasn’t quite sure what happened. Could water rush in through her belly button? Was that how it was done? But then, how could she take a bath? In the back of my mind, I knew that it was not only the baby she was trying to drown. I took my aunt’s hand, and did not ask her anything.



An auntie of mine once studied with Rukmani Devi at Kalakshetra, that famous dancing institute in India. One year and it changed her life, and charged everything she did with a dancer’s touch. She learned Bharata Natyam, the sacred dance. She learned mudras; she learned to tip her eyes and head. Like some girls, I grew frustrated I could not tilt my head back and forth like a true Bharata Natyam dancer. But I danced on the roof, in the kitchen, in the front room in and around the chairs, sometimes even out on the veranda. Rasi and Sanjay and I held hands by turns, trying to spin faster and faster, seeing who would lose their balance first.

A widow needs to grieve a long time before she thinks of dance again. In the old days, maybe one didn’t think to dance at all. But if life deals a hard turn, it seemed to me that the thing to do then was to step away a bit, breathe hard and soft, and try to dance again.



One day, we got ladoos from the sweet shop. They crumbled at our touch.

“Enjoy ladoos. At a wedding feast, they are the prize. If you are lucky, you will get two by accident when the server forgets he has already served you, and you sit in the right spot where he has finished one batch from his plate, goes back to the kitchen for a refill, and hurries back, forgetting where he had stopped, forgetting the place, and gives you another. A double bonus. Lucky wedding guest, especially if you traveled from out of town, are tired and a bit weary of the events—look, there is the ladoo, shiny and round, glistening with ghee, in front of you. Your treat. Enjoy,” said Shanti-Mami to us one day, as we lingered in the kitchen.


“Remember always to eat well, no matter what you have on your plate,” Meterling wrote me, years later. She was transcribing her recipes on paper—writing at last! “No matter what life removes from you—and you know, life also replaces what it removes (like breath, say the yogis, in and out like breath)—remember to eat well. Savor what you have. When we get depressed, we forget to eat. Eat anyway. Eat yogurt, eat rice, eat carrots—anything. Fill your tummy up so that it roars quietly and then roars softly. Fill your belly when you can. Hunger for life,” she told us. “Make pancakes. Eat biscuits with tea. Eat noodles in broth. Feed your pain with nourishment, not more pain. There is no use for pain that life doesn’t provide already.”

In her collection of recipes, she would write, “Watch the ladoo break apart on your plate—just nudge it a little with your fingernail, and see the revealed jewels. Saffron. Whole cardamom. Raisins. A touch of camphor. Golden split pea, cooked in sugar and glistening ghee. The cashew half, nicely toasted, next to a plump raisin, and wonder of wonders, the pod of the cardamom, its seeds dispersed into tiny black bits and ground fine into powder. Yes, place a bit in your mouth. Suck the juice, rejoice, it’s the rasa that you first experience, what we call rooji—the essence of any food’s taste, the top notes of flavor. Roll the food particle on your tongue, so you can experience all of the parts, and know the whole. Drink the cream of what remains, the innate richness, the joy, the sensation of sweet, the satisfaction. This is dessert. The finish of a good meal. The start of a wedding supper.”