Sun Drying Tomatoes on a Sunday

07:00:00

The sun is alive. A golden rectangle illuminates the back wall, with a delicate silhouette in its middle. On the other end, Amma is looking out the window.

Yawning, I ask her when she woke up. She replies, fifteen minutes ago.

There is tea on the kitchen counter that she has brewed with goat's milk, fresh ginger, whole cloves and cinnamon sticks - a masala chai recipe perfected over generations.

I place the mug in the microwave for sixty seconds but take it out at forty-five seconds. Intricate threads of steam rise up, entwining and untying in a mesmerizing dance to welcome the morning sun.

09:00:00

On two stainless steel plates, three chapatis each with a dollop of purple tamarind-achar. On the centre of the table, a piping hot bowl of ghugni with a wooden spoon shoved in.

Although I cooked the chickpea dish with its usual ginger-garlic paste, cumin, cilantro, green chilies and diced onions, I also decided to throw in a few sun-dried tomatoes from our terrace.

Having tasted it, Amma says the tomatoes are still premature and that I should dry them for at least twenty days. This would allow the tang flavour to condense and shine through the ghugni. Her main complaint though is with the texture of the chickpeas. I confess that I forgot to soak them overnight and so just boiled them straight from the packet.

Although she insisted I soak tomorrow's chickpeas right away, I told her I’d do it in the evening. She asked if I wanted her to set an alarm for it, to which I said, it was not necessary. She was still persisting when I felt myself getting irritated. She then turned to complaining about her brittle teeth.

I promise her tomorrow’s ghugni will be softer.

11:00:00

In the terrace, Amma sits on a red plastic chair soaking in the sun’s strength. It is still quite chilly despite the morning fog having cleared. She wears a black and gold embroidered Kashmiri shawl, wrapped around her like a kati roll.

I place the small crucible - containing lukewarm coconut oil - underneath her chair before applying a few drops to her scalp and gently massaging it in circles. Around us, the sun-drying tomatoes lay scattered across sheets of aluminum foil. They've been coated in white vinegar to deter molding with a few sheets also covered by cheesecloth, to avoid direct sun light.

The vinegar slices emanate an acrid aroma which mingles with the fragrant coconut air to produce an odour, reminiscent of Amma’s village during stubble burning. A few of the batches have already been packed in nearby glass jars, sealed tight with olive oil, oregano and dried herbs. The flavours will enhance overtime, allowing the slices to be added directly from these jars to countless dishes like ghugnis, lentil soups, dips, kichuris and salads.

Kanta devi - our next door neighbour - has also come up to the terrace to dry her clothes. She greets us with beaming eyes and echoes my thoughts on the acrid smell while gingerly inspecting the dispersed slices. She observes they’ve become tough and leathery and reproves me for not having found a suitable wife to take care of such housekeeping chores in a timely fashion.

Amma chimes in at the phrase ‘a suitable wife’. She complains to Kanta devi about how I never want to sit down with her and have a serious talk about marriage. Kanta devi smiles.

13:00:00

Amma and I sit down on her twin bed and have a serious talk about marriage. She expresses her deep-seated yearning to embrace a grandchild as she pulls out a photo album from her stash of photo albums, tucked away in the bottom drawer of her creaking closet.

In this particular album, there are black and white pictures of Amma’s marriage, her migration to the city with Appa and then there I am, a baby brown boy in her arms. She places her forefinger across Appa’s mildewed face and sighs that it’s time to pass down the family heirloom to the next generation. By this she means her ginnis.

They are essentially these pure gold coins that were passed down from Appa’s great grandfather - a sepoy for the 6th Bengal Light Infantry - who had received these while on payroll, from the British Raj. One gold coin would have been ten rupees back in the day but that same coin is worth close to ten thousand rupees in the current market.

Amma gets up eagerly to show me her bag of coins but I have already seen them a few times. Instead, I bring her back to her marriage photos and together we identify all the family relatives in attendance.

15:00:00

The neighbourhood has wound down to embrace its ritualistic Sunday siesta, aided by a belly full of rice and kosha mangsho. Three tubby cats and a brown mongrel lazily lounge on the steps of the local bread shop that has closed its shutter but will reopen later in the evening.

In the distance, a radio coughs white noise in between melodic tunes of Rabindra Sangeet while Amma sits in a meditative pose in front of her murti of Krishna and reads verses from the Bhagavad Gita. She partakes in such worship typically three times a day, with the last one being the evening aarti, just before the sun sets.

Amma also has this occasional habit of setting the book down and praying for a few seconds before cracking it back open to a random page. She then dedicates the rest of her time to reading and re-reading the verse on that page. I ask her about today’s verse and she reads it aloud:

Bhagavad Gita: (2:47) You have the right to work, but never to the fruit of work. You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself – without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat.

Having finished her prayers, Amma looks at me with a cheeky smile and wonders if we can visit the Holy Ganges river in the evening. I ask her why. She says she hasn’t been there in a long time and would like to offer her evening aarti to the river. I am reluctant at first, citing the cold but she insists, citing the Sunday.

17:00:00

The sky is an amber orange with salmon-pink cirrus clouds pinned to the horizon. In front, the Hooghly river flows with the serenity of an ancient giant. It was once the main channel for the Holy Himalayan waters, which have since shifted further inland, toward Bangladesh. Still, the Hooghly river is regarded as sacred, despite the majority of its water being sourced now from a man-made canal nearby.

The steps leading to the riverbank are festooned with mutilated plastic bags, worn-out biscuit wrappers and pieces of clay urns. A group of local boys at the bottom, take turns giggling and diving underwater with a fist-sized magnet. They are fishing for coins which are typically scattered at dawn alongside the ashes of the cremated, from the burning ghat nearby.

I look at Amma but she is looking up at the sky. A concert of blue and green pigeons has come into view, gliding through the dense air in choreographed symphonies. While it is difficult to separate out an individual bird, it is impossible to deny their collective presence. Even in sharp turns, their flow is graceful, accompanying thunderous applause. I wonder if such fluid harmony can be both designed and spontaneous at the same time.

Amma says, the movement is God revealed.

19:00:00

Amma is watching her nightly soap opera. I wait in my room for Dr. Sonia’s scheduled call.

Dr. Sonia calls and starts off by commending my written entries from the week prior. She really likes the schedule details but advocates I dial down on the distracted ruminations. We review the activities for the week ahead and have a brief dialogue on the nature of experience and the extent of its role in personal identity.

She emphasizes that the routines will begin to disintegrate drastically. Taste and smell will continue to enervate.

I ask her a few follow up questions. In particular, we explore stimulation therapies and compare their cost-effectiveness with the ongoing pharmaceutical regimen. I precipitously confess to having spent fifty thousand rupees in the last month alone and try to nonchalantly ask how much more might be needed. Dr. Sonia declines on an approximate figure but underscores that the therapies are meant to address the symptoms only.

She then refers me to a specialized physiotherapist and advises me to keep working on our strategic plan of not falling into arguments.

I thank Dr. Sonia for her time.

21:00:00

Amma is visibly tired from the day as she begins to doze off while sitting on the couch. I help her stand and together we shuffle to her bed where she lies down with a sizeable exhale as I tuck her in.

I turn on her red night-lamp and then review the alarm reminders on her phone for tomorrow’s schedule. I notice a last alarm that was set for today, for an hour ago.

soak chickpeas

Reminded, I walk over to the kitchen and spot tomorrow's chickpeas soaking inside a glass jar, meant for the sun-drying tomatoes. I transfer the contents over to a plastic bowl from the top cupboard and proceed to clean the glass jar dry.

I return to Amma’s room, but she is already fast asleep.