Salt To Taste

By Asmita Majumdar

Sunlight has an unusual way of flowing onto everything it beams upon. Wrapping against the wooden leg of our dining table, melting into the crevices of the rain-slugged walls, slipping against the dusty beige curtains. It was comforting — the last palmful of daylight, before the eventual drizzle of the July monsoon took over. 

The anatomically small room was further worsened by the maximal nature of Nani’s item collecting hobby. From porcelain plates to countless idols of gods to unusually shaped flower vases, almost all things imaginable to the human mind could be found in the humble space we called our living room. Home decor was her passion, never really her talent. 

Nani in all dainty was sitting on the other side of the diwaan that she refused to sit previously at. It’s damp and has fur all over it, she’d say, resisting to even touch the pad of the furniture. Though, the cause of her disdain had cared little for her grumblings, and continued to perch itself on the spot as though a king seized his throne. 

In her hand, she held her little box of paan arrangements. The beetle leaf was cradled against the small of her palm as she delicately coated it with a thin layer of quick lime paste. 

The small of her face remained unreadable with an expression I’d last seen when they had cut out the electricity while she was watching her favourite character finally get revenge on her overbearing mother-in-law on the television. 

“Have you put the potatoes to boil?”, slowly her voice drawled out. It was raspy from the hours of hush. Not many words had been exchanged since we came back from the crematorium. 

“Yes, and the rice too”, I hummed. It was the second thing I did upon reaching home. The first being clearing out a corner that couldn’t bear to meet my eye anymore. The rubber balls and the tiny chicken treats had no business laying around in the house like they belonged when he wasn’t anymore. 

The paan arrangement was now completed to perfection, with just the right amount of tobacco powder and betel nuts as she liked, she placed it on her tongue. Though I didn’t find her savoring it with a small contended hum like she usually would. Only mindless chewing followed mirroring a bad-tempered cow dissatisfied with dry grass.

The box was placed aside, and she said “Take the ghee out of the fridge, it will soften in the meantime. Put the salt and chili aside as well”.

“No eggs then?” taking another instinctive glance towards the kitchen. 

“Nothing non-vegetarian. The dead must be respected by showing restraint.”

“What is so restrictive about skipping eggs? Bunny loved them.” That and bits of fried chicken, and dry fish treats and anything edible, to be fair. 

My retort was met with a tight glare fixing me to my place. My pupils followed her lazily as she moved across the room, tending to things that did not require tending to — adjusting a cushion that was already straight, emptying a half-filled glass into an over-watered plant, and putting the TV remote back in its ‘rightful’ place. 

The choice for a name had been fairly simple, faring between his big doe eyes or those floppy cartoon ears, settling on ‘Bunny’ seemed justified at the time. Not many suggestions were added nor objections voiced; nani couldn't have stirred less at my attempts of creative nomenclature. 

The little clay pot of ashes sat quietly on the table with the peacock-blue floral cloth that nani had a comedic attachment to. She ignored it’s presence as if it has become one with home itself, almost as if it it has camouflaged in the cloth, only visible if you squint hard enough. 

“What are we planning to do with them?”, the question left me as I fiddled with the lightly bitten corner of the cushion. 

“Not keep them here, certainly. Bad luck. He deserves somewhere better than this.”, was replied as a matter of fact. 

“Deserve? Careful now, I’d almost think you started caring for him.”

“I tolerated him on my best days”, she lied with a straight face. 

“Remember, the joke you used to make whenever I told you I wanted to bring home a dog?”, I mused with a hint of smile forming on my lips. 

Her attention never fixated on me, as she settled back into the diwaan, now yawning with an exhaustion that seeped deeper than her bones.

“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten?”, I kept nudging.  “You used to threaten that you’d get rid of him, by putting him on the stove while I'm at school.”

A younger me had thrashed and protested vehemently at the suggestion. With each calendar turn, I’d learned to deal with her quips with much more sophistication.

“And here we are now. Just ashes left.”, I finished a little too morbidly than the mood required. 

“That is will be all of us one day. Nothing to mourn over.”

Her bleak cynicism had long failed to surprise me anymore, rubbing off on my own personality like stain on glass. One slightly endearing thing about co-cohabiting with someone for so long that a few of their traits barge their way into your own psyche uninvited. Unfortunately, sometimes these quirks can even be the ones that get under your skin. 

‘In hindsight, six years doesn’t feel like a long time, right? Dogs like him are meant to live much longer”.

“Not that I know much about animals.” Nani shrugged as her nimble hands were pressed into her hair, trying to tame them into a semblance of neatness, “But despite his oddities, he must have been a sadhu in his past life.”

A beat passed. An eyebrow was raised in her general direction, “Where is this coming from?”

“Anyone who leaves too early is a sadhu reborn, atoning for small sins. Their early departure is release.”

Plenty of beings depart early. The child of our next door neighbour, lost to an autoimmune disease. The sapling one of my friends planted in remembrance of her sister, too withered before it could take root. The little chick that chirped her last breathe as she lay ruined because an unfortunate cricket ball hit her nest. 

Where they all sadhus in the past life? What kind of sins were they atoning for? Clad in saffron coloured fabric, praying beads in clutch, and devotion wrung over their necks, what life did they for-see? Does the pain left in death’s wake be considered a sin as well? Tying a thread round the finger, and ripping before the wrap even took hold. Who had the gods assigned to atone for that?

A huffed noise pretending to be laugh left me, “Such nonsense, I swear.”

“Believe what you want, it’s the truth. Now he is free from the cycle of rebirth”, she pronounced, as though enlightenment itself sat on her lap alongside the paan box and the cough drops. 

”I’m glad you believe in the eternal salvation of our dog’s soul who died of cancer.”

Unimpressed as ever, my remark was dismissed with a casual wave of hand and a choked scoff. A half chewed beetle leaf must have lodged itself in her throat. Reaching over, I handed her a bottle of water, and stroked her shrunken back to bring her back to normalcy. 

Whether eternal salvation existed or not was a debate best left to another forum. As of today, the animate had perished, and the inanimate had survived. It had made itself own as her wrinkled fingers carefully hid a tattered collar weary age and loneliness. Laid down with a touch of reverence in company of her old jewellery and sepia toned family photos, within a drawer in our old almirah that she barely touched. 

A slight scent of burn lingered in the air, almost taking me back to the visions of funeral pyres and flames larger than life itself, engulfing its very essence. The image did not have time to marinate in my mind as a more rational one replaced it. 

“Oh god, the potatoes”, I murmured to myself, feet already on the ground, dashing towards the kitchen. It took a less than a heartbeat for nani to cling onto me. 

While my dry hands scraped at the half-burned, almost tarnished potatoes, echoes of her taunts could be heard from down the hallway, filling the quiet that was left behind.

By Asmita Majumdar