Skip to main content

Buttered toast and Betelgeuse

The slices pop up from the toaster with a ding! My tentative fingers pick them up, one at a time, and drop them on the plate before the heat signal can travel from my skin to my brain. They need to cool, just a bit, just enough to acquire a hardness that won't give when the butter is spread over the surface. Golden, salty butter. Kept out of the fridge just long enough for the knife to cut through the smooth yet firm rectangle.

I move the knife horizontally across the fat brick of butter, gathering a thin layer that curls over the finely serrated blade to form a small ribbed cylinder, like the ones in the silver dishes in fancy hotels. Impressed by my unexpected artistry, I place it carefully on a slice and watch as it yields to the warmth, its butteriness oozing slowly over the golden brown surface, sinking into the pores. I quickly spread the rest, realizing that I haven't waited long enough and that the butter will soon disappear into the bread, visible only as a dull shine.

"I want to see the butter," he'd say, as he waited for the toast to cool before spreading a thick layer. Sometimes he'd add a dollop of ketchup.

Buttered toast and tea was a 4 o' clock routine that my father rarely missed, when at home. He took pleasure in making the tea himself, milky and thick, topped with an extra spoon of malai. I'd watch him, faintly disgusted by the malai (I was obsessive about straining every bit of it out of my tea and coffee) and remonstrating with him about the amount of butter on the toast. He paid no attention, focusing instead on enjoying the moment and all it contained.

January brings with it the bittersweetness of remembrance. One smiles at memories, grateful for their abundant presence, but sadness at the absence of those that played a role in generating them.

Orion and his belt. Image: Wikipedia
Like walking on the terrace at night. A keen star gazer, my father mapped the skies for me, pointing to Rohini--"that's Betelgeuse, the reddish one," he'd explain--at the far end of the long constellation of Orion, and then showing me the Belt, three stars strung across Orion's middle. Later my daughters were made familiar with the same stars and shared his excitement over expected meteor showers, lugging mats to sleep on the terrace and keep their eyes open for falling stardust. Never mind that most nights the clouds and the diffuse city lights masked whatever showers there may have been. The sense of anticipation was infectious.

Like going to the station to pick up arriving relatives. I do it out of habit fed by expectation but for him, it was an extension of his own fascination for travel. He would walk the length of the platform waiting for the arrival of a usually-late train, stopping to buy the latest South Central Railway timetable and a newspaper, as if the book tucked under his arm wasn't enough reading material.

It's coming on ten years now. The loss has lost its sharp edge, its contours now diffuse and soft, evoking gratitude rather than regret.



Comments

Unknown said…
The best of the blogs I have read recently. Candid details layered with such expression.. it is simply rewarding. Nice one, very reminiscent. I can totally identify myself with summer nights, power cuts and sleeping on the terrace….Keep posting more!
4:42 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A house called Ayodhya

How do words get taken away from you? How do they mutate and reconfigure around entirely new meanings, only weakly related to those that they held when you owned them? And then, through repetition and constant association, they solidify into these new forms, their other histories hidden behind impenetrable layers, where they have not been erased altogether.   I live in a house whose name often elicits a curious look, raised eyebrow, a muffled cough, a judging eye, or even a vigorous nod of approval. But for even the least politically minded, the name is evocative of something. For some of us, it is the wave of negativity, divisiveness, and violence unleashed by the events of a December three decades ago. For others, it may represent the righteous assertion of identity.   But the name etched into the gate pillar, now fading and diminished when compared to the glitzy lettering on neighbouring walls, has nothing to do with the politics of place and claimed heritage. It is a simpl...
2 comments
Read more

Remembering Ja

Ja (right) with Maxine, at the Alternative Network meeting, 2004 I opened the newspaper this morning and way down at the bottom of page five was a small insert in remembrance of an old friend and sometime mentor, Janaki Iyer, known simply as "Ja" to many of us.  I myself took a decade or more to make the transition from "Mrs Iyer" to "Janaki" to a very hesitant "Ja"--the diminutive seemed not to do justice to a woman who in a very gentle and quiet way had touched so many people, young, old, and like myself, somewhere in between. First, the specifics. Janaki was a teacher from start to finish. After many years of teaching in an upscale Bombay school, she moved to Hyderabad and, with an enthusiastic friend, started Ananda Bharati, a learning space for children of migrant labourers, in a small room in the YMCA, Tarnaka. Many of those children went on to join the mainstream school system and complete their secondary education; a few even obtai...
3 comments
Read more

Talking about Talk: a conversation with Sherry Turkle

Credit: CNN Image s The Tang Building sits on the southern edge of the MIT campus, overlooking the river whose grey this autumn afternoon acts as a foil to the gold and auburn of the trees across its wide span. I rush up the stairs to the second floor—I am a minute past the appointed hour—and arrive, just a little out of breath, on the second floor. The corridor is dark and the roomy lobby leading to the room that bears the number I’ve been given is even darker. I check my phone again to make sure I have it right and then venture inside, flipping the light switch and finding a spot on a comfortable sofa. One never feels quite prepared for an interview. Especially when it involves someone who has already been in the media eye over the years, whose engaging commentaries on life in the digital age have found their way to the TED stage and from there into millions of YouTube and Facebook shares, whose books straddle the academic and popular; someone who could be the Nora Ephron ...
2 comments
Read more