Lynn Aarti Chandhok A Simple Meal
When Negiji makes meat, I hesitate.
I want it, but I worry I'll get sick.
I want more to seem grateful. I begin
picking small bits of meat from mostly bone
and gristly parts I'm glad it's too dark to see.I get a good piece in my mouth and chew.
At once, I'm in Kashmir, where meat would come,
not often, through the back door, secretly.
Kebabs or roghan josh, sometimes the prize:
gushtaba—mutton pounded to a paste
with curd and spices, cooked, they said, for days.
We thumbed great mouthfuls to our pushed-out lips.
The grease and smell stayed on our fingertips
for hours though we would lick them lovingly,
then wash with hard gray soap and scalding water.Later, I wouldn't eat meat. I had decided
that it was cruel or wrong. I'd seen the shops
where hollowed heads of pigs looked down in rage
and chickens waited dumbly for their deaths
in tiny wire cages stacked ten deep.But other foods got dull. I started rating
creatures by their potential for real karma
and added small crustaceans, later fish,
into my diet, figuring we'd all
pass safely to our next-life incarnation.And when I was the bearer of a next life,
millenniums of raw biology
took hold. I had to have it, white meat first—
and so it went, till karma or conviction
gave way to old desire, if not old need.Now, here at Negiji's, by lantern light,
I find as much meat as I can and soak
the roti with the broth, drink it like wine.
His family will have leftover meat.
They'll leave no shred, as I do, undiscovered.