Jaguar Lights (2007)

 

Fumiyaki-San

The worst thing Fumiyaki-San could have done was sit towards the far end of the swimming pool, watching me climb out of it, as I fumbled over the slippery steps. The best thing Fumiyaki-San could have done was to attempt cooking Japanese fried rice in my kitchen. He was a vague, funny man this guy. Very interested in food, in women and rice wine but very uninterested in language arts and politics, even the history of his own country.

He lived in an inn, one of those cheap one-room accommodations you get in a crowded city like Seoul and he spent most of his evenings with Jackie, my Korean friend, courting her or trying to get her into bed or with me and my husband at the pool or sauna room. He even tried his lop-sided Japanese-English on me ”Ah! you looking very good. very sexy, today” or “Ah, beauteefool” appreciating my attire, which would mostly be a lazily put together maroon skirt with blockprinted gold on it matched with a similar colored t-shirt. It made me blush, those remarks. Understanding from where it was coming and also the uncanny earnestness with which they were delivered.

Fumiyaki-San made me spend a small fortune, the day he proclaimed it was his birthday, on buying spice and chicken. We already had some chicken stored up in the fridge but he insisted it was not going to be enough. However, when he reached home and saw the packets, he said we were over-stocked. I called my husband home early from work and we foursome celebrated with our choicest wine, Fumiyaki-San’s birthday. We toasted, sang on an off-key note and drank. Only later, halfway through the meal were we to realize that it wasn’t his birthday. That was next week. There had been some misunderstanding.

So, we celebrated Fumiyaki-San’s birthday a second time. The real one. This one at Jackie’s parents home tucking into plateloads of kimchi - carrot, spinach, root, and colors that make up for a tangy rainbow with large bowlfuls of mackerel soup and shreds of boiled chicken. We wished him well as the topic changed to politics. Jackie’s father brought out the long-awaited hatred he possessed (through years of thinking, I presume) for the Japanese occupation and sought to be excused by Fumiyaki-San as he was a guest! But Fumiyaki-San wasn’t bothered. Not when we compared the aristocratic British to the ruthless Japanese rulers in an attempt to forge our niche, coy Korean-Indian friendship. Nor when we drew parellels between Pakistan and North Korea.

Fumiyaki-San finished the kimchi and started on a second round of mackerel soup, nodding blatantly and I wondered if Jackie’s mom and grandmom (Aabojee) would have anything left to eat. (Because they stood in the kitchen like two decent women from old time India waiting to serve upon their guest).

I teased Fumiyaki-San later, remembering how he had bluffed me on my tightly controlled budget against surplus chicken, parsley (the bottle of which I brought to India till it rotted away) and tomato sauce (a whole new bottle, when we already had enough for his chicken recipe).
I didn’t tell him how I had cut corners to allow a shopping budget for the end of the stay. He smiled his disarming smile and continued picking at his fish.

Fumiyaki-San didn’t teach me anything. Yet with his flabbergasted, half-flustering sentences he formed the backdrop to my visit in Seoul. I remember him sometimes when I think of Seoul, the snow or the extremely inane moments that come in between great ones.

Or am I being too presumptuous? Maybe, he did teach me something and I refused to learn.
I’ll be back because I need to figure out Fumiyaki-San and why he stuck in my memory for so long (It’s been a year, almost).

I shudder to just let it go.

(c) Rochelle Potkar

A dark moment comes

I crossed through the inky black waters of the night. Not a God, a spirit guide or an angel was in sight. Not even an allusion, a fleeting vision, a guiding hint was whispered from a higher self. I was all alone. On two sides stood pain and fear, more visible and loyal than anyone else. They were forces almost powerful and for the first time I understood that humans are embodiments of emotions and that a prime emotion makes body of a human mind.

Why had the God’s abandoned me? Is it because pain and fear were already there and were enough to teach? One guiding the other, the other riding the back of the former?

The sky hadn’t been lit with pristine light yet. And already I knew what I wanted to do.
"Eat it" I went to the fruit I had, just the previous day, out of mirth, scribbled on ‘criticism’ and changed it to ‘pain’ ‘fear’.
And don’t you think the Gods had answered, even in their stark silence?

Idle Observations

There is a man from across the street
who fashions old buttons on fray trousers
and who puts an ending, heavy borders
to my new silk crepe sarees

he sits with his legs strumming the machine and his eyes on the road
to check if he needs to smile
at anyone he knows

there is a laundry guy who waits
behind him
like his conscience
in a stained banyaan

a measuring tape over his neck
(for god knows what)
who makes a receipt for every
dry cleaning item you give him

a carbon stuck in his notebook
he hardly looks;
he stares
with connivance

unlike the tailor
who is easy
and waiting to please

rebel

It was the day he left. She gathered herself up in layers of fine clothes - unwanted by the temperature of the day, unwelcome by the weather of the night. A feeling unknown crept over her skin - heat, fear, rage, maybe even sodden guilt.

She slept under a starry, moonless dome.

The same nakedness that he had once liked and which she had once encouraged seemed sinful to keep. She pulled blankets over her waistline and woolen scraps over herself. Even the sweltering summer heat couldn’t challenge the effect it had on her.

She hated nakedness from now on.

Letter to a friend in love

We are not two of a kind
I am burnt
and you are burning bright

my wings were clipped
in delight

but the site of my plight
is still erudite;
in insight

so an advice

beware of the things
that shine too bright

The zephyr of early dawn

The cool rays of evening sun is just blending into a point where twilight is about to happen. Birds are going home.
If there is one thing I learnt from my last love, it is staying true. He didn't speak so, but it is the only amalgam of his homecoming.

Arriving on a fluke into a dusty place called home.
It’s a rain forest and you can hear the bleating of germ.
Some nectar flies. Some birds, exoticise.
If you hold your breath long enough, a brook breaks into laughter.
If you release it, spring arrives.
The wind in hair makes trees shake in delight.

Your feet may be covered in sores, ant bites

Your shins epigraphed in thorn
But there is enough melancholy here to graze your throat, vanquishing the short thirsts on a long journey.

He came, wandering through the wilderness of his mind.
Wading through the talk barks of searching, and to understand. And when he sees me he knows we are to be partners in crime.
Well, up until a time.
I sit with his head on my lap. My hair covering my breasts. The wind flapping against us, whispering mimes.

Ah! the erotica of a finding mind.

He sucks onto raw, savage fruit. Its acrid taste renders his tongue insipid.
So we speak, in alternate.
He is prime in his urge to know. I am the same. We are twin soul.
There is a canoe in the distance sitting over rippling, gleaming moon but we have set assail. Not in it.

We settle our ears close to ruddy soil, thinking with our eyes.
The breeze caresses our goose pimpled fleshed skin.
The frogs start croaking from the black river behind

and when the fronds atop a very tall tree shiver we know our journey has come to an end.

He moves a distance. A shadow.
I move a step. A silhouette.
His nose makes a faint mountain against the ridge of his cheek.

We move away further.

My laugh lines are disappearing. It is dark.
I can sense the teeter on his little finger has stopped.

A crackling of jungle wood fires. Orange flecks soaring with desire.
It is the past that is changing her garments, every moment.

She refuses to stay quenched.

There is a blanket of hungry amber ...all over.