garam masala
title: garam masala
author: phinnia
rating: PG-13/R for themes
disclaimer: a wandering minstrel i, a thing of shreds and patches. i own nothing.
author's note: for kutner_love's kutnerfest: kutner and cooking. (apologies: i've lost the prompt number.) This eventually ended up being more about spices. eh. 'garam masala' is an Indian spice mixture. 'naan' is indian flatbread (more similar to a pizza crust than a tortilla or pita). 'kheer' is an Indian rice pudding dish. much love to my merry band of first readers, who pointed out my typoes and prodded this lovingly into shape.
He doesn't cook much any more, and this is why: the memories don't need any help. These days of long shadows have always taken hold of him, taken what they would from him, and with each solar revolution they take a little more, and soon there'll be a time when there's nothing left, and he doesn't want to hasten that time in coming.
cumin
He is three years old and is beginning to realize the world is full of things. Standing on a kitchen chair, chubby hands wrapped around the graceful curves of its back, he watches seeds pop and dance in the oil. Each wiggles and waits until it can wait no more and then it explodes, bursting with deliciousness.
He thinks it must be something like waiting for dinner or waiting to go out or waiting until playtime. He feels a certain kinship with the seed and tries to tell it this, but his mother slaps his hand away and pulls him back from the stove and then he's down on the floor with an unceremonious thunk.
Instead he plays at being a seed - rolling himself small, then leaping - until dinner is ready and he tears the soft naan apart in his hands, stuffing it into his face and relishing the smell and taste of cumin seeds.
cinnamon
He is six years old and staring at his shoes. The bright-hot smell of cinnamon gum is everything, a high note that coats the low mutters and clicking of cameras and the dirty stench of what he will come to know is gunpowder.
The social worker's breath reeks of cinnamon from gum she'd taken from the shelf beside the registers. She's saying things he can't or doesn't want to understand. All he can smell is cinnamon, and not even the comforting muted smell of the kheer the way his father makes it, without the cardamom. Just that stolen tense-breath bright-orange cinnamon.
He is suddenly, violently sick, all over the social worker's handbag.
mustard
He is fifteen and at a backyard picnic. He's slathering brilliant yellow mustard on his hot dog; his baby sister plows into him, knocking him backwards onto the lawn. She looks up at him, contrite, and he laughs, smelling mustard and grass and staring into a deep blue sky.
basil
He is standing by his landlady's kitchen garden: end of a day, drenched in late sunlight. A lazy bee hums past and the air is peppery-thick with basil and the sharpness of tomato vines. The heavy envelope in his hands is postmarked 'Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital".
oregano
Cheap pizza sauce in a hundred places: hospital cafeterias, his high school cafeteria (he sees himself dumping cheap fake parmesan on top to hide the taste, hears his jeering voice saying words he can't forget even now) the PPTH lunch line. Memories of numbered placards, a game that turned too serious too fast, one that wouldn't stop, didn't stop without taking hearts or minds or entire lives.
lavender
The soft meow of a cat, the quiet jingle of its bell: the acrid stench of its urine, hiss of an air freshener leaving him cotton-mouthed. Whisper of a zipper.
Whisper of a gun barrel.
Smell is the most effective memory trigger.
He took a deep breath and held his nose.
author: phinnia
rating: PG-13/R for themes
disclaimer: a wandering minstrel i, a thing of shreds and patches. i own nothing.
author's note: for kutner_love's kutnerfest: kutner and cooking. (apologies: i've lost the prompt number.) This eventually ended up being more about spices. eh. 'garam masala' is an Indian spice mixture. 'naan' is indian flatbread (more similar to a pizza crust than a tortilla or pita). 'kheer' is an Indian rice pudding dish. much love to my merry band of first readers, who pointed out my typoes and prodded this lovingly into shape.
He doesn't cook much any more, and this is why: the memories don't need any help. These days of long shadows have always taken hold of him, taken what they would from him, and with each solar revolution they take a little more, and soon there'll be a time when there's nothing left, and he doesn't want to hasten that time in coming.
cumin
He is three years old and is beginning to realize the world is full of things. Standing on a kitchen chair, chubby hands wrapped around the graceful curves of its back, he watches seeds pop and dance in the oil. Each wiggles and waits until it can wait no more and then it explodes, bursting with deliciousness.
He thinks it must be something like waiting for dinner or waiting to go out or waiting until playtime. He feels a certain kinship with the seed and tries to tell it this, but his mother slaps his hand away and pulls him back from the stove and then he's down on the floor with an unceremonious thunk.
Instead he plays at being a seed - rolling himself small, then leaping - until dinner is ready and he tears the soft naan apart in his hands, stuffing it into his face and relishing the smell and taste of cumin seeds.
cinnamon
He is six years old and staring at his shoes. The bright-hot smell of cinnamon gum is everything, a high note that coats the low mutters and clicking of cameras and the dirty stench of what he will come to know is gunpowder.
The social worker's breath reeks of cinnamon from gum she'd taken from the shelf beside the registers. She's saying things he can't or doesn't want to understand. All he can smell is cinnamon, and not even the comforting muted smell of the kheer the way his father makes it, without the cardamom. Just that stolen tense-breath bright-orange cinnamon.
He is suddenly, violently sick, all over the social worker's handbag.
mustard
He is fifteen and at a backyard picnic. He's slathering brilliant yellow mustard on his hot dog; his baby sister plows into him, knocking him backwards onto the lawn. She looks up at him, contrite, and he laughs, smelling mustard and grass and staring into a deep blue sky.
basil
He is standing by his landlady's kitchen garden: end of a day, drenched in late sunlight. A lazy bee hums past and the air is peppery-thick with basil and the sharpness of tomato vines. The heavy envelope in his hands is postmarked 'Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital".
oregano
Cheap pizza sauce in a hundred places: hospital cafeterias, his high school cafeteria (he sees himself dumping cheap fake parmesan on top to hide the taste, hears his jeering voice saying words he can't forget even now) the PPTH lunch line. Memories of numbered placards, a game that turned too serious too fast, one that wouldn't stop, didn't stop without taking hearts or minds or entire lives.
lavender
The soft meow of a cat, the quiet jingle of its bell: the acrid stench of its urine, hiss of an air freshener leaving him cotton-mouthed. Whisper of a zipper.
Whisper of a gun barrel.
Smell is the most effective memory trigger.
He took a deep breath and held his nose.