The Kitchen Of My Home

The kitchen of my home holds too much. 

The old-styled gas stove, not the electric one, is still serving us with a few tweaks here and there.

A few cups with broken handle remind me of how you exist without being used anymore.

My kitchen holds the flavors of my home, different kinds, in small cups, and cups bunched in one whole container making a flower kind pattern.

The kitchen is old, but this one holds decades of cacophony; women, utensils, grinder, chakla-belan, tongs. All in synchrony. 

The tea which comes out from here is prepared with some tiredness and tulsi.

The heftiness of arguments often ends up here with my limbs stretching out to grab something from the shelves, my self-esteem.

The same old kitchen has seen me evolve from a dumb-ass kid to a kick-ass woman.

From choosing a simple dal to the most complex and hard-cooked anxieties; 

Sometimes, utensils being trashed upon in despair and an empty stomach.

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The kitchen of my home holds too much. 

My very own hands clean it with a dirty piece of cloth.

That one old dirty rag maintains the beauty of my whole kitchen.

Few boxes are kept aside from the gas stove. Blackened with something that looks like soot. Or maybe a decade's old fire, still burning.

The boxes aren't matched or a pair of twins, but comes complimentary with something filled in it.

Different shapes, colors, and when it gets over, we refill them with ideas and hopes.

From polythene bag stored in one another to the old massive sil- batta. It is still used to crush oneself and make the best chutney.

I wonder if the taste feels the same if someone else cooks here.

The kitchen of my home knows the hands who always touch her laying still there, lifeless, and abandoned until the morning comes and chaidaan finds its way on the top of the stove.

The kitchen of my home holds too much, my home.