Taste Collector

Amlanjyoti Goswami, Issue 06

Eat a little more, she says, it will tide over those rough days later.
Grandmother, long gone, in the village house at the harvest.
I’ve been collecting tastes all summer.
They stay in the tongue of memory.
What came first – khar, the alkali or the steamed rice?
Was it a copper or brass plate?
The aroma of my first biryani, white rice swirling from the pot.
My first burger, juicy and forbidden, at seventeen
In the big city. The first dimsums were fried not steamed.
The lush curry – my father’s tenga – sour with lemon and tomatoes
And some cumin. This is a poem not a recipe.
That akhaa jeera chach pulao. Meat filled. Untranslatable.
Grandmom’s dark gravy, smoke blown, pigeon.
Scientists will one day recover a place for all tastes in the tongue
Where is sour, where sweet, what is umami, where resides the spice
Route to the brain, to the cells where they preserve
Memories like pickles.
I will call everyone home for the perfect meal, a buffet of possibilities.
Like memory, hope and the granary, the options and servings
Will be unlimited. Baked with love. Made with attention,
That hidden ingredient lingering in my tongue
I cannot find a name for,
As I turn page after page after page
In that dictionary of memory. Call it what you like. It stays.
The one that will tide us through all the rough days.