Mid-afternoon after a missed lunch

Too close to the evening meal,

An expectant rumble way down

Anticipating a long hunger.

 

The culinary instincts of his own recipes

Combine with Ami Gees, Aunty Gees and sisters,

To recreate a unique Salan hai.

 

Brown hands cracking

Tissue paper parchment of garlic cloves.

A roll of varnished onion skin,

Then deftly, large palms cutting thinly, to equal sizes,

Potent, pungent. silver staples.

 

Hissle, steam and oil meet to start the plot.

Black moustache 70s porn style,

Glasses round spying, maybe Yoko, from a piano,

cast the spices.

 

Mussilman hai,

Warm days in Gujranwala, a grandfather’s arm

Keeping stationary a wry boy in the fierce Punjabi heat.

Whilst a father hands out tickets

On Manchurian public transport.

 

Rusty electric chilli’s seal taste buds in gastric shock.

 

Along came winter coal fires

And mechanical accents, that take a preposition.

Soon the tongue curls around swollen pakora aloo,

Ami’s finest.

 

Haldi skies in February morning,

Staining everything it touches,

A coriander meadow, green with Spring

You thought would not arrive.

 

Taken and tranced underneath, international flags,

Flapping rights, resolutions, revolutions.

Salt defines the dish,

Not too much, never too much.

Yoghurt and honey is the cure.

 

Chicken fried till pale and coated, glistening ghee,

Eyes to stir the pot, to see the magic moment,

Achaa Jee.

 

Now before the flour and choti rotis,

A cigarette, a creamy cup of char.

Soothing a crying child ‘terro, terro, terro’

Languid in his mid-life truce.

Stroking too long a moustache.