The Balancing Act

The big black pot with a lid When the lazy afternoons gave way to a big orange sun on the horizon with clouds hovering around it, sometimes to embrace, sometimes to hide and sometimes to just be besides the majestic one, that was almost always the most interesting time of the day for me, the little girl in a laid back little town of Kerala, way back, rather decades back. When a sleepy little me, after my afternoon nap, forayed into the dark kitchen and looked around and fumbled with the lid of the ‘big black pot with a lid’, that was the pot which held the goodies for the evening snack with tea, and my grandmother knew that to find me she does not have to look elsewhere, just to the corner of the kitchen and she can find me struggling with the lid, and she would come to the kitchen and help me lift the lid and take a piece of my evening palaharam. Years passed the little girl grew up but the memories did not fade, and one day I wanted my grandmother to show me the black...