for my darling baby

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 pot with the lid which I used o call’ karutha patram’ (black vessel) , which held so many good memories of so many golden evenings and of the goodies which my grandfather used to bring for me every evening when he came back from work and my grandma used to save one or two pieces of these palaharams so that I can have it next day with the evening tea. So she showed me the pot and, oh my God!! I could not believe my eyes, this was a small black pot with lid, “‘what happened to the big black pot with lid’, in which you used to store goodies for me?”, I asked her, she smiled and said this is the same, you were so small at that time that this pot seemed so big for you and you used to struggle to lift it’s lid to savour the snacks.

Well, that was a surprise, but I started loving the ‘big black pot with a lid’ a bit more and looked at it lovingly and extracted a promise out of my grandma to pass it on to me as an heirloom, not to give it away to any one else, even if it cracks or gets faded or useless. she promised, she would, the black pot suddenly seemed so special and I realized I have not seen that kind of a utensil any where till now, it seemed a Chinese pot , but looked different , with handles, and lid and such a lovely round shape.

But then I grew a bit more , distances also grew, I do not know about rights and wrongs and whether the pot has been passed on to someone else or it has faded or cracked,  but I know for sure that  I still miss the' big  black pot with the lid' and those golden evenings of that laid back town and the love that helped me lift the lid to savour the goodies.