Writer
Anita Nair’s newest offering, Alphabet Soup for Lovers, is a paean
to food, love, loss and longing, and the intimate connections between
them. The narrator of this novella is the family cook, Komathi. And
by using the language of touch and taste, Komathi introduces us to
Lena Abraham, and the man Lena is so instantly attracted to, Shoola
Pani Dev--a superstar, plagued by superstardom and a loveless
marriage.
Komathi,
is trying to learn the alphabet. For her, love of food is as
intrinsic and intimate as love or life itself. So, A, for Komathi is
“Arisi” (rice in tamizh, as she puts it). Every alphabet
thereafter, and the food, dish or vegetable she associates it with,
is thus an aphorism--an acute observation of men and women and what
they do for love.
Komathi
knows Lena, or Leema as she calls her, did not marry her husband KK
for love; they are “like two strangers in a doctor’s waiting
room.” And Komathi also knows Leema needs some arisi appalam
(rice pappads) in her life. Arisi appalam, with its mingled
flavours of green chillies, asafoetida, lime and the heat of the sun,
is “like a firecracker bursting in the mouth”. But it spoils
quickly, she warns. And that is how we get our first inkling that Lena, at age
39, is about to get a lesson in life and love that will disrupt her
otherwise nondescript existence.
Shoola
Pani, the newest guest at Lena and KK’s plantation homestay in the
picturesque Annamalai Hills, is that disruption. I confess the name Shoola Pani feels utterly unsexy for me, as a reader. But Anita Nair's Lena Abraham has no such qualms. As Komathi watches, her Leema re-learns the alphabet of life. And as Komathi reaches the
letter Z, she too gets a chance to reunite with a love she thought
lost forever.
Will Komathi reach out for her own Zigarthanda-- the
cool, refreshing drink that “makes you step into the unknown, not
thinking about what you have left behind, or what lies ahead”?
Will
she?
Won’t
she?
Nair’s
clarity of thought and writing, makes this book a flavourful,
colourful read.
Alphabet
Soup for Lovers by Anita Nair
Harper
Collins India
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