deviousways

This is something I wrote for a website called Chillibreeze. Sometimes, you write from the heart. This brought back many, many memories. ___________________________________ I grew up in a house with two kitchens – a big one where my mother and our long-time maid Sowmini, made breakfast and dinner, and a little one where the maid cooked our afternoon staple of rice on a fire of wood shingles. Even as a small girl, it was the smoke-filled, soot-encrusted ‘rice’ kitchen I really loved. For, that was where Sowmini would roast cashew nuts. She would throw the nuts on the logs and tell the eager brown-faced girl near her to wait patiently. Soon enough, I would hear a telltale hiss, a sign that the nut oil had seeped into the wood. A few more minutes of mouthwatering anticipation and I would have a handful of coarsely blackened cashew nuts to carefully crack open and crunch on. Cooking with wood comes naturally to Sowmini because that is everyday reality for her. My family i...