Butterscotch

Nanaji reaches for the small glass jar

and offers us endless butterscotch sweets.

Hard and honeying, they speak of untold joy

and fleeting contact.

Unmarried aunties fuss us out of the cave-like shower

into the gentle sunlight,

wrapping our hair in thin towels

and drying in between our toes.

Our Lady Di inspired dresses are hurried on

and we wriggle as the charpoy ropes

graze our cosseted knees,

kinder to hardy familiars.

We’re smuggled crispy mixes in cellophane wrappers,

our privileged status confirmed by whispers

and promises of yet more fancies.

We play dress-up in their college burkas,

giggling at the strangeness;

seeing, unseeing, seeing, unseeing—

how strange to play at foreign grown-ups

though they are merely out of school.

In the late evening when everyone retreats indoors,

seeking refuge from the mosquitoes

and ready for reclining,

hunkering down in too-thick blankets,

tossing roasted corn into our mouths or at each other.

We replicate a serious Qawwali performance.

Heads wrapped in linen scarves,

though my Dad’s borrowed track top

and our matching toothless grins

lessen the authentic effect.

Bemused Uncles clap graciously.

“Wah, Wah!”, they shout and ask for encores.

We readily oblige; attention and novelty

embolden us as holidaymakers losing their inhibitions.

Although Dad had warned us:

Nanee would only make us aubergine stews every day,

she indulged and overfed us like

a maternal bird at first flush of motherhood.

Sunlit mornings hosting ghee oozing parathas

wafting as we tap dance impatiently on the stones

surrounding the cracked tawa

atop the crackling fire of sticks and logs.

Spying on neighbours’ kite flying

when able to escape to the baked rooftops.

Dark cool interminable stairs—

then a burst of unbearable sunlight

as we emerge at the top of the world.

Befriending the new patchy goat

and feeding it freshly hewn grass—munchy munchy—

only to discover it for Eid lunch,

deliciously meaty and red with flavour.

Welcomed, enveloped and delighted at,

praised with practical care and possessive glances.

All too aware of the distant nature of this

carefully curated bliss.

There was no other warm World like it

before or since—

when two worlds collide

and remember their shared beginnings.