Tomatoes and Memories

The tomatoes caught my attention while I was searching for cold water in the fridge.

Red. Soft. Slightly wrinkled.

I picked one up absent mindedly and pressed it lightly between my fingers. The skin almost gave in. And suddenly, without warning, my tongue remembered a taste from years ago.

A taste of hunger.

A taste of home.

When I was a child, Appa wanted to become a writer.

Not the kind who sat at home with papers neatly stacked near a window. He wandered through paddy fields, village tea shops, temple grounds, and riversides. He even built a small hut near the fields because he believed silence helped words grow better.

People said marriage would change him.

It didn’t.

Even after Appa married Amma, even after my sister and I were born, he remained a passing shadow in our lives. Sometimes his articles got printed in magazines. Sometimes rich men from the village paid him to write praises about them. On those rare evenings, he would come home with folded notes in his pocket, hand the money to Amma, eat quietly, sleep for one night, and disappear before sunrise.

Our mud hut stood beside my grandparents’ smaller one. Chickens scratched the mud outside all day. Amma worked wherever she could, washing vessels in big houses, stitching torn blouses, and helping the nearby temple priest clean the lamps.

We never completely starved.

But hunger lived with us like another family member.

On the worst days, Amma’s tiny vegetable garden saved us. A few green chillies, some spinach, and tomatoes.

We usually sold the vegetables and chicken eggs to the shop for money, but the tomatoes were kept for urgent days when there was nothing else to eat.

I still remember those evenings.

By dusk, after Amma returned tired and smelling of sweat and smoke, she would pick three tomatoes from the garden. My sister and I sat beside her near the viragu aduppu - the small brick stove outside our hut.

She would crush the tomatoes with salt , some garlic and chilli using her hands.

The firewood never cooperated properly. The wind kept blowing the flames away.

“Aah, even the fire is jealous of us,” Amma would laugh. “Just like your Kamalamma, my distant aunty, who roams around trying to see how everyone else lives. If someone is happier than she expects, she becomes jealous.”

My sister would laugh loudly, showing her tiny cavity filled teeth.

Her hair was always messy.

Amma’s saree was always faded.

Her round black pottu would smudge from sweat.

But somehow, under that weak fire and open night sky, the tomatoes would turn into the tastiest curry in the world.

We mixed it carefully with rice, trying to make it last longer. If the chilli became too much, Amma would quietly add a little curd.

And we ate like it was a feast in the open ground, while the firewood still held tiny sparks of light and warmth against the cold wind brushing through the forest valley.

Standing in my kitchen now, years later, I suddenly smelled Amma again.

Smoke.

Sweat.

Tomatoes roasting on firewood.

I saw my sister’s grin.

I saw the torn edge of Amma’s saree dancing in the wind.

A breeze touched my shoulder softly, almost like a hand.

Before I realized it, tears rolled down my cheeks.

I closed the fridge door, took the tomatoes, and went to make that curry again.

For the first time in years, I wanted to taste home.