#cornershopkids

[samaya11]

The Tale of the Perfume Thief and Other Misadventures

(Based on partly true stories of my late sister Dipa)

Dipa and I were sitting in the courtyard of our ancestral home in Navsari, India. She was telling me about her latest obsession - collecting miniature perfumes. She had already amassed a small collection from our travels around the world, but she was determined to add more to it.

As she spoke, I noticed a mischievous glint in her eyes. She leaned in closer and whispered, "Pri, I have a plan. I want to steal some perfumes from the local store. Will you be my lookout?"

I was hesitant at first, but Dipa was always the adventurous one. She convinced me that it would be fun, and that we wouldn't get caught. So, I reluctantly agreed.

The next day, we put our plan into action. Dipa distracted the shopkeeper while I kept watch. She quickly pocketed a few miniature perfumes and we made our escape.

We were giddy with excitement as we ran back to our house. Dipa showed me her loot, and we giggled like schoolgirls. But as the days went by, I started to feel guilty. What we had done was wrong, and I knew it.

I tried to talk to Dipa about it, but she brushed it off. "It's just a few perfumes, Pri. No harm done," she said.

But the guilt ate away at me, and I couldn't shake it off. Eventually, I confessed to my grandmother, who scolded us both for our misdeeds. Dipa was angry with me for a while, but we eventually made up.

Years later, after Dipa had passed away, I found myself thinking about that day. It was a small, insignificant moment in the grand scheme of things, but it was a reminder of the bond we shared. We were partners in crime, always looking out for each other, always pushing each other to be bolder and braver.

And now, as I held her miniature perfume collection in my hands, I realized that what I wanted was not just a physical object, but a memory. A memory of the times we shared, the secrets we kept, and the love we had for each other.

[samaya11]

Excerpt from the working manuscript of

The Corner Shop Kids

“But why do you need the orange cheese slices on the sandwich if you already have these round pink cheese slices?” She’d ask. My sister had convinced our dear devoutly Hindu lacto-vegetarian and supremely naive granny or “Ma” to make what I called the “haram” sandwiches of Anchor butter, smoked ham and Red Leicester cheese slabs for her and our brother. I as usual, just watched open mouthed at her boldness and feared for our souls.

“You want one too right, Maya?”She’d slyly wink, her green eyes twinkling with mischief knowing full well I didn’t care for eating flesh.

“How thoughtful Dikra” gran cooed at her.

Turning to me, “Khaa, Khaa Maya! khaavanu pun kaam Kartu jaavanu, hambru? granny would admonish in the same breath making the sandwich I’d give away to a sibling on the pretext of being too full.

Poor granny the tricks my siblings and I would play.

Sneaking in alcohol or sweets from the off-license (liquor store) downstairs was their job. I was usually the look out or the one to climb through small spaces like the bathroom window bars when our parents locked us in. Not that we really had to sneak hard if we wanted a drink now that I think about it. Brandy was always available on the pretext of having a sore throat or a stuffy cold.

“It’s the only thing that clears up their symptoms overnight” granny argued with my Father while she stocked Remy Martin in the cupboards for us to have with Coke as a medicine. That with some Disprin tablets and Vick’s Vapour Rub up the nose or plugging our belly buttons were among her go to home remedies for us. Sometimes a bottle of Lucozade for glucose power to soothe a genuine fever or secret hangover vomiting. For someone who believed so strongly in Ayurvedic foods she embraced some very contemporary practices from whichever country she happened to be in.

Our kitchen was tiny and cramped with both a washer and a dryer, a folded wood dining table and chairs up against the glossy deep red Victorian furnace. Granny was so neat, ran such a tight ship, and took so much pride of the religiously scrubbed sink, the gas oven dismantled constantly for proper cleaning, the patterned linoleum floors swept and mopped with such precision. Under the stairs adjacent to the kitchen was the food pantry that we snuck grannys large disk shaped tablets from. The only thing that wasn’t in her medicine cupboard. I never knew exactly what they were for but they were sour orange and fizzy. We also picked at the tamarind packs a little at time cherished for their sticky mouth puckering tartness. Ofcourse our foolishness would attract mice to Ma’s consternation.

Granny’s fixation for cleanliness extended past physical to her focus on internal & psychic exorcism. She was convinced we needed “najar uttarvanu” to keep the evil eye away, to drinking Khadvaat an utterly foul smelling bitter muddy concoction of torture, which Nills was the champ at holding her nose and downing it in one gulp. I always vomited. I never made it past the first sip which convinced granny I was full of sinful thoughts, possibly demons or worse full of parasitic worms that would infect the others eventually. The laxative tablets she tried to make easy for us. They were hard chocolate tabs wrapped in foil. Shay would hide his in the corners of that kitchen for mice to find, cheered on giggling mad by me and my sister. Until we realised one of us girls would be tasked to clean that liquid mice shit up the next morning not darling curly-haired Prince Shay.

One time I was dared to try Ma’s “tunkhi”from her tiny metal box. I had the easiest access to her supplies being trusted to fetch things for her. It was beige tobacco powder we watched her carefully pinch to her nose once a day. I just coughed and lied hard that it was pretty good and they should try it too, so Shay tried it and gagged, Nills had a nose bleed, the reaction suffer from all her life to foods that triggered her.

At night we all slept in the same room. Shailesh and Nila in the top and bottom bunk beds, me in the twin bed with granny between us to stop the fights at bed time with her impossibly long arms and specifically tuned ears. We had taught Ma the little English she knew and along with that our own definitions. So Tia Maria from the label of a liquor bottle we told her meant good night tofits of hysterical giggles when we made her repeat it back to us.

One night Shay & Nills got drunk. Ma and I had gone to sleep already. She convinced my brother to slap granny in her sleep. He did it and she woke up sputtering awake “hu thiyu? Kyon che? Hu juye?”

For years later we would laugh about the story but i never really thought it was funny. I would always wonder if it was a tiny awakening of morals or just jealousy that I wasn’t included.

Priya Ramesh Desai, 2020 @samaya11

[samaya11]

The Zebra Crossing

I trail behind my mother

Gold rings on her every finger

The Indian merchant’s wife

Her blue Dr. Scholl’s peeking

From under the hem of the paisley sari swish

as she walks hurriedly along at the pace

I would mimic subconsciouslly

when I was old enough to know better

You didn’t stand still in London Town

Or anywhere in the world if you were female

Walk confidently with purpose

Or suffer being mistaken for an easy mark

My eyes start watching the lines between

the century-old scarred yellow brick on my right,

my shadow on the concrete pavement below,

In front of us cars zoom by the approaching

busy East End London High Road

She does not try to hold my hand or wait

She is an impatient woman with places to go

With far too much work to do

Her tiny hands crammed with responsibilities

weighing on her already strained

Varicose-veined 4 foot 10 inch frame

She lost me that day

She did not realise for hours

Her youngest child of three

The curly haired three year old girl

I had walked to the left after she turned right out of my sight

I was now blocks away almost at the zebra crossing of Leytonstone High Rd

Standing next to the Wall’s Ice Cream sandwich board on the bustling sidewalk

Eyeing the chockablock traffic thoughtfully of how to cross

A stranger picked me up

put me on their shoulders

and carried me away

to the police constable

Where I tried to describe the off license

RJ Wines Store with the old Goodrich name under the front door canopy still written proudly into the decorative mosaic stones.

But I couldn’t form the words from the pictures in my brain to my tongue being so shy

My curse for years and years

which is why I learned to draw

You would think that after this incident

My mother would hold me close

Or vow to hold my hand

Weeks later I trailed behind her again

This time I ran out of the alley onto mornington Road to catch up before she disappeared again

I was knocked over by a boy on his bike

Poor blue eyed Paul from five doors down

He never had a chance against my mother’s

Tongue lashing in her fiery broken English curses

Then she realized I was bleeding

The corner of my eye cut open

I remember being taken to Whipps Cross Hospital

Not by Mum, she would never learn how to drive

She still can’t cross a street without cussing

Whipps Cross Hospital was the place I was supposed to be born or so the story goes, but it was too full. Instead I was born in Hackney’s The Mother’s Salvation Army Hospital on an unusually cool and rainy mid-August morning. They forgot to turn the heater on mother recounted. You didn’t even cry because you were too cold she said with a strange sort of pride at my supposed audacity.

I remembered not to cry as they cleaned up the gash

I remembered the small cross shaped white bandage

The smell of antiseptic Dettol floors

I still have the visible scar on my right eye

Some wounds never heal.

I’ve heard that surgeons say

Wounds can create their own light

I wonder if a slim ray guided my path

From that day.

— Priya Ramesh Desai, 2020