Rumcake

Black birds cooing outside the kitchen window- an omen of unspeakable events waiting to wash over fraying paints of the kitchen tiles and glued shadows of steam that kisses it’s walls. It’s marvel unnoticed and unremarked. There’s a corner with a crack where a hairy spider lives, and a coconut shell near the foot of the table- growing blacker each day.

The sink is a fading alloy, speckled and worn. Mottled glasses with the stench of vodka stand dry and misted beside. When there were fewer glasses to scrub there was more life in the kitchen. A whisk, a ladle and dough, found itself inside the same bowl. My father with a crooked smile and sleeves rolled up would sway rhythamically to an old Malayalam song the radio sang.

He would whisk and add ingredients, attempting a butter cake better than the last one he had made with a sober face. Me and my sister would hop along and reach out to the metal bowl, to thrust our fingers into the wet, lumpy dough our father hardly reckoning it to be inconsistently mixed everytime.

And for some odd reason it took us almost a year to realise why the cake never settled completely. But even after finding out that an oven ought to do the job and not a microwave, we couldn’t care less; as long as there was some what of a wobbly cake presented on the dinner table we were happy with it (undercooked or not).

What disheartened my Appa though were the rings of burnt crumbs on the bottom of the Tupperware. Nevertheless, if we had enough butter for one more he would try again- whilst our licking of the first bowl. And on reducing the heat this time, would happily execute a “butter cake” barely qualifying to be called one.

With great effort and authenticity he would flip over the plastic and gently carve sections out off the cuboid of spongy butter. He would spare a small square for himself and with much abnegation distribute pieces amongst the family, expecting our excited reactions which were promised.

On seeing our faces would then return to piling glasses: which meant no more cake for a few months.

As for now there aren’t any left. No butter smeared bowls or unwashed ladles. No stench of liquor or stained glasses. A dead bulb in the kitchen that needs mending. The Tupperware and microwave yearn to be used. There are roaches running about. The fitments that bear the ingredients to this special cake mourn for the loss of a dancing baker. And the taste of the runny cake has shrunk itself into a dying memory. The kitchen remains sacred. The kitchen is a temple of good days that aren’t going to return.

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