A late night infomercial
Celebrates functional kitchenware, spreads
Its revelatory gospel. Just two
Payments of nineteen ninety-nine brings
Salvation to housewives everywhere!
Who mourn piles of sloppy rajma 1
Fallen on the floor, “Oh Lord!
That damned faulty tupperware!”
To those poor souls
Who live in an unseasoned, nauseating,
Greyscale video filter;
Whose slain beans are
Slimy monsters of wrath!
Salvation, salvation to you!
Poof! You find yourself in technicolour,
And successfully you place
Securely encased legumes
Into the fridge, beaming!
Salvation, salvation alas!
And only you, Oh
Lord! How I dream to escape
My greyscale world.
For Rajma is one among
The many things I’ve ruined – those
friendships, opportunities and loves, my
Mind, body and soul crippled with neglect.
How I suffer the terrifying piles of
Experience strewn across the cold tile floor.
I suffer because I cannot forget,
And because the mess of my past
Ensures an ultimately catastrophic future;
Knowing my doom lies in burying
My history, so that I can live to tell the tale.
Oh, to forget would be happiness,
To be a blank slate again!
If only someone had given me his number,
That of the man who invents.
Perhaps he could have created
Tupperware for someone like me.
Then could I have enclosed my rotting,
And shut it away
In the coldest freezer
Forever and ever.
1 Marathi for kidney beans
Editor(s): Amber T., Sydney O.
Photo Credits: Unsplash