Aadi Jeevaraj
In March ‘23, I wrote a piece for iitr.uncultured, an independent Instagram page where my friends and I tried to deconstruct contradictions on campus. That particular post questioned the reasons for meat-based segregation in IIT Roorkee’s messes. The post quickly gained traction across campus and over the week that followed, I received threats of violence from terrifyingly diffused sources. It’s funny that I’d given up meat that January 1st & was experimenting with veganism. I started eating meat again shortly after these events in a fit of reactionary rage. I wrote this poem then.
Fish Curry
fish stinks, like everything else,
over flame, under wicked grandmother,
& scattered tamarind sits in the boil.
by the sea, I’m a story,
her shell-strung anklets snapping in her thrashing,
giggling, orange silks on her soft blue bellies,
is she water or blood to beckon thus?
thoughts ground in this sand,
is it my blood I hear thrash?
tracing the salt in my blood,
the kings of the world’s washed margins,
in their wooden crescent thrones,
Mukkuvar, & their oars,
playing with their mother’s hair,
greying at the peaks where she frothed;
& beach queens in their fish basket crowns,
& my hungry grandmother, lying awake.
how far back does time go?
how long does a moment last?
by the sea, I’m a story.
& if the sea is infinite, so are we.
feeding, wherever we’re put away,
my lunch will always stink,
but if our mother spared the fish,
there was only seaweed.
Our messes and easily washable plates remained divided & the sheer insecurity apparent in the offensive a loud majority of campus reacted to the post with only convinced me their concerns were of ‘purity’ & hegemony & was at odds with any form of environmentally conscious veganism. It is a denial of the fact that dietary habits are a long link of structural information & history. I will not Sanskritise my tongue for a seat at your table. We feed where we’re put away – all ecology consents to that much.
The pressing concern, when we look to the drained sea today, is a different one. The shift needed extends, in some measure, to the entirety of our consumption patterns – a rapid restructuring of the sources of food we rely on – leave the table at the mercy of whatever the land (or sea) nearby throws up.
In my grandmother’s house, the neighbour’s cow clears our lawns & then, we drink her milk – smaller worlds will sustain, spin, survive. We make small talk with the man who throws the fishing net – we always have, children of the sea, Mukkuvar.
My grandmother inherited digestive disorders from her hunger, & still, the sea is her mother. Kadalamma. We are so used to taking indiscriminately from our mothers, from the umbilical cord to fishing machinery, that we don’t stop to look at the hole we have made.
I wasted so many of my lunches because I thought my food smelled different from the other kids. But neither is the sea infinite, nor are we. We have the tools to learn that today. Liberation is learning. When the first fish grew legs and crawled out of the sea, they had to carry the water with them, packed in their cells. Today as well, we are mostly water. I’m emancipated by time, I inherit everything.
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