By Sonakshi Srivastava

There is something about my mother’s hands. At once so mundane, at once so magical – they infuse life to the oft-quoted, almost quotidian, Hindi idiom haathon mein jaadoo hai (there is magic in your hands).  I have often marvelled at the multiplicities of hands in general, and my mother’s in particular. Her hands, naturally, embody the essence of life to me. They contain the world, and open it up too – by appealing to the innate, the familial, the sensuous, her hands are no less than a recipe that nurtures life. 

Hands, I believe, are perhaps the most versatile parts of the human body. Crafted for tactility, and capable of creating, the catalogue of hands’ works run aplenty. Hands assume a life of their own. A mental recollection of a person would necessarily entail a recollection of their hands or by extension, a creation by their hands. Consequently, a sudden surge of memories announces itself, brimming forth with the sensual affectations of the tactile, the olfactory, the auditory. It is almost as if the senses are enmeshed with the hands, a kind of memory randomly accessed. 

My mother’s hands intrigue me. They are an archive, an extensive chronicler of time, a document of experiences – always nourishing, always nurturing. In their negotiations with the everyday, a rhythmic grammar of sameness emerges – those hands at work – mending, cooking, healing. This visual essay rings up the vocabulary of one such particular memory – the sameness that emerged when I saw her prepare my favourite dish, ghuiyyan ke patte ke pakode (fritters made from the leaves of colocasia), and when she mended and dyed a dupatta for me, and how these images spoke to the sensuous realm, thereby making me aware of the unity of the body and the mind. 

सामग्री//Ingredients:

• spices
• thread
• leaves of colocasia
• fabric
• thread
• flowers
• scissors

 विधि//Steps:

1. गंध// Smell

Gather the ingredients together. Pay attention to how each ingredient evokes the senses. The smell of the marigolds, the smell of the spices, the smell of the leaves of colocasia, the gradient of the veins of the leaves, the texture of the dupatta, the edge of the scissors, of the needle.

2. स्पर्श//Touch

Hands at work. The ingredients are infused with life as the fingers gently spread the petals on the dupatta, the masala paste on the leaves. The ingredients are now works in-progress. 

3. ध्वनि//Sound

The congruency begins to emerge as the hands perform similar actions in crafting together the dupatta, the fritters. The flowers rustle in the dupatta rolling over, the masala paste is enveloped in the rolling leaves.

4. दृष्टि//Sight

Threading together as an act of putting together. The hands tread carefully, negotiating between the fragile cloth and the sharp needle, the supple leaf against the abrasive thread.  

5. स्वाद//Taste

A severance, a cut – in the cloth, in the rolled-up leaf. The carved-out parts are now dyed, and fried respectively – the final act of feeding the aesthetics.

When I moved away from home in 2015, epiphanic realizations about things that I had taken for granted hit me. I realized the importance of the most mundane things – from stitching to cooking. In an attempt to learn these skills, I pivoted to my mother’s hands – the hope was to be able to recreate a part of her haathon ka jaadoo, to be able to bask in the familial impressions of the senses that are closely tied to my mother’s hands.  The mere sight of her hands – in person, or in memory conjure up images of deep familiarity and warmth. I am instantly struck by the fertile machinations of my mother’s hands, and how a sheer recollection of the same is capable of dishing out images of my favourite recipe by her, thoroughly refreshing my senses. 

My mother’s hands are the artificer of memories – constantly weaving the present for a reflection of the past, for a window into the future.

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Sonakshi Srivastava is a senior writing tutor at Ashoka University, the translations editor at The Usawa Literary Review, and an educational arm assistant at Asymptote. As opposed to eating, she loves writing and talking about food.