We were the city relatives, and in our honour there was going to be chicken for lunch in the ancestral village home in Goa. As a seven-year-old honoree, I was captivated by the house’s tiled roof leaking sharp narrow rays of sunlight, the blackened upright wooden beams, the cool floor with the coat of hard-packed dry cowdung. But when the time came for the chicken to be slaughtered, it all became too much for me. I leapt at our relative, pulling vainly at his arm as he tolerantly and smilingly twisted the squawking chicken’s neck. I tearfully swore that I would never touch the chicken curry.
When lunch was served, the chicken curry smelled irresistibly delicious, and I tucked in with everybody else. It was the first moral failure I clearly remember in my life.
smoke-filtered sunbeam
the proud strut
of a colourful cock
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