UKADALA
At Serendipity Arts Festival, December 2019
Ukadala
Go to the town to beg
with a cloth bag
on your shoulder,
a tin pot in your hand.
Return home
with your booty
of decaying food
overflowing the tin pot,
and stale dry jowar roti
in the bag.
Put all the rotting food
into your big clay pot
along with the pieces
of dry roti.
Collect twigs and sticks
from the garbage heap
to light the chulha.
Bring the mixture to the boil.
The spoilt food
with a sour taste
is called ambuda.
Once it is cooked
it becomes ukadala.
Pour it into a mud bowl
with a spoon made from
a cracked coconut shell
and a piece of wood
nailed to it.
Let everybody feast.
adapted from Babytai Kamble’s ‘The Prisons We Broke’
(2009)