The Language of Memories

Madura thulasi—holy basil, Ocimum teniflurorum—is a type of basil native to Southern Asia. When my father wafts a sprig by my nose, I don’t recognise its fragrance. ‘Lavender,’ I ask him, ‘or mint?’ 

He’s not the happy-go-lucky flower-picking type; I’m anticipating a lesson, a memory, a story. He starts to explain in Malayalam, shifting to English, as he remembers his  audience. In Kerala, thulasi is used medicinally, and in pujas—rarely eaten. He didn’t know it grew here; god help me, I didn’t know any of it. 

Of course, most of it goes unsaid. The heart of this show-and-tell is nostalgia, and my father is not the reminiscing type. I have no right, no skin in the game, but I can’t help re-interpreting—easily conjuring somebody else’s thickly perfumed, mythico-religious childhood. 

I know so little of the place I was born. Recently, the reminders of my not-knowing have become more frequent. An epidemic of half-familiar this-that-those. 

Some things remain known, alarmingly predictable. When I woke up in the middle of the night, aching and feverish, neither of my parents thought twice. They fell into step and danced circles around me. I used to hate this routine when I was younger: the bustling and temperature-taking, the who-did-you-get-it-from, the advice, meticulously administered as though I’d never had a cold before. 

The front door creaks shut behind my father. My mother, still leaden with sleep, puts on the kettle. Chukku kapi—ginger coffee—is the strongly-spiced medicine for my sore throat and congestion. We’re out of palm sugar, so she uses maple syrup; it doesn’t taste the same, but it’s just how it should be. 

Thulasi is traditionally used in chukku kapi. When my father comes back in, he’s holding three long stalks of it, pilfered from somebody’s garden. My mother doesn’t need three guesses—she smells it, and knows at once. Like him, she’s delighted with this serendipitous piece of home. She, too, asks me if I know what it is: this time I get to say yes. 

In it goes. She stands by the stove and stirs, he fiddles with the thermostat, and I sit there and soak it all in.