No Cutlery by Gitan Djeli
Published in Issue 1 | May 2017
The heat in Frankfurt reminds me of Mauritian summers
Where earth, food, air and islandness mingle and stick to the skin
Where hot coffee would be better drunk from the saucer
But oh! how weird would that look here?
I remember my grandmother sitting under the shade of the mango tree
Blinded by the bright white sunlight of the concrete building
Enjoying a cup of sweet tea in her gilas
Poured in little sips in her metal saucer
Her morning brewed tea reheated
Which tasted heavenly cool.
I close my eyes
My body limp from the heat
My sensations lost between two worlds
Hot coffee, warm tea
Sweet turkish delights, salty moulkou
Sticky finger, dusty finger
Other organs reacting
Tongue, flesh, finger
Organ-ic experience
And not the organic greening of capitalism!
Organ-ic memories
I feel the mushy soft whole potatoes in my fingers
The brown curry staining my skin
Cooked with so much tradition in the back kitchen
Improvised to cater for the wedding guests
The loud music, the shimmering colours of sarees
Wrap the body in comfort and solace
The body moves and is moved
The sensation registered by the body
Before food reaches the mouth.
Remembering set kari. Seven vegetarian dishes.
A small white volcano of rice
With spicy yellow dhall churning in the middle
Pickled white cabbage, carrots and beans wrapped in saffron
A messy circle of tasty eggplant with bright leaves of coriander
A speck of cut green chillies
A tumble of mild green banann frikase
My favourite! Double serving of koutia grated green mangoes in spices
All displayed elegantly on a banana leaf
Inviting my tingling fingers to touch, feel, cup and bring to my lips.
A feast to the body.
The colours are indeed a feast to the body
And the smell is orgasmic
The eye as organ receives the visuality of it all
The mouth the physical textures
The internal body receives the smell
The sensations difficult to put in words, language having its limitation
How to describe the will of the finger, the wish to meet the tongue
The extremity of the flesh uniting with the organs
The connections but also the tensions
The sensation of tension.
The urge to dig in builds up
My flesh fingers the warmth of the food
It examines the texture
It mixes and knows what works well
The volcano crumbles and the yellow lava spreads in smooth patterns
It’s hot, warm, slippery, finger licking.
The materiality of the flesh bonding with freshly cooked food
Both flesh synchronised in a temporal moment
Capturing its splendidness
Before the inevitable process of decay.
This is the time to discard bourgeois etiquette
The time to forget colonial heritage
Porcelain, silver, glass, even terracotta are no food rituals today
Sit properly, back straight, no elbow on the table, fork on the left…
All left to that other house, supposedly called home
Home is here
Home is in my body
Home starts at the tip of my fingers
No silver spoon between fingers, food and tongue
The flesh, the touch never separated.
Food and flesh encounter the same ecstasy
The body is present
No silverware to break the union of bodies
Silverware that invades our intimacy
Worse, it shapes, structures the relationship between flesh and flesh
Between finger and food.
My finger probes the vegetarian dishes, touches delicately
Carries it with care and grace to the lips.
Humidity, temperature, love all synchronised
Food, finger, tongue, smell
No break. No violence. No cutlery
Even children! No plastic designed ergonomic spoon today
Ritual, nature, culture imposes itself
The child’s body is freed, the finger allowed to perform what it was designed to do
Touch, taste, feel, desire.
Memories come splurging to my body
Not the brain but the body
Memories at the tip of the flesh
Remembering the feel of different consistencies
Feeling the liquid flow from the tip to the palm
No napkin as well today
The tongue licks the sauce, stops its adventurous flow
The tongue, the food, the palm is again re-united
The body is finally reclaimed.