Last week’s gut infection
indicated a prescription
and advised a liquid diet.

Soup and light white bread were instructed.
With ginger, bay leaves, and nutmeg.
Cubed mushrooms, bouillon cubes,

And a manifestation of onions.
Blended and turned into gravy.
Diced, browned, and caramelised,
turned into a bed for chicken thighs with skin on.
A spoonful of praan – fried shallots,
for the aroma and nuttiness,
from a small jar I extorted from my mother’s pantry.
SD’s fridge faces a crisis as well.
A dozen onions were put in the freezer
instead of the vegetable basket.
Mistakenly, she says.
They need urgent attention, I am told.

For a minute, I was back in November 2021.
The day I spotted the word Cornucopia
Sprinkled on 25 different ads.
It is a different kind of onomatopoeia,
when a word does exactly what it’s called.

Like words that took the shape
of the sentences they were put in –
behaving like identical twins
who started out the same
but eventually grew into completely different people.

The onion also blooms, as it is told
In the Summer, it can sit still for a month at will.
Left in December, and it rots.
Left in the Spring and it shrinks,
as it sprouts from root and shoot.

I remember the advice of a lazing carpenter.
That whenever you travel to a new land,
before you break bread with its people,
or even drink their water.
Eat an onion grown in its soil.