Suburban Spice

We live in a town out of Ladybird Books: well planned, neat, and well- behaved. Houses are red-brick or painted white. They are cuboid and clean and accommodate nuclear families of 2.4 children in row upon orderly row. No one has rebelled and painted theirs pink; no youth done graffiti and no architect made a statement in brutalist concrete.

No, instead, some of us fry up hot clouds of spice to surround our homes and scintillate passers by. While no one has built a Mahalaxmi temple in our suburbs, the curry leaf, mustard seed and coconut sizzle sometimes makes it smell like they have. A side door opens and a small lady in a sari shocks us with her razzmatazz chilli and cumin bursting onto the pavement. Wow, this town is on fire! There is so much going on. And that's even before she's added the ginger and garlic.

Then round another corner and down a street without cobbles, with neither dreaming spires nor fabled domes, my heart melts as if at the sound of lutes and zithers, for filling the driveway outside number 32, is the perfume of cardamom, cloves and saffron. Behind the lace curtain someone is sprinkling orange blossom water and someone, rose petals. I could lose myself wandering down these fragrant lanes, my head forever in the clouds, my prayers of thanksgiving offered up like incense.