It Was A Sleepless Night Never Forgotten Poem by Bashyam Narayanan

Sleepless night never forgotten
Was thirteen plus then
Early part of the night
I slept early that night
Very tired,
Probably because I played a lot in the evening
School holidays they were
Owing to a temple festivel
Hurried through my night food,
a mere butter milk laden rice it was
And to sleep quickly
Was shaken up by my cousin
He preferred me to others as I was polite
Obedient and less questioning
Get up and we need to go the temple
He said in curt
Before I could gather myself
He placed a bamboo basket on my head
And started walking
Without a question I followed him
We walked through the no-one-seen-anywhere street
We stepped into the temple
He took me to that part of the temple
Which otherwise unvisited
He was talking to a person
Sitting in front of a table
My cousin paid him some cash
And collected a receipt
I was asked to show to contents in the basket
The person who issued the receipt verified
And he suggested we may proceed
By then I realized that we were to do
Something in the temple kitchen
A forbidden place for outsiders
We were let inside after the collection of the receipt
And the verification of materials we were carrying
The kitchen was crowded
I came to know that we were there
To cook something to be offered to the deity
It was all smoke
Emanating from the firewood kitchen ovens
My cousin ordered me to collect a new earthen pot
I was not unsuccessful
As many were after that
By that time my cousin managed to get one
Now our job was to find an oven
For our cooking
It was also accomplished after some struggle
Regular kitchen staff members were instructing us
As to how to go about cooking
We placed the pot with water in it
After the quantity of water got checked by the instructor
By the time the water got hot
We understood that the cooking pot was leaking
The instructor came to our help
By getting a better non-leaking pot
It was not new, but a used one
Our cooking started in the real sense
We added rice and the yellowish pealed-half-broken green gram
We had a break then
I started looking around
The smoky less illuminated kitchen hall
Someone enquired about me
Someone expressed happiness over seeing me
Probably the youngest among this one-time cooks
We got busy later cutting broken coconut
Into small thin little squares
My cousin declared to the instructor
The rice and gram got cooked
The content was in a half-slurry shape
We were asked to empty the cooking pot
Onto a filter basket
The cooking pot was placed over the stove again
Instructor added very small quantity of water
And the jaggery we carried
Was added to the water
We were instructed to carefully
Handle this and to keep stirring
We kept informing the progress of this soup
To the instructor
And at one point he said to stop heating
The pot was removed from the heat
The instructor verified its viscosity
By allowing a free fall of some drops of the contents
In water and certified its suitability
We carried the jaggery-water-hot-mix and
The cooked rice-gram mix
To a small granite platform
Where they were mixed along with coconut square bits
And the whole got transferred into the cooking pot
He was happy to inform us that
Our offering is ready for presentation to the deity
We kept the pot in the basket
And went to the place where deity with his female resort
We were let inside a tall screen
And I saw more than a hundred baskets
With the cooking pot projecting over them
Before the deity
The temple priest did some ritual
With someone ringing a hand bell
And at last the screen was downed
And we were asked to collect our pot
We walked home with the pot-in-middle basket
On my and cousin's head alternately
I saw that dawn was near
When we reached home
We were given a great reception at home
As they were waiting for this great dish
Cooked in the temple kitchen
And offered to the Lord
Eyes burning after a sleepless night
And a break-less exposure to smoke
It was a sleepless night never forgotten