Name in Rice
Snehal Amembal
I a ladder
| rising into clouds
| steady in the wind
|
| first rung
| curiosity
| fear
|
| climbing
| slowly
| one rung
| another
|
| a song
| I did it my way
| my grandfather’s voice |
| click
| click
| click
| his typewriter
|
| the air warms
| dosa
| mustard seeds crack | garlic chutney
| cooker whistling
|
| yellow curtains
| swaying
| my hiding place
|
| the last rung
| mango door
|
| I rise on tiptoe
| and ring
| the bell
Some memories sit quietly
in the attic of my mind.
I don’t visit them often, but when I do, they appear exactly as I left them— folded carefully between photographs and forgotten afternoons.
“Ambika,” the priest said.
For a moment I didn’t realise he was talking about me.
The name floated gently through the room,
like incense fumes,
before settling somewhere in my consciousness.
“Ambika.”
My new name.
The name I was meant to take.
A plate of rice placed carefully in front of me.
“Trace it, for the sake of ritual.”
I remember interrupting very politely.
“Panditji, may we skip this ritual?”
The room paused, but only for a moment.
“I am very fond of my current name.”
And that was the end of Ambika.
Not a dramatic act. Just a quiet decision.
But looking back now, I sometimes wonder when that certainty first began. The answer, I think, lies far away from that wedding mandap, in a small house in Bombay.
Our flat was tiny, but to me it contained an entire universe.
There was a swing in the doorway between the kitchen and the bedroom. I had desperately wanted one after seeing swings in my friends’ homes. Our house was far too small for such luxuries, but my father somehow found the only place it could fit and installed it there.
From that swing I could push gently against the kitchen counter with my feet and glide back toward the bedroom, then forward again toward the kitchen.
The distance was small.
To me it felt enormous.
From that vantage point I watched life unfold.
My mother usually cooked in a soft cotton nighty while my grandmother stood beside her in a sari. Interestingly, she always wore light colours—peach, pink, grey, cream—shades that seemed almost impractical for the kitchen.
And yet she moved through the kitchen with effortless grace.
The moment I loved most was the tadka.
Garlic hitting hot oil in a small iron kadhai with two little handles on the sides. The crackle.
The smell filling the house within seconds.
Our flat was so small that clothes were often dried in the dining area. The aroma of garlic tadka would seep into the fabrics and linger there.
As an adult I imagine that might have been inconvenient.
But as a child I loved it.
That smell on my mother’s clothes. On my grandmother’s sari.
It meant they were nearby.
My childhood memories are filled with such fragments.
The cling-clink of my mother’s glass bangles when she erased something I had written incorrectly in pencil.
The click-clack rhythm of my grandfather’s typewriter.
The smell of sewing machine oil from my grandmother’s sewing machine. The incense sticks she lit during the evening aarti at the small temple in our house. The pink flowers growing in abundance by the garden gate.
Even today, the smell of Camlin ink can transport me instantly back to my school desk. I remember my first sketch too.
A fox.
And I remember the maroon photo albums that once held all these memories before they were lost to the floods.
The photographs are gone now.
But the memories remain.
Papama—my grandmother—also entrusted me with a responsibility I took very seriously. Distributing the Toblerone after dinner.
It was a task that required fairness and vigilance. Every person had to receive exactly the same number of pieces. No more, no less.
Justice demanded it.
Of course, each triangular piece of chocolate carried a raised letter—T, O, B, L, E, R, O, N, E. I was always delighted when the letter N appeared.
Naturally, as the person responsible for distribution, I ensured that piece came to me. It seemed like a fair arrangement.
After all, I was doing the work.
Looking back now, I realise that the small house had been teaching me things long before I understood them—fairness, observation, listening, curiosity.
I would sit on that swing talking endlessly to my mother and grandmother while they cooked, telling them about my day, my small triumphs and grievances, while they spoke about theirs, their voices weaving quietly through the rhythm of cooking.
Without realising it, I was learning how to pay attention to the world.
Years later I would study psychology, and later still, in classrooms in Mumbai and London, I would learn that ideas could be questioned and examined—but perhaps the earliest lessons had already begun in that small kitchen.
When the priest suggested a new name for me at my wedding, I did what that little girl on the swing had always done. I listened, I thought about it, and then I politely said no, because somewhere between the smell of garlic tadka, the rhythm of my grandfather’s typewriter, the careful distribution of Toblerone pieces, and that small swing that made a tiny house feel vast, I had already begun to understand who I was.
After all, I had been holding on to the N in my name for a very long time.
Perhaps that is what memory really is—opening a quiet attic box and discovering that the past was never packed away at all. It was simply waiting for us to return.
15 November
November always reminded her of him, her younger brother, born on the 15th, the exact middle of the month.
Back then, it hadn’t meant anything.
Now it felt obvious.
He had lived his whole life in the middle of things, careful not to stand out, almost comfortable being overlooked. Attention embarrassed him. Praise unsettled him.
“Nobody needs to look at me,” he used to mutter whenever their parents brought out the camera.
That morning, for the first time in years, she stepped into his room, a place once fiercely guarded behind sharp warnings of “Don’t come in. I need privacy.”
Crossing the threshold felt like stepping into something paused.
His Metallica and Linkin Park posters glared down at her. His PC still sat under the matching plastic zip-on covers their mum had once proudly bought on sale.
“See? It’s a set,” she had said, delighted.
Everything remained arranged with his peculiar precision: alphabetised books, spotless shelves, G.I. Joe figurines lined up behind glass beside He-Ma and the tiger she had always teased him about.
“You’re too old for that toy.”
He had hugged it closer. “Says who? You?”
The memory landed sharply.
“How dare you?” one of the many times he had snapped when she’d entered without knocking.
She moved further into the room.
Their relationship had never been simple. Not quite love-hate. Something more tightly wound. He had resented her, that much she could see now. She was the bright, compliant firstborn. She was Christmas Day.
He had said it once, during an argument.
“Of course they love you more. You were literally born on Christmas.” “That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not.” A pause. “You’re December. I’m just… November.”
She sat on his bed.
The faint trace of cigarette smoke lingered the ones he thought she didn’t know about. “Don’t tell Mum,” he had said once, lighter in hand.
“I won’t.”
“You promise?”
“Of course.”
She closed her eyes briefly.
Her gaze shifted to the desk.
The calendar remained open.
15 November 2020.
Beside it, a photograph. Him, smiling, one of the rare times he had allowed himself to. Underneath, in their mother’s precise handwriting:
15 November 1990 – 15 November 2020
Her breath caught.
“It wasn’t the virus,” her mother had said, voice trembling.
“It was… him.”
The last conversation returned, uninvited.
“You sound strange.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
A pause.
“It’s just like that.”
She had been distracted. Rushing. Certain there would be time.
“Okay. I’ll call you back later.”
A soft exhale on the other end.
“Yeah. Later.”
She never called back.
Her fingers traced the edge of the frame.
“What were you trying to tell me?” she whispered.
The room held its silence.
A memory surfaced—quiet, insistent.
“Do you ever feel like you’re just… waiting for your life to start?” She had laughed.
“Everyone feels like that sometimes.”
He had nodded.
“Yeah. Sometimes.”
She hadn’t realised it was always.
The calendar page shifted slightly in the breeze from the open window. November, lifting and settling again.
She held the photograph close.
“You were never an afterthought,” she said softly.
“I’m just sorry I made you feel like one.”
A church bell rang somewhere in the distance. Late.
Hollow.
Fading.
And this time, there was no later.