Sun(g) Oranges (Plateful of Memories #3)
Every day this past week, I throw two tiny mandarin oranges into my lunch bag as I head out to work. Usually, I forget about them until afternoon hits—like an internal metronome for an alarm—for after lunch, I wish I was doing anything but work. When the weight of adulthood and deprived afternoon naps stare heavily at me, I pause everything I do for a few minutes to retrieve those two oranges from my bag. One by one, I pluck their crowns, attempt to peel the entire skin in a go (and fail), take apart the pieces and its strands of fibre before popping it between my lips, all in quick succession. The monotony of the act is only punctured by the taste of the orange itself and the dusk-lit image of my grandfather. See, until I was about 12 or 13 years old, I don’t ever recollect peeling my own oranges. My late paternal grandfather used to do it for my cousins and myself. Sultry evenings in Madras, he’d sit on a chair or a charpoy by the gates to my aunt’s house, monitoring us kids while slowly peeling oranges for us. The oranges we had back home didn’t have an empty crown with air on its head but was full all around. Tight, like a ball. It’s hard to strip it with just your fingers and not ruin the carpel slices themselves. I vividly remember him making a clean incision and peeling every orange with the utmost care and focus. Now and then, he’d look up and stare through his big glasses to see if all his grandkids were still accounted for and that we weren’t up to any massive mischief. He’d then resume his meditative trance with the orange. His stubby fingers were somehow nimble and full of inquiry, his silver watch and large dial ticking away slowly as time is warrant to do of memories. He’d proceed next to remove all the fibre and separate the slices and collect them on a screeching aluminium plate. Slowly but precisely, he’d remove the thin skin around each slice of orange. He had a whole operational system to it — make a clean cut at the centre and string it out, pop out the seeds, hold one end together and remove the membrane before proceeding to the other side until all that was left was the very soul of the orange itself. He’d expertly shed its layers one by one — there was no room for mistakes, no need for masks. Hard of hearing at the time, I wonder if peeling oranges was his internal music monologue (in addition to the transistor he never shut off and played really loud for the entire street to listen to) and him, the grand orchestra conductor. I remember watching him peel oranges in rapt attention, especially when it was my turn for some because when he handed you a slice, you’ve received an immaculate trophy. You weren’t going to have trouble chewing it, each one seedless but still held together with what seemed like nothing but his mojo. When I finally run my finger across each peeled piece (the vesicles still taut and smooth) before placing it between my teeth and biting into it, my grandfather would look satisfied, like his life’s purpose has been achieved—not the humble painter and welder jobs he held at the Railways, not his tiny Rameshwaram home at the sands overlooking the sea, not the seven children he’d borne with his devoted wife, or even the numerous grandchildren he’s raised—but just that one with the orange slice between a smile, singing hymns in that singular moment. As the sun sets and we run out of oranges, his transistor still blares through the street until we’re all called indoors, us kids carrying orange peel scraps for dustbins, following him, one by one. We don’t try to rush ahead of him, we let him make his slow steps over the threshold as the concert ends in a grand rapture and silent ovation. We then file into the courtyard to wash ourselves clean, the sweet taste of orange still alive at the roof of our mouths. I think about him every time I eat oranges on cold Columbus afternoons, my grandfather, the stern man who never let me peel an orange until the day he died. I miss him and his stubby singing fingers playing with the sun.
