Over the Kitchen Sink...

I find disconnect over my kitchen sink. I spend some time on auto mode doing the dishes. But my attention belongs out on the street, the ladies are out in force. I can watch them, unnoticed, safe, from behind the kitchen sink.

Out on the street I cannot meet their eye. These are the women of the street, in their homes, behind their own kitchen sink, maybe their mascara runs down. But here leaning nonchalantly by the parking meter, they can look a man squarely in the eye, their eyes programmed to detect a tiny gesture, a look, a movement in the passing toyota, lexus, nissan.

Today I am drawn to writing about the view from my kitchen window after taking a peek at the beauty beyond the sink at Taste Memory's.

In the bleached-out afternoon some green distracts me momentarily. The new sprouts and shoots on my sill provide me a degree of fuzzy comfort. The weather is optimistic these days and the hopeless heat is still some months away. Opposite the colourful ladies, on the other side of the street, the gents in blue sit on their haunches under a reluctant ghaf tree. A rickety TATA motors bus will arrive any minute to take them to their camps, until then they entertain themselves by huddling together and cracking bawdy jokes.

My view of the horizon has long been obscured by a building that apparantly no longer serves its purpose. Its reflective exterior so dark that it hides the emptiness inside and fools passersby with their own reflection.

I remember another view from another kitchen - the kitchen window of my childhood home, the sun's rays bursting through the green lattice of the coffee tree, its blossoms taut and white against the green. Stray chicken foraging in the kitchen garden, a crow on a solitary palm frond waiting for the bits and bobs that will surely come his way after the family breakfast. The commotion of the warblers hell bent on talking all at once. The dogs lazily napping in a sunny spot after a hard nights work. And familiar voices approaching the window calling out for this and that.

These are some of my own memories over the kitchen sink. Care to share yours?

And this is the coffee tree I am talking about, she bears fruits every year unfailingly. I took this picture of the tree laden with berries on my recent trip home and it is indeed my click for Click! Red.