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Profile
Maya Chowdhry was born in Edinburgh and grew up on the Fife coast; basking on barnacled rocks in an orange swimsuit, the February wind chilling her skin to goosebumps. She journeyed the kala pani; circling to Scottish shores, her poetry manuscript below layers in her mum’s attic. She (w)rights poetry, plays & digital poetry. Prizes include the Cardiff International and the Prix Futura, Berlin. Her work is published in many anthologies including ‘Healing Strategies for Women at War’ and in magazines such as Ambit. She has worked extensively with young people revealing and disseminating their voices; from the Woolwich Ferry to an outdoor bed installation: Sphere : dreamz, to the world-wide-web. Her poetry has travelled via film, audio, web and past fingers on pages; always discovering, always uncovering. She is currently working on a residency in Mexbourgh with Northern Ballet Theatre. Her latest collection, for which she received an Arts Council literature award, is unleashed at www.destinyNation.net
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Creative Work
Hurry Curry
the rain heralds her arrival
monsoon like she pours herself into the land
in the post office she discovers Pataks Original Mild Curry
Paste and begins blending
the ready-made with the soon to be made
her grandmother’s words sizzling you can’t make a curry in a hurry
she lowers the heat and adds the paste in a hurry
imperialism gives rise to the recipe’s arrival
resisting the way curry had to be made
dissension – the right to her roots on the mother-land
the kala pani and Sound of Skye blending
could she put haggis in a curry
could she resist her birthright of curry
would her grandmother’s ghost know it was with haste and hurry
and a flurry of blending
that this soil felt her arrival
in the mountains and vales of this land
until in the earth’s womb a pact was made
and on her table acceptable ready-made?
lowering the tone with her curry
giving her tolerability in this land
if Tescos could do it in a hurry
globalised food had its arrival
aisles of ready-meals blending
chicken and tikka masala blending
allegiances made
departure and arrival
of the colonial curry
judgments made in a hurry
about who can migrate to the land
own the land
through blending
and mixing in a hurry
until the recipe is made
a bastardised curry
makes its arrival
blending promises made
we land a new kind of curry
hurry to await its arrival
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Reflection
I have had a number of attempts at writing recipe poems which captivate the whole meal experience from buying or growing, through preparation to eating. Food is a common theme in my work, I went to catering college and dreamed of being a chef in a vegetarian café. I became a film-maker and sculpted celluloid instead of spun-sugar baskets.
I started writing this poem arriving one rainy evening in Wales, pausing in the post-office to buy a ready-made spice mixture. The jar of already chosen ground and mixed spice and the sestina parallel each other, both in form, shape and combination; the different ways the words inform the subjects of the poem – curry, nation and land.
The paste offers you only one kind of curry, is monotonous like the repetition of the line-endings. I hadn’t meant to include a rhyme in the sestina, but found it created a rhythm that went with the irony and comedy of the poem. I can hear the ghost of my father’s voice saying ‘Hurry Curry’ and ‘Pataks Original Mild Curry Paste’ in his Indian accent; imagining us all falling about laughing at how foolish it sounds. There’s a ridiculousness about “curry” being the nation’s No. 1 food and the entrenched Englishness of this country.
Ready-made refers to both the ready-made clothes you can buy in India (middle-class people use a tailor) and the boxed in dinners you can buy in the super-market in England and heat in the microwave; the likes of which would perplex my grandmother beyond belief – why if you have such beautiful ingredients would you want to eat so conveniently!
It was convenient for the colonialists to conquer, plunder, divide and rule the Indian Subcontinent and the legacies here are far more entrenched than anything found in modern India; haggis curry and oceans mixing allude to the possibilities for new recipes to live by that the poem journeys to.
The poem gathers momentum, rushes to the end with the sizzling and hurrying of its content; echoing the judgements on who’s allowed to live here, I’m imagining a big ink stamp crashing a big no on the application bearing any non-English sounding name.
The earth has taught me that she has names in many languages but remains of soil and water, fire and air and I may journey through her to find all my selves.
At the root of this poem is how it is acceptable to eat certain types of “curry” in this country and yet being able to be Asian and Scottish at the same time is often troublesome. Counter to this are the (imagined) voices of my grandmother scorning this way of making “curry” (kari in Tamil) and the spicy stews my English mother ate in India.
At the end I hope that something new will arrive on the land of my birth, which will shift perceptions and you are what you eat will have some resonance.
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Publications
Kaahini (CapercaillieBooks, 2004) - play
The Crossing Path, in New Plays for Young People (Faber and Faber, 2003) - play
Healing Strategies for Women at War, in Seven Black Women Poets (Crocus Press, 1999) - poetry
As Girls Could Boast: New Poetry by Women (1994) - poetry
Monsoon: Six Plays By Black & Asian Women (Aurora Metro Press,1993) – play
Putting in the Pickle Where the Jam Should Be, co-author, Jag Rahi Hai (Write Back, 1989) - poetry and prose
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Contact & Links
Email: maya-chowdhry@o2.co.uk
Website: www.destinyNation.net
www.mayachowdhry.f2s.com
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