Johny Plathottam's "Amma" (Mother) says the story of a rich woman.
Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, being rich does not get Amma out of the kitchen though her family is rich enough for her to have many servants.
The kitchen is a spacious room full of huge cabinets, cupboards made of black wood with glass and wire screen doors, tall shelves full of crockery and things like refrigerator and washing machine that most houses do not have. Servants come to clean the vessels, grind spices and do work around the house. But the man of the house has an ‘aristocratic stipulation’, only Amma is allowed to do things in the kitchen and dining room, servants are not. So the kitchen is the world Amma lives in.
When they were little the children followed her around in the kitchen. But once they started going to school they are mostly in their rooms upstairs and had only one thing to do—study. They also have their own things to do, learning to ride the bike and play tennis and don’t have much interaction with Amma. When breakfast is set on the table Amma would call them to come down to have breakfast, but they almost never interact with her. All meals are served that way.
They know their mother through the variety of items that come to the table for their sumptuous meals and her affectionate call to come to have their meals.
As she lived, the kitchen is where Amma is found dead --in the narrow path between the cabinets and cooking vessels stacked up high, with a cooking spoon in her outstretched arm. The forensic professor friend who joins the doctor for the autopsy remarks that Amma’s death was like the engine that stopped working because it was tired of running, but one thing seems unnatural to him: “Her dead body seemed very old as if the death took place months or even years ago, …yet, the body had not deteriorated.” We are left with the question: when did she actually die?
Her son who lives at home with her tries to remember when he actually saw her or talked to her, but he is not able to. He has been too busy with his work and couldn’t even come home for her birthday. No one, it seems, had time for her.
Website: http://www.achammachander.com/
India Edition: www.rainbowbookpublishers@gmail.com
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