The Red Veal Kebab and other poems

The first time I encountered William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow” was at a factory manufacturing non-precision auto components somewhere in central Tamil Nadu. Printed on a postcard sized photograph alongside the image of an upright, bright red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater, next to a white chicken, the poem had a certain literality in the context of its display that struck me as deeply profound. Of course, the printing company had not really cited a source, nor mentioned the name of the poet, nor did it present any reasoning for the obviousness with which it described the imagery beside which it had been placed. For the uninformed reader, such as myself, I was instantly mesmerised. 

Sometime later, as I read up on modernist imagism, and the photography of Alfred Stieglitz, and then the story of the poem itself, its initial incorrect interpretations linking the poem to the story of a sick girl that William’s attended to, and then subsequently to an african american named Marshall who had found favour with Williams and in whose home he had seen the red wheelbarrow, which then made its way to his now famous (?) poem, I found myself quietly amused at the oversimplification with which the postcard had dealt with this rather complex and enigmatic poem of utmost literary significance. It had broken it down to its unashamed nakedness. A red wheelbarrow, glazed with rainwater, next to a white chicken. It seemed like a grave injustice. I contemplated this briefly over a big ass plate of biryani at the original Junior Kupanna and let this thought get relegated to a corner of my mind, until I found use for this otherwise useless information again. 

A few months later (or maybe even a year), on a day that a convectional thunderstorm had blessed this city with a smattering of humidity increasing rainfall and hail, I found myself contemplating the verses of Williams Carlos Williams, for their imagery applied to my situation devoid of all their profundity, at their oversimplified best. That too over a plate of deep fried veal kebab. You see, I tend to savour a veal kebab tremendously, more so when it rains, but on this particular occasion, it was Pariera’s chicken kebabs that I craved. An aside here, can you please holler back at me if you agree that the bangalore chicken kebab should be the city’s number one gastronomic export, on par with a dosa. It’s kind of ridic that we folks don’t talk about this enough. Finding Pariera’s temporarily closed, I decided that it would be impossible for this day to be seen through without at least a little bit of deep fried flesh. 

Opposite the road leading into Pariera’s, there is a non-descript kebab stall that sells, much like most beef kebab stalls, all of four items. Phal, masala chops, veal kebab and sheekh. It was here that I stood, under a blue tarp that contorted every 30 seconds to tilt over accumulated buckets of rainfall, which by now was falling in rolling sheets, disintegrating into a plate of perflectly juicy phal. As if almost instantly, the transcient cloud burst was gone leaving behind a slow drizzle of fat raindrops and raging rivulets of flowing rainwater that searched endlessly for a inlet to a drain, no doubt mixing with the sewage of half of Fraser Town. Unperturbed, and finding the weather to have possibly improved from the hot, dust-filled mess of the afternoon, Bangalore conspiring to make this experience of veal kebab consumption almost perfect, I decided to partake. 

His veal kebabs were not the best veal kebabs I have had. But they were exceedingly delicious, made so no doubt by the continually improving atmosphere around me. But seeing as I was the only customer then, the proprietor turned to me while gently populating a skewer with a ball of sheek mince, “Kya saab, kabab accha hai?”. For a moment, I thought of telling him the truth, that his kebabs were possibly fried a few seconds more than they should have been, had just a tad too much of chaat masala, were not balacing the crisp with the juicy and so on and so forth. But all I did was smile, and say “Best!”, for it had then dawned on me. That,

So much depends

upon

the red veal 

kebab

glazed with rain

water

beside the fried

chicken