Last evening as I looked up from my writing, I smiled at the vegetable puff my wife brought me along with my mug of tea. It wasn’t the puff or tea that made me smile but the tomato ketchup poured quite lavishly for me. I love tomato ketchup, and many, many moons ago, when Kissan was the only company manufacturing it in India, and it being a rarity in my home because those days anything tasty or delicious was always rare in most homes, I decided that it needed to have a place on our table.
So that birthday, not mine, but my mother’s, what a pleasant surprise she got from her twelve year old son, to find he had gifted her a bottle of tomato sauce.
Even as she hugged me and thanked me for the wonderful present, she knew I’m sure, who would be having most of it.
Unfortunately I didn’t, because our cat, during one of her numerous fights with neighbourhood toms jumped on the dinner wagon, and that night when we came home, I saw the floor flowing red. It was my mother who warned me about glass pieces and managed to prevent a devastated me from licking the sauce of the floor!
And then I was shocked to hear that my tomato ketchup was often poured lavishly on floors during the dishum-dishum fight scenes of old Hindi movies. “Bob, don’t look so pale that’s not blood, that’s tomato ketchup,” said my first date as she held my trembling hand.
“Tomato ketchup!” I cried, “How dare they waste my precious ketchup, instead of spilling some good ole blood!”
Ah well, we all believe there’s a lot of tomato ketchup that’s used today isn’t there? Tomato ketchup poured on the state of the economy so we believe there’s really nothing wrong, ketchup splashed on a whole state so the rest of the country won’t know what’s happening inside. We laugh at the ketchup that flows from lynching incidents, rapes and doctor assaults. “It’s just ketchup,” we smile as we hear statements against religious communities, and in countries across the ocean we grin to hear of ketchup laid thick on walls that are built to divide, till one day, someone will shout, “It’s blood!”
“No, it’s ketchup!” we laugh till, suddenly we find same ketchup on ourselves as we discover our fundamental rights violated.
We touch and find its blood.
I smile as I remember the Kissan bottle of my childhood, but as I stumble to clear the mess that’s on the floor, I know today it’s not ketchup that’s spreading all over..!
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Robert Clements is a newspaper columnist and writes a daily column, which has graced the pages of over 60 newspapers and magazines, from a daily column in the Khaleej Times, Dubai, the Morning Star, London, and in nearly every state in India, from The Statesman in Kolkata, to the Kashmir Times in Kashmir to the Trinity Mirror in Chennai.
Yes with more and more companies introducing their sause it’s flowing across the country in abundance and lynching has got most of it
Tomato ketchup sounds funny(gift) but reality realized, alarming sound ringing all over the country, here and there beginning from Kashmir case…etc etc you name it. Need wisdom from above to keep from more dreaded blood shed.
Fondly remembring my Grandma; who used to make tomato ketchup at home which i ravaged with every meal. T’day, while a bottle of ketchup is available at arm’s length; can’t say the same about blood needed for those victims of mob politics!!
Nice food for thought Bobby.
You nailed it, Bob ! Hopefully the nail draws no ketchup or blood ?