Bratati Chakraborty

Steam curls from the pan like a secret.

My mother presses lentils into shape

patience held together by oil and turmeric.

She hums something in Bengali

a tune slow as molasses sweet and melancholy.

She calls it Dhoka

means deception

but also dinner.

Lentils pretending to be meat

born from famine

when faith boiled thinner than oil.

The hunger of 1943

still coiling in my blood, eating quietly through me.

She holds my hand as I finish the dish

her voice rising like steam.

“Eat the last grain” she says in her thickened accent

as if waste were a sin

as if love meant scraping the pot clean.

She stirs the pot like it’s a prayer

and says nothing should be wasted

not even grief.

I eat with a plastic fork

in a kitchen where the window whistles

with another country’s light.

The air smells of mustard seed and memory.

I wonder if hunger still passes down

like heirloom gold

polished but never sold.

They say a river split our mother tongue in two

one half sung the other swallowed.

Borders rose like bruises

and we called it “peace”.

East and West same salt

same scars that never rest.

The war sings:

two lands one wound

two tongues one sound.

Dhoka means trick my mother says with a smile.

Maybe that’s why I answer to two names

and pretend both are home.

I wash the plate

but the scent clings

turmeric smoke and something older

than hunger

still refusing to die.