Teedok

Growing up, I had a place within me, deep within the bones

an appetite for memories of identity in the form of food.

When I was a kid, my mother

would call out to me while I was in the Reepsing

playing with my friends " Oye teet modok oh

Zho Jhom ka Dee" ( hey, aren't you hungry, come to eat lunch )

My ears searched for these echoes from the kitchen walls

my meal, which would be colourfully green and brown,

 just like the earth.

With local delicacies such as Tuntokbee and

Surongbee, which came freshly

from the nearby forests, hand-picked by the members of our house.

At present, when I look back at my upbringing with food

It has always been related to the way they are cooked

every method brings in the aroma of boiled cells

or the golden fried coating with oil

which would bring in bumps to my taste buds.

The young hands of my mother, which got

worn by the passage of old age

brewing, cooking, and consuming

delicacies and teaching me many.

My culture always had a special cuisine to

feed on my ever-longing nature as a teenager

I was more acknowledged by unrevealing stories than recipes 

hidden, just like the breeze that flows between the Teesta River

and her surrounding hills

Like a close embrace

Of the children sitting close to their mother.

Appetite, as a half-eaten memory where I long to go back.

Glossary

Teedok -  appetite /hungry in Lepcha

Reepsing -  garden of flowers in Lepcha

Tuntokbee -edible ferns found in the  Eastern Himalayas

Surongbee - Stinging nettle eaten as a broth in the Himalayan region.

Footnotes

 The Lepchas are a tribe from the Eastern Himalayas. They are nature worshipper and this poem connects the poet's ideology on food, nature, and finding identity through childhood.

Sunrongbee’s thread  is woven to make the traditional dress, the dumvon, worn by the

women folks of the Lepcha community, specifically called  "Aasham dumvon."

 Lungmying Lepcha is a BTech student at NIT Sikkim, she believes she can extract literary works from her culture and translate it into English so that it can be known to the whole world. The Lepchas are an indigenous Himalayan tribe in Sikkim and are known as the first original inhabitantsHer writings are mostly ethnographic, revolving around the myths and culture of Lepchas. She uses mostly poetry and creative nonfiction forms of writing . Writing for her is an escape from the social dilemma.