1st draft, full! Finally!

Blender, Mortar, and Pestle
by Suhaili bt Khalidi

“And her family has all these modern kitchen appliances, you know,” I said loudly, hoping my grandmother would hear. “She never even has to do much in the kitchen, except pouring herself a glass of water.” My younger cousins sat there gawking at me, transfixed by my story about life in the city. “I bet she never even touched a kitchen knife before.” I finished, while slicing onions from a great distance to avoid making my eyes water.

“What are you prattling on about, Piah…have you finished slicing those onions? Hmm…slice them thinner, will you?” My grandmother said, bustling around with big pots and pans that clanged noisily against each other.

“It’s not Piah, it’s Sofia. She still hasn’t got that right,” I muttered, looking down at what I thought was finely sliced onions. To make them thinner, I would need a paper shredder rather than this blunt, wooden-handled knife. I sighed in frustration.

“Opah, don’t you have machines to do all these?” I asked, standing up and stretching. It felt like hours sitting on the cold, hard, cement floor of my grandmother’s old house.

“What machines? This is how I cook since I was your age,” Opah said, her head still buried in the cupboard, searching for something. Finally, she extracted a funny-looking wooden contraption with a star-shaped blade pointing out on one end. She began taking half a coconut and started grating it on the blade.

I looked closely at Opah and imagined what she looked like when she was my age. I tried picturing a younger version of her in one of my outfits. Somehow, the baby-Ts and capri pants refused to take shape and kept being replaced by faded, flower-print baju kurung Kedah and sarong, which suits her better. I focused on her gray, brittle hair pulled tightly into a messy bun. A few tendrils have escaped and framed her wrinkled face. A long time ago, her hair must have been black and sleek, decorated with ribbons and flowers. I touched my own shoulder-length straight hair, adorned with shiny butterfly clips that never failed to attract attention.

The sharp scent of onions is getting to me, so I moved further away from them and sat next to my grandmother.

“Opah, what are you doing?” I asked, as I have never seen anything like it before.

“Grating coconuts. To make santan,” she answered matter-of-factly.

Puzzled, I blurted out, “But…isn’t santan in liquid form?”

Pausing mid-grate, she mumbled something that sounded like “ignorant city-folks” and explained in a condescending tone, “You get santan by adding water to these grated coconuts and squeezing the juice out of them,” she punctuated her words with a final grate and then wipes her hands on her sarong.

Reaching for a mortar, she begins to put in a few chunks of the onions I abandoned and crushes them repeatedly with a pestle. Her face was frowned in determination as she works on getting the pieces crushed just right. I am perplexed by this act of hard work when it could have been effortless. My eyes fell on a blender sitting on top of a wooden cabinet.

“Opah, why don’t you use the blender? It will make things easier,” I offered.

“It won’t come out right,” she replied without looking up.

I scoffed quietly. It doesn’t make any difference to me, I thought. So I took the blender and after washing it, placed a handful of onions inside. Plugging it in, I turned the blender on full blast and it made a loud clanking noise. Oops. I forgot to put in some water. I filled some water from the big kettle on the stove and switched it on again. When I’m done, I got something which resembles a runny tomato puree, so I dumped the whole thing into the sink and repeated the processes again. This time, when I switched it on the blender gives a funny whirring sound, a splutter, and stopped mid-blend. I switched on the power again but nothing happened. Above us, the ceiling fan spun slowly to a stop.

“Oh, the power is out again. Erfan, will you go turn the main switch on?” my grandmother shouted in the direction of the living room. Continuing her onion-crushing, the clanging contacts of the pestle with the mortar seem to mock me with every sound.

She gives me a fleeting look and tries to hide a growing grin on her face. Sometimes I think she is even more childish than I am. She continues to bang away on her ‘traditional blender’ and begins her usual Opah-nagging mode:
“You see, that’s what happens when you belittle your elderly. I don’t need blenders; I’m doing fine just with my trusty old mortar and pestle. I don’t have to have another appliance when I already have one. People nowadays are very lazy and easily dissatisfied,”

Before she can go on and on, I wandered silently out of the kitchen into the spacious living room. The wooden floorboards creaked with every step I take. Outside the old-fashioned window half obscured by hand-tailored curtains, I can see my younger cousins who have escaped outdoors climbing trees and throwing pebbles into a pond. Their laughter rang out among the cricket chirps of the afternoon.

The 19” television set sitting in the corner of my grandmother’s scarcely furnished living room seems so out of place, almost as if it’s unhappy living in a house that lacks technology. Pak Ngah Amid bought the television for Opah two months ago, and judging by the thick film of dust gathering on top of it, I’m sure it has never been used. I was searching for the remote control when I heard Opah yelling at the younger kids not to take her pestle. Pestle? Why would anyone want to take that heavy stone?

Opah rushed past me to the window and I joined her, just in time to see my mischievous cousins climbing the highest tree and throwing an oblong shaped stone with a round end into the pond. Opah’s pestle made the biggest splash, much to their amusement.

I craned my neck to steal a look into the kitchen, where I saw the mortar located among half-chopped onions – without the pestle. Lumps of ingredients are still in it, waiting to be crushed before being sautéed in the frying pan.
Hah! I thought, the perfect timing to take revenge!
I looked up at my grandmother to hit her with my best shot, only to find a frail-looking old woman with an expression similar to a child having her toy taken away.

The sarcastic remark died in my throat. Suddenly, I feel so guilty at not understanding what it is like for her, about not being able to bridge the gap between two very different generations. To make things better, I grinned and hugged my grandmother.

“Opah, it seems like we can’t have one without the other.”
She smiled back at me at the depth of my words and led me inside, presumably to let me show her how to use the blender.

(1179 words)