Veggies Reimagined – Vegetable World
Imagine a world running parallel to ours in which vegetables including spices each bearing distinctive individual characteristics interact among themselves while aiding, observing and judging us humans and our idiosyncrasies.A household kitchen is undoubtedly the activity centre of any home where love, service and desires are at play, aimed at fulfilling not only gastronomic ends but equally in dishing out of emotional expression with chopped vegetables, potpourri of spices and an intention to please the palate of loved ones and guests.Viewing all this action of passion and innovation are the ingredients in the dishes, each of which would demand the utter respect and adoration of the artists of the kitchen, otherwise failed dishes only, would inevitably await them.Imagine a sweet potato with artistic leanings or a ripe tomato severed from its stalk high up on its parent plant revelling in its dancing skill as it lands with an agile ballerina split and not going splat on the hard ground surface.All this farm to kitchen drama is expertly packed into newly published Veggies Reimagined, a book of comic poetry embellished with the author, Rasa Rasika Sittamparam’s expressive illustrations.The macabre purplish aubergine poet espousing philosophical truths of life and bitter recollections of the pipe smoking tapioca migrant, reflect the emotional impact and hard lessons acquired by the author on entry into the cold, placid world of London, UK as scholar and later journalist of a luxury lifestyle wealth management magazine, hailing from the sunny wet, sheltered tropical peninsular paradise, Malaysia.As Charles Dicken’s Oliver Twist character finds himself embroiled in a 19th Century workhouse of industrialising London, similarly tested are the aubergine as is the Indian mango Bharatanatyam dancer, Thillana Mohanambalam who is lured to London by her virtual suitor and finds herself stranded at Heathrow airport without a trace of the welcoming reception befitting the prima donna status she enjoyed on Indian soil.These tales unwound in crisp flowing verse and comical drawings grips the reader as they flip through the glossy pages of this hardcover coffee table book. Not a one-read book, they can flip a page every time the need for a gentle squeeze of hands or warm embrace of assurance is badly needed, for Rasa Rasika’s veggies pop up with a reassuring tug at your heartstrings at every page of Veggies Reimagined, reminding us that being human is truly a blessing one should cherish. Just as their appearance on the author’s writing pad provided the balm for her aching heart and flailing hope on the back of the dire emotional stress of fast paced life, far away from loved ones, in central London.The self published debut book curtly introduced in the opening poem, The Debut by the carrot addresses readers such:
An orange tuber
seeks solace below
It’s soft bushy top
looks for an opportune
moment to become noticed
and picked up, celebrated
A green front for the submerged
dirt of a nodule
covered in earth and worms
The carrot top is crushed
uprooted, outshined
by the ugliness below
Polished now to perfection
the soundless foundation
shines in its orange coat
takes off its hat and bows
to a nonplussed crowd.
The book can be bought at Amazon.co.uk, now delivering to Malaysia.
