Mess Hall in Rural India

Abstract

Mess Hall in Rural India Divya Ramesh (bio) The used banana leaves take attendance here, for the hundreds of fractured faces that flow from the fields through these open doors at noon, and sit pretzeled, hungry and waiting to be served before a large, veined banana leaf. Leaf-plates collect in the compost heap every afternoon at two, when men and women with toothless smiles and arthritic hands crowd around the washbasins to scrub the beetroot stains from their fingernails. Still wet with edible finger paint, the green canvases lie, yoghurt white, mango pickle red, turmeric yellow, streaked in thick bands, the width of a fidgeting finger that chaotically crosshatched the canvas, stippled with grains of lemon rice for contrast. Each leafy canvas is a fingerprint Each drying design, a new identity. [End Page 56] Behind these doors, poor laborers who come for a free noon meal, who seek respite from sunburned fields of rice, become artists. [End Page 57] Divya Ramesh Divya Ramesh is a junior in the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, studying Psychology, Hispanic Studies and Creative Writing. When she is not treading water studying for her exams, she enjoys writing poetry and short stories. Copyright © 2015 Berea College