# The Joy of a Bowl of Bought Chicken Stew There is a particular kind of happiness that descends when you hold a warm earthen bowl in your palms, still steaming, filled with broth the color of amber—chicken stew bought from the vendor's stall, not conjured from your own kitchen. It is a happiness untethered from obligation, from the long arithmetic of ingredients and the discipline of heat and time. When you cook yourself, there is always a debt. You must account for each element: the onions sliced to the precise thickness, the garlic crushed at the exact moment, the salt measured with the gravity of a chemist. The stove demands your presence, your vigilance. You stand before it like a supplicant before a temperamental god, waiting for the moment when the broth darkens to the right shade, when the meat surrenders its fiber and yields its essence. And when at last you sit down to eat what you have made, you do so weighted with the memory of your labor. The taste carries the echo of your effort. It is never purely pleasure—always, always there is the undertone of accomplishment, or regret at some small failure, or the faint sting of wasted time. But this—this bowl bought from someone else's hands—carries no such burden. You have paid. The transaction is complete. The debt is settled in those few coins. And now you are free. Free to simply receive. Free to taste without the interior monologue of your own making running underneath. The broth is not yours in the way that something you have labored for is yours. It belongs, in a strange way, to the vendor who stood over the pot for hours, whose hands know the rhythm of this particular alchemy. And because it does not belong to you, because you have no claim to credit for its creation, you can approach it with a kind of innocent pleasure—the pleasure of a guest, a stranger, someone merely passing through. The warmth rises into your face as you lift the bowl. The steam carries the scent of turmeric and ginger, of meat long-simmered until it has given up all its secrets to the water. And there is—how shall I name it?—a lightness in this. A relief. You need not think of technique or timing. You need not wonder if you did it right. Someone else has already done it. Someone else has already failed or succeeded. You are not responsible. You are only tasting. Perhaps this is what the ancients meant by grace—not the religious doctrine, but this: the sudden release from the burden of making, from the weight of your own ambition and effort. The joy that comes when you cease to be the creator and become, simply and purely, the receiver. An earthen bowl, warm in your hands. Stew bought from the market. The taste of something made by someone else, costing you nothing but money, which is the easiest debt of all to repay. This is happiness: to be free, however briefly, from the necessity of doing it yourself.

 
I went to CRB.

I go there often. My purpose is not simply to wander. My aim is to find people who genuinely need help. But I choose carefully — only those in whose nature there is no flattery, no performance designed to exploit others' emotions.

I rarely give money to beggars, because most of them have twice as much in their pockets as I do in mine. Most beggars have perfected the art of manufactured feeling, of tears expertly deployed to extract money from everyone around them. Some weep so hard their chests heave, their tears flood the streets. It is theater, pure and simple — an emotional weapon. Experience teaches that most of them are frauds.

Yet there are beggars who suffer genuine want. I can recognize them.

Like those you see on the streets: amputees, the severely disabled, those so sick they lie like the dying. Many of these are richer than you or me. It is not begging for them — it is a comfortable business. So I never give such people even a single taka.

But when I go there, I set aside a certain budget to help someone who truly needs it. To find that person, I observe — sometimes for hours if necessary. I sit quietly, but the observation never stops.

In any case, I went to CRB today. Sat in one place. Searching. Made a mental list of several people. But when the crowd around me grew, I moved elsewhere.

I waited there for a long time.

Then I saw a boy — nine or ten years old. He was sitting on the street with a weighing machine, asking people, "Sir/Madam, would you like to be weighed?" He didn't ask the same person twice. Very polite, very courteous. A grave expression. He didn't smile much. When someone consented, he would light up with quiet joy, carefully place the machine, take their measurement, collect his three taka.

I saw that hardly anyone came to be weighed. But in that faint smile that flickered across his face when someone did — in that smile I could clearly see the boundaries and extent of countless privations. In the slight compression of his lips lay an infinite hunger for those three taka — a hunger that made three taka worth more to him than three hundred crore.

There was no laziness in his work, no false courtesy. His eyes and face bore the deep, habitual mark of responsibility.

Let us say he was nine years old. Only nine. This is the age for mischief, the age to run wild with friends by the pond, to leap into the water. The age to swing from tree to tree and face the owner's wrath. The age to race from one neighborhood to another and come home at dusk for mother's beating, to miss a meal in anger because you wouldn't study, to tremble under the bed in fear of father's cane after a fight with friends.

None of these things had happened in his life. Poverty had dragged his nine years toward ninety.

Life does not give everyone everything. The Creator gives some a heart but not wealth; to others, wealth but not a heart.

# That’s How It Is

In the vast expanse of the entire universe, with all its god-given habitable spaces, there isn’t even a sesame seed’s worth of room for the wretched like these.

I noticed how she kept returning to one particular spot, cradling a small child and showering it with affection before coming back again, and each time she returned, she would ask someone new if they needed their weight measured. Curiosity stirred in me.

I walked over to that place. I saw a middle-aged woman. A tiny child in her lap. Not particularly old in years, but you could tell at a glance that poverty’s whip had driven the marks of age deep into every pore of her body with considerable force. The weight of these marks had draped her thirty-five-year-old youth in a blanket ancient with two hundred years of wear.

I sat down beside her. I saw that she barely noticed my presence. She was absorbed in tending to the nine or ten-month-old child on her lap with careful attention, trying to tickle it into laughter, while the baby gurgled and laughed, scratching at the mother’s eyes and face, laughing aloud. Watching them, it seemed as though this child was the only small world the baby possessed, the mother’s face was an entire toyhouse, and this house belonged to the baby alone.

After a while, the boy who measured weights would come, lift the child onto his arms, lavish affection on the baby’s eyes, face, and cheeks, then place it back in the mother’s lap and return to his work.

I watched in fascination.

I asked the woman, “Who is the boy who measures weights to you?” The woman paused her smile and answered, “My son. Nine years old.” And then she grew wistful. I saw her eyes turn away from mine and rest with tender, sorrowful gaze upon the boy busy at work some distance away. For a long time she looked, perhaps drowning in the past, stumbling again and again at the door of life’s cruelty. Nothing escaped her lips, yet her eyes held multitudes of words. How can one say it all?

Breaking into her melancholy, I asked, “Who all do you have? A home, a family, a husband?” At the question, she drew her sorrowful gaze from the boy and turned to look at me. Now I began to read her eyes. I saw a kingdom of unspoken pain settle upon her face and mouth. Some kind of dread lived there. She spoke nothing aloud, yet her anguished eyes told me everything.

After drawing a long breath, she began to speak. “I had a home. In that home of mine, I had a person of my own. In that room of mine, happiness overflowed. We had beautiful days of joy. A home full of love, we had. There was a time when the kitchen bustled three times a day. Though we lived by pulling a rickshaw, our home lacked nothing much. Perhaps at month’s end the rice would sometimes run short, the lentils grow sparse. Even without chicken and rice, at least once a week we cooked something fine. Though my home knew the want of money, it knew no want of love or happiness. Pedaling that rickshaw through the blazing day, turning those three wheels in circles, our life went on well enough. In that cycling motion of those three wheels, we had bound together a beautiful, happy home. Three lives were bound within it.

In a single-room dwelling, three beings lived crammed together. My days brimmed over with the gentle laughter of the morning sun. In the banter of noon and evening, our little room would surge with the gush of approaching happiness. And when dusk fell, that man would return to my home, wiping the sweat from his brow after bearing all day’s exhaustion. While fanning ourselves with palm-leaf fans, munching on dried rice and puffed wheat between our teeth, moonlight would spill into our evening room. Sometimes, wrapped in that moonlit shawl, resting our heads on his chest, we would be lost in sweet dreams of the days ahead.

There was happiness.

# There Was Such Great Happiness in That Impoverished Home

One day. My man came home. Exhaustion written across his face. The marks of illness upon him. I quickly cooked rice and set it before him. He could barely eat. After a few mouthfuls, he gagged and vomited. What was happening, I could not tell! I became frantic. I rubbed balm across his chest. Leaning on my shoulder, I led him into the room and laid him down. How lifeless he lay there. Not speaking, eyes shut. With each moment of his silence, my own restlessness grew.

By midnight, the fever in him had surged violently. When I touched him, it felt as though all the heat of the sun had gathered in his body! And so, somehow, morning came. By then the fever had doubled.

From the one hundred thirty taka hidden beneath the quilt, I took out a hundred-taka note and brought medicine for the fever. I gave it to him. By afternoon, his condition worsened. We had no means to take him to a doctor. We barely had enough rice to eat! A doctor and medicines beyond the fever remedy were nothing but sheer luxury for us.

The luxuries easily available to us were the light of the moon, the fireflies at dusk, the call of crickets in the night, or the feel of rain-water on our skin during the monsoon.

My man could eat nothing; the moment anything touched his lips, he would convulse and vomit. Our son sat beside his father, his eyes brimming with pain, looking again and again at his father’s face. I was beside myself. I could not think what to do, what to do.

Evening descended. Suddenly my man’s writhing increased. Then silence. After a long while, his eyes opened. Opening them, he looked this way and that, searching for something. I asked: Do you need anything? …With great effort, parting his lips, he spoke: Where is my boy? I want to see him.

I called the child sitting alone in the courtyard. I saw then—father and son—how much was passing between them in their eyes. With great effort, he stretched out his hand, touching his son’s cheek, his eyes, his face, his head. Tears streamed down his face. In those falling drops was woven unbearable sorrow and nightmares. I did not understand it then.

I saw that neither of them spoke. Only they gazed. Again and again, my man pulled his son into his chest!

That night he lay with his son clasped to his chest. I lay beside them. Night deepened.

Worn out all day from doing this and that for him, I did not know when sleep took me.

Morning came. Through the rusted grill of the broken window, sunlight poured into my room. Suddenly I woke. Turning from one side to the other, I peeped and saw—father and son were holding each other. The child’s face was buried, pressed into his father’s chest. One of the man’s hands lay beneath the boy’s head, the other arm lay across the child’s body, holding him.

The boy was in deep sleep. His mouth hung open near his father’s face. Both of them lay silent, at ease. I placed my hand on my man’s back to feel if the fever had lessened. I felt his whole body cold as ice. With my hand I kept touching his forehead, his back, his body again and again, hurrying. Gently shaking him, I called to him again and again. This man whom I had never needed to wake from sleep was not answering my repeated calls. I took his hand and pulled. His hands had become hard as bone. I could not move them.

What was this? I grew frantic. Wailing and crying out, I called to my man again and again! My screaming startled the boy awake. The way my son’s father had held the child as he slept—he was still lying exactly like that. Not moving. Not breathing.

He lies rigid.

And with that, my entire world crumbled. At my piercing screams, neighbors came rushing. I grew frantic, shoving at him, calling his name again and again, but nothing—nothing would wake the man.

An old man touched him to check. He began reciting *Inna lillahi* through his tears. He said the man had been gone a long time already.

My man was no longer alive!

I screamed again, crying as I tried to lift him, to hold him, but his silence—his silence would not break!

Then I understood: on this sunrise morning, my own sun had set.

Now the boy is crying out loud, calling *Baba, baba*, touching his father again and again. But the father says nothing. Just as he last held his son in sleep, so now he lies, wordless, lifeless, inert—as if he has claimed all the world’s silence for himself alone!

He has left the weight of every household burden on my shoulders alone, and now lies silent by the pond in front of our house. There are no three-wheeled pedal carts there, no trace of exhaustion, no hunger gnawing. Only unbroken peace!

When the man was dying, another life was growing inside me. He had such hope—that this time he would have a princess. She would have long, flowing hair. He would part it carefully, oil it with such tenderness, how much joy the father and daughter would share! He wanted to name her Shiuli, after his favorite flower. The man loved flowers so. A few months after he died, my child came into the world. But not a daughter—a son. He escaped death, but in living, he killed us.

I saw her lips trembling now, her eyes glistening. Even as she swallowed down the tears she tried to hold back, her lips shook with pain. Inside those eyes, the ashes of so many burnt, colorful dreams were tearing through all the world’s laws, throwing everything into chaos. The more I looked at her eyes, the more I sank into some hazy, smoky realm of ruin, drowning in its fathomless depths.

I asked: So, Auntie, how do you manage? On your son’s income? She released a sigh heavier than the world itself and said: All day he works and earns so little. How many people need their weight checked in a day! But the belly understands none of this!

I understood then: the weighing machine measures human weight accurately enough. But hunger’s weight—that machine cannot measure. The whole household’s burden stands upon that one scale, and the machine cannot bear it.

She began speaking in a rush: My son’s income comes to so little. Rent, firewood, food—so many expenses, I cannot manage! I took work in a big house. But they won’t let me bring the child. They say leave the child, come to work. Tell me, is that possible? Who do I leave him with? Who will watch him? This innocent baby has no one but me. What can I do? One house turns me away, I go to another. The belly knows no hunger, does it? Hunger understands no humanity! If I go without food, that is one thing. But if I don’t eat, this baby gets no milk from me. And where would I find food? The big mansion owners, those wealthy masters—they don’t even know whether our kitchen gets the scraps from the cook’s plate. Their children eat fancy things, expensive things, while my child doesn’t even get mother’s milk enough. They sit at tables laden with all manner of delicacies while we don’t even get the rice foam. Do they know? God lives in their houses!

# The Weight of Hunger

The grand households have so much on their hands, so crowded with their own concerns, that where does God find time to look upon my little room? I search from house to house for work, but even when I find it, they don’t keep me long. Between jobs I have to nurse the child. The baby understands nothing of all this! When it cries mid-task, I have to put down my work and pick it up for a moment—and suddenly the masters say I’ve been terribly negligent! They keep me a few days, then send me away. But hunger knows no compromise, and my belly is still tethered to another belly. I could go without food myself, go hungry for days if need be. My older boy can beg scraps here and there from the shops. But my innocent one—what does it know but my breast milk? It cannot ask for anything else, cannot endure anything else. There is no mother in this world who can bear to watch her child starve. Not even the street dogs, the mangy bitches lying discarded on the roads, can bear it. And I am human! How could I have such strength? Going without food myself for days—that was never the problem. The problem is the small belly that hangs from mine. So when there is truly nothing left at home, sometimes I slip away quietly to beg…but far from these streets, shrouded in my burqa and niqab. The people around here don’t know. But I don’t beg all the time—only when my son’s wages run completely dry, when I have no choice. When my child is a little older, when he can walk, I’ll take up housework again. Begging shames me deeply, it wounds my dignity. Yet see how it is—God does not live in the boundary of hunger. He is too busy with the grand feasts of the great households. Just a few more months and the boy will learn to walk. Once he does, I’ll leave him with his brother and take work in other homes. True, I beg in secret, but I have never let my son beg. He doesn’t even want to.

—

Before he had finished speaking, I noticed his head was bent low, tears streaming silently down his face—not a sound, not a whisper.

The evening was deepening. The pale, fading sun only made the deep darkness of his world seem heavier still. He wept in silence, head bowed, weeping as if no one could understand, weeping as if hiding himself away. Then, after a while, the boy in his lap stirred with some mischief, and it broke through his trance. Now he returned fully to the world around him. He forced his lips into a smile and began to caress the child with tenderness. I too found myself drawn into the beauty of that gesture.

With joy now touching his eyes and cheeks, he wiped his face and began to speak: “You know, my older boy is blessed—he weighs his wages carefully and buys vegetables with them. After evening, he goes to a private tuition now. It’s been three days. The teacher doesn’t take money from him. He goes to school too, says he loves to study.”

I could see it then—kingdoms of imagination dawning in his eyes. He gazed at his older son with a soft smile, lost in thought. Perhaps he was dreaming that one day his boy would grow tall fighting against all the poverty of the world, that through study he would become a man of standing. That these hard days, these days of want, would pass. That one day their home too would overflow with the feast-foods of the great houses.

# The Weight of One Chicken

One day the pots and pans—for fish, meat, pilau, biryani—will clang and ring in their stove too. One day they will have a room with a proper roof, where the monsoon rains won’t seep through, where blankets will warm winter nights, where a fan will hum in the heat, spinning out that blessed cool breeze. One day her son will wear good sandals, proper clothes on his body. On Eid there will be payesh and phirni, noodles too, cooked in their own kitchen. That day happiness will be measured on that weighing scale!

On this side the sun is sinking lower, disappearing, while on the other side of the world it’s already peeking up, stretching itself awake. On this side evening is thickening into night, on the other dawn is twinkling its first smile. She was getting pressed for time now…oh, oh, she had to get home, had to cook! So saying she began to rise. Even as she stood, she started talking—for days now they’ve been eating nothing but fried potatoes at home, the boy won’t touch it, yet he doesn’t refuse either. What to do? Though he’s young, he understands so much. It’s been so long since anything good has been cooked. Today I have a little money in hand, and if I can scrape together something tomorrow too, I’ll bring home a chicken, cook it, feed the boy. He’ll be so happy….As she spoke these words, her eyes and face shone with such tremendous joy—the joy of being able to cook chicken meat tomorrow and feed it to her son. That widow’s, that unfortunate woman’s face was lit up two-fold, three-fold, a hundredfold brighter.

Yet it was just one chicken, merely one chicken…and in that one chicken’s meat lay an entire kingdom of happiness! In that happiness mingled not the satisfaction of a full belly, but the joy of being able to feed one’s child! For some, happiness means grand mansions, branded cars. But for her, for others like her, happiness meant a piece of chicken meat on her son’s plate and a bowl of gravy.

She stood up. I moved closer and asked her, Aunty, do you have a mobile phone? She said, Yes, child, I do. I asked her for the number. I saw it was an old, battered Nokia set. As she took it out, she began to speak—this was my son’s father’s mobile. When he was alive, he’d saved up a thousand and five hundred rupees and bought it many years ago. Now I use it. My mother is still alive. Sometimes, when my heart gets too heavy, I talk to her, share my joys and sorrows with my brother. We don’t see each other, so we talk to ease the pain. As for family, I have my mother and one brother. My brother does road work. He’s married. He looks after my mother. But my brother’s wife can’t really bear with my mother. I wish so much that I could bring my mother here to live with me, but I myself don’t have enough to eat. If she stays with my brother, at least she gets two chapatis and rice twice a day. She’s alive—that’s the main thing.

After exchanging numbers, she stood up, laughing softly, dusting off her son’s clothes and caressing him tenderly. I stood up too, took her hand, pressed a thousand-rupee note into her palm, and said, Buy a chicken today, cook it, feed your boy. And from now on, every month I’ll come here and give you money for his schooling, along with what I can manage to help you cook something good. You teach him, give him the chance to study.

With all the wonder in the world in her eyes, she stared at me like one struck dumb for a moment, then suddenly gripped my hand tightly, bowed her head down onto that clasped hand, and fell silent. I saw—this time too she was crying without a sound. Cold drops of water fell, pat pat pat, onto the opposite side of my palm.

These were teardrops of joy, of gratitude, of love.

There is not a trace of impurity in the love of these lowly folk who do not know how to speak gratitude aloud. Yet no one bothers to seek out this untainted love. These loves without alloy, these bewildered happinesses—you can find them stepping outside for merely a moment, and yet we go searching for joy in tiled floors and costly restaurant platters.

I somehow wrenched my hand free, glanced once toward his eyes, then turned away and hurried forward. Behind me, he stood frozen like a statue, showering my departing path with the heavy rain of his astonishment, his gratitude, his love. Silently gazing after the way I was leaving. Perhaps thinking to himself that though the whole world is bound by the threads of self-interest, there are still some who are bound instead by the threads of love, outside that knot. Perhaps thinking that within the form of a human being, too, there dwells something of the divine. That some souls, pushing through crowds of great lords, discover in dew-gathered grass the shelter of a refuge built on love and well-being. What he truly thought in that silence, I never came to know.

I am returning home. I climbed into a rickshaw. Two hundred taka in my bag. With these two hundred taka I am going home. The weight of this money in my hand feels heavier to me than crores. It seems to me that I am richer than the greatest wealthy of the world. It seems that I alone am the master of half the world’s riches, splendor, and joy!

I am looking around. It feels good. A refreshing breeze. In this world there is only peace, only peace. With one thousand taka I have bought and filled my bag with ‘happiness’ worth several crore. One thousand taka! Merely one thousand! With such trifling ease I have purchased so much, so very much happiness!

Before my eyes again and again: tonight, in some ramshackle house of want, three hungry people are eating rice with chicken meat and chicken broth in great joy, gulping it down with relish. As they eat, the image of some unknown, nameless, unrelated stranger keeps surfacing in their eyes and faces. Raising both hands in thanks, the three of them silently shower that stranger with their love, again and again. In their eyes and faces glows the light of the procession of hunger’s release! Tonight, in some hunger-choked broken house, a bowl of meat broth will be cooked!

Sitting in the rickshaw, I look this way and that. As I make my way home, an odd serenity envelops me, and I seem to myself the happiest person in all the world. Next time, in exactly the same way, with five hundred or a thousand taka I will buy happiness worth several crores and return home again. No one else knows of such a profitable happiness-trade with so little capital…Ah, but I have discovered it! I search for tomorrow, the day after, the day after that—from which poor house, which needy family, with so little money will I be able to buy joy? What house will I cook that bowl of meat in next time…I am searching.