Once upon a time in the interiors of Punjab there was a farm – a tomato farm owned and managed by a not-so-poor farmer and I was an un-plucked tamatar waiting to be plucked. Life was good in this luscious green field full of thousands of fellow-tamatars. The farmer was quite well-off as he used to sell tamatars to big companies like Kissan and Maggie who later processed us into tomato-sauce. Of course I wasn’t aware of that, when I was a fully riped tamatar waiting to be plucked – nobody was and nobody is until the moment of truth comes and you are facing a monstrous machine out to crush every single bone of your body and turn it into sticky, fluid stuff to be consumed with sandwiches and samosas.
But until that moment came, we were all happy, joyous, full of fun and frolic. How can a tomato have fun, you ask? Ask to be a re-incarnated as a tamatar and you will understand what’s its like to be a happy tamatar with no cares and worries that my not-so-poor farmer was so burdened with – worries about rains, insect-attacks, crop failures, unpaid debts, unsold tamatars..he was full of worries and used to unburden them in punjabi upon his pretty wife who understood very little, but smiled sympathically. The wife’s job was to pluck us in two different baskets – one for the round, juicy, very fleshy tamatars, and the other for the smallish, poorly shaped, not-so-healthy tamatars. The first category of tamatars – of whose I was a proud member – was reserved, as you must have guessed dear reader, for the sauce-making companies.
The wife was not so sharp and coming upon one of us would look quizzically at his husband, who would then shout – sauce. This for some strange reason amused her and she would start crooning some words which went like – kyonki sauce bhi kabhi bahu thi – Since this didn’t sound like Punjabi we didn’t understand what it meant, but concluded that the ‘bahu’ referred to our poor, unhealthy cousins. Oh, how we used to torment our unfortunate brothers, teasing them, lampooning them as “bahoos”. If only we knew what was in store for us!
Then the day of reckoning came – when I was finally plucked and put in the basket meant for the sauce factory which I was foolishly thinking was some sort of tamatar heaven where we the superior ones would live happily ever after. I don’t even want to talk about the torture I went through at the factory – but finally when it was over and my body shape was changed forever, I was packed in a glass jar and sent to some storage. After endless travails from one place to another, I finally ended up in a place called “refrigerator” in a residential house in some big city.
I stayed there in this horrible cold place for several weeks, learning and absorbing the rituals of middle-class households. A family of five – husband, wife, daughter, husband’s mother and father, as I observed habituated this house. Soon some secrets tumbled out – the husband was committing adultery, having an affair with one of his office colleague. The poor wife was unhappy and drowned her sorrows watching soaps on telly. The mama-in-law and the wife would often get into heated arguments with saas scolding her for neglecting her household duties at which the bahu would remind her of her son’s infidelities.
The husband used to be irritated at her obsession with the soaps and one fine day ordered her to stop wasting her time watching the idiotic soaps. The wife retorted that she would stop, if he stopped his chakkar with the office colleague. The husband decided to test her and said he would immediately end the affair if she would remove the sindoor from the head and throw away the mangalsutra. The wife was shocked and horrified at this suggestion and moaned ’’yeh kya kah rahe ho, yeh to mere suhaag ki nishani hai!’’
The husband grinning slyly said – see that’s why I’m having an affair..you are like Star Plus, while she is like Star World. Get it? The wife of course didn’t get it. If she had brains, she would never have been watching soaps like ‘Kyoki saas bhi kabhi bahu thi” in the first place.
And so the daily shenanigans and wailings went on, while I passively waited for my end to come…
Till such time comes, I drown my sorrows singing……
Kahi kisi roz main ek tamatar tha,
Baghon mein, Kheton mein khilta tha,
Woh bhi kya jeevan tha, kitna suhana tha,
Ab dekho kya ho gayaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
Kyoni sauce bhi kabhi tamatar tha...........