The smell of summer

It smells like eggplant in my apartment. I’ve never bought an eggplant in my life let alone cooked one. In fact until the age of 8 I lived under the misconception that eggplant plants like the one my 3rd grade teacher had us pot and take home would grow eggs…as an egg plant should.

I have no neighbors and the giant upstairs isn’t home. Maybe the smell is in my imagination. Whatever it is, it’s making me feel like I’m back in my grandmother’s (bejee’s) kitchen.

Every summer, all of us cousins on mom’s side would stay over at my grandparent’s. My bejee has a ridiculously huge garden full of all the ‘punjabi’ vegetables, the majority of which none of us were fans of. But, none worse than the eggplant.

Every few days the eggplants would be picked. Giant, ugly things that smelled horrible and tasted even worse. My cousins and I would sit down for lunch and pull faces and attempt to find new ways of covering up the taste while ignoring the fact that when it was cooked with the skin on it looked like squishy slugs.

We were grateful; I imagine that my bejee cooked that eggplant with the best of intentions - hoping we’d grow tall and ‘hearty’. Needless to say I didn’t eat enough of it to reap those benefits.

I did however laugh more at that kitchen table then anywhere else in the world. So, even though the eggplant had to be swallowed down with enough water to give us major stomach aches afterwards, I don’t think I’d go back and change a thing.

Damn it. I know why I smell eggplant.

It’s homesick Sunday.