The cello felt awkward now.

She had to hold it differently, what it used to rest against was no longer there. That meant she also had to change her bowing and how she held her arms. In away, it was like learning to play all over again.

Losing her breast was something she could deal with, but she wasn’t prepared for the mastectomy to so severely affect her playing. She didn’t expect to be perfect immediately, but the extravaganza of sour notes pouring out of her instrument shook her confidence.

In the back of her mind, there was the creeping doubt that the Memphis Symphony Orchestra wouldn’t bring her back for the next season, that she’d be relegated to gigging weddings to make ends meet.

She practiced harder than ever to keep that fear at bay. Each bad note a challenge to be better.

Then one day at rehearsal, something happened.

“Alisa,” the conductor called her name from the podium. “First chair cello will be out for this concert. You take the lead.”

She looked around for a moment, stunned. “Me?”

“Well, yes.” He crossed his arms. “Unless you don’t think you can do it.”

“No.” She smiled. “I can.”

Memphis Note
The Memphis Symphony Orchestra has been a part of Memphis culture for over half a century. Started originally as a group of twenty-one musicians, the Memphis Sinfonietta outgrew their original performance space and moved into Ellis Auditorium where the group evolved into its current form.

Dickson scratched at his stubble and tried to think of something nice to say. “This ain’t exactly what I had in mind when you said you’d been workin’ on the electric blues, boy.”

“Not electric blues. Electronic blues.” His grandson was hunched over his iPad, fiddling with a bunch of dials and a keyboard that wasn’t really there. “You know, like how triphop remade hip-hop into something super modern. I want to do that to the blues. Introduce it to the digital generation.”

“Trip what now? Boy, I think you’re missin’ the point of the blues. It’s gotta be organic and natural, it’s somethin’ you feel. Ain’t something a computer can come up with. The blues comes up with itself.”

Putting the iPad down, his grandson frowned at him as series of distorted beeps and clicks, arranged like the 12-bar blues started to roll out of the speakers. “But didn’t you say that music, especially music in Memphis, was about combining things that no one had ever thought to combine before? Rock came from people combining blues and country into something new.”

Dickson nodded, the boy had a point. The music was terrible, but he had a point.

Memphis Note
If America is a melting pot, Memphis is a blender. Things thrown into the mix have no choice but to be pureed into something new. It’s how we came up with rock and roll, it’s how we push the edges of rap, it is the cultural slurry that is at the heart of this city.

Her ears perked up when she heard the car door slam. Before the keys could start turning in her lock, she was flinging clothes at the man sleeping beside her.

“What’s the matter?” He asked, roused by her clothing barrage, his Hindi accent thickened with grogginess.

“I am in the autumn of my life, I do not need to be dealing with things like this!” She scoured the floor, searching for her unmentionables.

From downstairs, a voice called out, “Mom? You home?”

They shot each other looks. His one of restrained humor, hers of abject panic.

“How long does it take you to wrap this thing ‘round your head?” She clenched his turban in her fist.

He shrugged lazily, “I don’t know, how long does it take you to get your hair done?”

“Don’t you test me, Patel. You may be the man partaking of my sweet pleasures, but don’t think I’m afraid of unleashing a stereotypical big mamma switch whoopin’ on your tan ass.”

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

“Keep it up! I’ll make you climb out the window using that thing as rope!”

“Just so long as I can use it to get back in later.”

Memphis Note
One of the best Indian grocery stores in Memphis is a predominantly African American neighborhood. But, you don’t open up a cuisine-specific food store without clientele looking to buy it. Which means that there is some blending between those two cultures, and I can only imagine what shape those blendings might take.

Hector could hear Kamal talking in the other side of the store, then the cash register chiming and the receipt printer grinding. A few seconds later a white couple came around the corner with the slip of paper. They handed it to Hector, he nodded, gestured for them to take one of the long family style tables, and went to work in the kitchen.

Hector had worked in a few taquerias before, and knew his way around a kitchen, but even he was surprised to find himself here. Kamal had taken the time to teach him traditional Indian cooking. The proper way to season a curry, the exact ratio of potatoes to spices in the perfect samosa, what good – really good – tandoori was.

Sometimes, after the store was closed, they would sit and talk while Hector finished cleaning up. Kamal would bring him a tea cup filled with rich chai, and they would talk as best they could through each others’ broken English.

They’d talk about the deserts they grew up in, those desolate empty spaces, filled up by people, their culture, their lives, their food. Hector’s closer, Kamal’s farther, but both worlds away from where they found themselves now.

Memphis Note
This one is for the kitchen crew at the SaiGruha Indian Market on Winchester. They make the best damned Indian food in the city, and the fact that you’ve got a Hispanic kitchen at an Indian restaurant should tell you about the melting pot nature of our city.