The lamp of Sitopaladi

January is the month the chest remembers. The cold has settled in by now and the cough it brings is the tired kind, the kind that lingers after the fever has gone. Sitopaladi is a small powder with a long memory: sugar candy to soothe, bamboo manna to cool a throat rubbed raw, then long pepper, cardamom and cinnamon in falling shares to warm the lungs and move what has settled in them. Sweet first, then pungent, so the fire is lit without scorching. A pinch on the tongue with honey, several times a day, and the house is quieter by nightfall. Its stars lie in the Ayurvedic quarter of the sky, close together, the way a family sits near one stove.