dedicated to my mother-in-law who died 26 years ago in december
On that sultry August afternoon in Madras I sat next to her on our blue rexine sofa and tried to capture on paper the recipes that were only in her head; recipes of the food that my husband had grown up with that she made so well; recipes of the simple masala curry and the complex boondi ladoo and everyone’s favourite, the paal paayasam.
Roast the coriander powder till the raw smell disappears, she said, and I wrote it down not knowing what it really meant till I tried making the masala curry in a graduate student apartment in Iowa City with the unfamiliar pots and pans that I had picked up at the Salvation Army Thrift Shop. The fragrance of roasted coriander soon started traveling around town with me on the second-hand parka that also came from the Salvation Army store.
Boil the sugar syrup till frog eyes pop, she told me but I never picked up enough enthusiasm to attempt the ladoo on my own, let alone hunt for the rimmed multi-holed ladle that is such an essential utensil to make boondis for the ladoo. I resigned myself to dreaming about the soft sugary delight that was the boondi ladoo; this particular version was becoming a lost art even in Madras.
The paal paayasam I did perfect and not just on the stovetop. I created an adaptation of the recipe to make in the high-end microwave oven that my husband brought home one day from the Sears in Gainesville as a surprise. We had, by then, started accumulating our material possessions because he had a job and we had already taken care of the necessities like the music system and a Sony TV.
The high-end microwave oven served us well for twelve years before it lost its mind - the computer chip that Sears couldn't replace because nobody used such complex microwave ovens any more. But my handwritten notes on yellowing paper have survived. I still use them to make paal payasam when our married daughter comes home. One day these scribbled short-hand notes will be hers to decipher.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Water
[I recently found out that March 22 was World Water Day and that this week is generally celebrated as World Water Week: http://water.org/world-water-day. So posted this piece that I had written in August 2009.]
It is easy to use a gallon of water to wash my coffee mug but some memories come in the way, sometimes.
At boarding school in Jaipur in winter, we were each given half a bucket of hot water that we filled up to one bucket with cold water to bathe with.
In Madras water is always in short supply. In the fifties and sixties you had to wake up at 3 am and fill every large receptacle with water for the day because that was the only time water was released from the corporation.
In years that the rains fail the reservoirs dry up and to this day you have to buy water from vendors in trucks if you can afford to, and carry them up three flights of stairs if that’s where you live. It is a daily routine in most houses to boil water to make it fit for drinking even if it is what comes through the corporation water supply.
In Kerala, where water was plentiful especially after the rains, it still didn’t flow out of a faucet with a flick of the wrist. All the water for domestic use had to be drawn by hand, pail by pail, on a rope and pulley system. While we were fortunate to have help to do that, I could never bring myself to using endless scoops of water either to bathe with or wash up. This was because I would often hang out in the back yard and watch the effort it took Chinna or her mother Neeli to fill the two large bins in the bathroom. As for the toilet, they had to draw the water from the well, fill up a large pot and make several trips to the outhouse at the edge of the property to fill the bin there, pot by pot.
Such memories make me pause a bit.
Water now readily flows out of the faucet in my house in the Midwest. Any amount I want and fully potable, as long as I pay for what I use. While memories linger, sometimes I find myself letting the shower run a little longer than needed. And occasionally using a gallon of water to wash my coffee mug.
Kitchen windows - then and now:
It is easy to use a gallon of water to wash my coffee mug but some memories come in the way, sometimes.
At boarding school in Jaipur in winter, we were each given half a bucket of hot water that we filled up to one bucket with cold water to bathe with.
In Madras water is always in short supply. In the fifties and sixties you had to wake up at 3 am and fill every large receptacle with water for the day because that was the only time water was released from the corporation.
In years that the rains fail the reservoirs dry up and to this day you have to buy water from vendors in trucks if you can afford to, and carry them up three flights of stairs if that’s where you live. It is a daily routine in most houses to boil water to make it fit for drinking even if it is what comes through the corporation water supply.
In Kerala, where water was plentiful especially after the rains, it still didn’t flow out of a faucet with a flick of the wrist. All the water for domestic use had to be drawn by hand, pail by pail, on a rope and pulley system. While we were fortunate to have help to do that, I could never bring myself to using endless scoops of water either to bathe with or wash up. This was because I would often hang out in the back yard and watch the effort it took Chinna or her mother Neeli to fill the two large bins in the bathroom. As for the toilet, they had to draw the water from the well, fill up a large pot and make several trips to the outhouse at the edge of the property to fill the bin there, pot by pot.
Such memories make me pause a bit.
Water now readily flows out of the faucet in my house in the Midwest. Any amount I want and fully potable, as long as I pay for what I use. While memories linger, sometimes I find myself letting the shower run a little longer than needed. And occasionally using a gallon of water to wash my coffee mug.
Kitchen windows - then and now:
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