Monsoon Diary Read online

  1 to 2 teaspoons salt

  1 teaspoon rice flour

  10 curry leaves

  Pinch of asafetida

  If using the tamarind ball, soak it in 3 cups boiling water. Once it is soft and the water has cooled enough to touch, mash it with your hands to extract the juices completely. Pour through a fine sieve to separate the tamarind juice from the pulp. If using Tamcon, simply mix it in 3 cups water.

  Heat the oil in a heavy skillet over high heat until it smokes. Then add the mustard seeds. When they sputter, add the fenugreek seeds, channa dal, and chiles and sauté, stirring, for 30 seconds. Add the vatral and fry until it becomes the color of dark chocolate, about 2 minutes. Add the sambar powder and stir until combined well.

  Stir in the tamarind extract and salt. Boil uncovered over a medium flame for 10 minutes, until the tamarind water is reduced by half.

  Mix the rice flour in 1/2 cup of cold water and pour into the pot in a slow stream, stirring all the while. Bring to a boil. The mixture should be the consistency and light-brown color of gravy.

  Garnish with curry leaves, and serve with ghee and cooked white rice.

  NOTE: Using Tamcon (tamarind concentrate) will save you the bother off extracting tamarind juices; purists preffer the taste off raw tamarind to Tamcon.

  FOUR

  Of Monkeys and Maids

  MY PARENTS LURED ME back home with promises of a puppy. Even though I saw them frequently—on every holiday when I lived with my grandparents—after my fifth birthday they could bear my absence no longer. They wanted to enroll me in a nursery school, they wanted me to get to know my little brother; mostly they just wanted me back. So they wrote to my grandparents, who reluctantly brought me to Madras and stayed on for a couple of weeks to ease my transition.

  To help me adjust to my new home, my parents acquired a puppy. We named her Julie, and she was a welcome distraction. Every morning my father and I took her for walks around the neighborhood so that she could keep her appointment with a lamppost. We bought the choicest meats from the butcher so that Julie would become strong and vigilant. And indeed she did.

  As she got older, Julie went from being a precocious, playful puppy to a ferocious dog that had never heard the saying “Barking dogs seldom bite.” Julie barked and bit everyone who came near her, including me. Horrified by their lack of judgment with respect to pets, my parents furiously called the acquaintance who had sold Julie to us and demanded that he take her back. He agreed but wanted a handsome sum. So as not to feel that they had been completely taken for a ride, my parents negotiated that one of Julie’s offspring be handed over to them. If they had to pay the mother’s alimony, they figured they would at least get a child out of it.

  Teddy, son of Julie, came into our lives a few months later. This time my parents were more cautious. They fed him the same vegetarian food that we ate: rasam rice and vegetables, followed by yogurt and rice. Curiously, Teddy relished our food and remained a lifelong vegetarian. My mother made him lie outside our puja room while she chanted her prayers so that he would gain a peaceful temperament. “He is going to be born as a saint in his next life,” my mother said, exulting in the notion that she was gently nudging Teddy to sainthood by monitoring what he ate and listened to.

  My mother loved animals and made sure that we had at least two pets in our house at all times. After Teddy came a clutch of rabbits. One of them limped, and so we named him Chappani after a popular Tamil movie hero who was one-legged. Chappani made up in procreation what he lacked in agility, and soon our home was filled with baby rabbits. They chewed on carrots, hopped everywhere, and hid under the chairs, tables, and beds. Every night Shyam and I would round them up, count them, and corral them into a makeshift rabbit shed that my father built behind our garage. At one time, when three of the females were in heat, we had twenty-three rabbits in total. It got to be too much. We didn’t mind feeding and chasing them, but we were tired of sweeping up the little black nodules of rabbit poop that littered our house. After donating rabbits to friends and acquaintances, we whittled our population down to eleven so that, including Teddy, we had a dozen pets.

  The rabbits were a hot favorite with our vegetable man, who saw them as a means of getting rid of all the stale lettuce, carrots, and cabbages that he had at the end of the day. He would come by in the evening and drop off a basket of carrots and greens for the rabbits before going home. Teddy was quite jealous of all this attention and would frequently retreat to a corner and sulk. In fact, no one was more pleased than Teddy when we opened the rabbit shed one morning and discovered that it was empty. The gypsies who had been roaming our streets must have stolen them.

  Once we got over mourning the rabbits, we found a parrot with a broken wing at the animal shelter. We named her Polly after a favorite nursery rhyme. Polly turned out to be extremely bossy. She would sit on my shoulder and nibble my ears continuously till I got up and took her to the mango tree in the garden, her favorite perch. Since she couldn’t fly, she looked upon us humans as her chariot. Once she got on the mango tree, Polly would sit for hours, screeching rudely at flying birds, perhaps because she was jealous of their mobility. My dad loved feeding her nuts and watched her shell them with dainty precision. Sometimes, if Polly was in a good mood, she would shell nuts to please my dad, but mostly she spent the day clucking to herself on the branch of the mango tree.

  Every now and then a group of monkeys from the nearby Indian Institute of Technology would come and visit. The verdant campus of IIT was home to many species, and some took an occasional outing, especially when there was a baby boom there. Then our whole neighborhood would come out of their houses to catch glimpses of them. Shyam took great pleasure in baring his teeth and making faces at the monkeys; they chattered back rudely as they swung from tree to tree in graceful arcs. But such visits from our primate relatives were rare and awesome events.

  MY PARENTS LIVED in Adyar, a quiet, conservative suburb. They had bought the land in 1965, a year after their marriage, when Adyar was the back of beyond, with no houses, shops, or conveniences. Because it was so far away from central Madras, older, more established families used to sneer at Adyar, refusing for a while to even list it on the map because only the “young riffraff” lived there.

  Adyarites coped with this ostracism by forming a tight community. In the evening the streets were full of people—couples strolling, people walking their dogs or their newborn babies. Everyone visited one another, and often there were impromptu parties. The adults sat in cane chairs, drinking sarsaparilla juice, while we children romped around the lawn. As the sun’s long rays dipped, one of the mothers would come over and strip us down. Someone would turn on the hose, and the garden would become a mass of squealing, squirming bodies, running to escape the gushing water from the hose.

  Madras was tropical and therefore hot pretty much throughout the year. The coming of the monsoon in late September turned the streets to slush and brought the traffic to a standstill. We would wade home from school, knee-deep in water, carrying our satchels above our heads. By the time we got to elementary school, Shyam and I decided that we didn’t want our parents to pick us up. Our school was only a couple of streets away, and we would meander home on our own, we said. After all, we were seven and six, almost adults. My parents compromised by sending the maid’s daughter, Sita, as an escort. She endeared herself to us instantly by showing us how to catch a dragonfly without killing it, then tying a string around its feet and letting it fly around us. Sita also taught us how to differentiate among different species of lizards and spot chameleons in spite of their camouflage.

  DAWN CAME EARLY to our home. First, the conch shell sounded from the Devi temple nearby, lifting the mists of sleep from my eyes. Moments later, the muezzin’s voice from the mosque down the road rose in mournful competition as he sang the “Allah Hu Akbar” (“God Is Good”), calling the faithful to prayer. Buses belched, cars tooted, and cowbells clinked in erratic harmony as milkmen led their cows from
home to home to deliver milk. Upon sighting the milkmen, the neighborhood’s night watchmen blew their whistles, signaling the end of their watch. As I stirred underneath my warm blanket, I could hear the click-clack of their sticks as they ambled to the nearest tea shop for warmth and a strong cup of Irani chai, boiled so thick that it could practically be spooned into the mouth.

  At our house my father was the first one up. He spooned powdered coffee into the brass coffee filter, poured boiling water over it, and inhaled the rich smell of the brew. My mother got up a few minutes later. She walked softly into our puja room and lit the oil lamp. The flickering light cast long shadows on the walls as my mother prostrated herself in front of the framed gods and goddesses, savoring the silence.

  “Amma, milk,” a raucous voice cut through the still morning air.

  My mother walked to my bedroom, ruffled me awake, and handed me the milk vessel. Sleepily, I opened the front door and stumbled out. Our milkman, Raju, stood outside, impatiently tapping on the gate. For such a puny man, he had a voice that carried quite a punch, especially early in the morning when he had to stir somnolent customers into action. Beside him stood his mud-colored cow wagging its head disapprovingly at my tardiness.

  “About time,” Raju muttered as I opened the gate and let him in. He led the cow under the mango tree, grabbed my milk vessel, and began milking. I sat on my haunches nearby, listening to the swishing and spraying of milk into the can and inhaling the scent of night jasmine, which had bloomed overnight.

  Some families in our neighborhood had started buying pasteurized milk in plastic pouches from the government milk cooperative. Others, including ours, still preferred milk the old-fashioned way, straight from the cow. We had to pay dearly for this preference, since Raju charged us almost double for the privilege of drinking fresh cow’s milk.

  A short while later, Raju handed me the milk with the injunction “Tell your mother that Tiger is in a particularly ferocious mood today. Your mother should sweeten your father’s coffee with some extra sugar lest he get Tiger’s ferocity.”

  For reasons best known to himself, Raju had chosen to name his most gentle cow Tiger, as if to make up in name what she lacked in disposition. He had also—in a masterstroke of marketing—recently given his cows English names, since his best customers were an American family deployed to the local embassy. So Kamala had become Coffee, Gomu had become Gaby, and Shanti had become Tiger.

  I glanced at Tiger placidly chewing hay in front of me and gave Raju a disbelieving look.

  “It’s true,” Raju insisted. “She nearly knocked down my third wife this morning.”

  Among Raju’s peculiarities was the fact that he had as many wives as he had cows. Instead of offering a bride price, he simply named a cow after each wife. This infuriated our maid, the mother of his first wife, Shanti, who suffered, among other things, the ignominy of having her namesake cow renamed Tiger.

  WE CALLED our maid Ayah, a common Tamil word that meant grandmother. Nobody knew what her real name was, least of all she. Even her husband called her Ayah when he was allowed to address her. Most of the time he lay in a drunken stupor under culverts until someone rescued him and brought him back to face Ayah’s wrath.

  Short, dark, and scrawny with long white hair that she coiled into a bun, Ayah was the second to arrive at our house in the morning. She was usually in a foul mood. She had a lot to be angry about. Her husband was a drunkard, her sons were wayward, her sons-in-law were bigamists, and her employers stingy. She made a living by delivering packets of milk to numerous houses in the neighborhood. Ours was the only home where she deigned to work as a maid, something that my mother viewed both as a blessing and a hindrance. A blessing because Ayah was honest and trustworthy. A hindrance because Ayah’s sharp tongue and erratic work habits irritated her. As my mother often said, she never knew whether Ayah was going to show up for work that day until she actually saw her face. It wasn’t that Ayah planned to skip work; it was that her family’s problems and frequent emergencies overtook her. Sometimes she had to bail out her sons from jail; other times, she had to rescue one of her daughters from abusive in-laws.

  Amongst the help in our neighborhood, Ayah was a legend. They spoke about her in hushed voices, feared her shrewish tongue, and knew that she could “fix up” a job for any of them, if only they could get on her good side. Over the span of several decades, Ayah worked as a maid in almost every house in our neighborhood. Whenever she quit a job, she installed one of her daughters, daughters-in-law, or grand-daughters in her place until her network of relatives spread like banyan roots throughout our small community. Ayah sat like a queen spider at the center of this web, receiving gossipy tidbits from each household to use at her discretion.

  I was the first one in our house to spot Ayah, and usually I heard her before I saw her. As I sat outside with Raju, the milkman, I could hear her rattle the gate a few houses away and yell “Milk!” This prompted Raju to milk his cow faster; he wanted to get away before his mother-in-law arrived and berated him for crimes and misdemeanors real and imagined.

  As Ayah walked toward our house, Raju hastily led his cow to the backyard, ostensibly to ask my mother a question.

  “Ah, that lout is here, is he?” Ayah said as she walked in and spotted the hay. “I have to give him a piece of my mind.”

  She surveyed me as I sat, milk vessel in hand. “Don’t you eat anything at all? For a girl your age, you should be at least five circles rounder.”

  Ayah treated me with the cordial disdain she accorded all the neighborhood striplings. Except on those days when she wanted me to count her milk cards.

  Once a month Ayah received a new shipment of milk cards from the government. She had to count these and make sure that each of her customers had one—she delivered milk packets to almost every house in our neighborhood. For that she needed me, since she couldn’t count or read. On those days, Ayah treated me with thrilling deference.

  “Are you free this morning?” she would ask softly. “Or do you have a lot of homework?”

  “What is it, Ayah?” I would reply. “I have a lot of work.”

  She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Nothing, my dear. It’s just that the new milk cards for this month have come.”

  I pretended not to hear and acted busy instead, flipping through my textbook, muttering multiplication tables to myself, while Ayah waited with a patience that was entirely out of character. A few moments later I looked up at Ayah’s suppliant face and held out a commanding hand. Ayah handed me a stack of square cards.

  “Thank you very much, my dear,” she said as I counted her milk cards. “You have saved my life. I don’t know what I would do without a smart kid like you to help me.”

  AFTER THE MILKMAN and Ayah came the iron man, Chinnapan. The iron man didn’t really work for us. He ironed clothes for the entire neighborhood. But since he set up his stand right outside our house, under the shade of our mango tree, he gave us a discount. Instead of charging five rupees to iron my mother’s sari, he charged her three.

  I thought Chinnapan was magical. He was a thin, dark man with a bare torso (the better to deal with the heat), bulging biceps (from all the ironing), and teeth that protruded when he smiled, which was frequently. With his oily, slicked-back hair and penetrating white eyes, he had the calm stillness of a snake charmer. He appeared at sunrise, wheeling his iron stand, about the size of a small table and thus perfectly suited for ironing wide saris. Since he didn’t have an electric connection, he used a heavy, old-fashioned coal iron, a hollow structure with a removable top that he filled and refilled with coals throughout the day.

  The iron man’s arrival roused my brother from the depths of sleep because he possessed a skill that Shyam coveted: an unerring aim. On weekends Shyam and I would stand outside and watch the iron man light a fire in an adjoining mud pit, throw some coals in, and blow life into them. He raked the spitting coals with a charred stick till they bloomed into bright orange. />
  To me, Chinnapan’s dalliances with fire had a certain scientific precision to them. For years I tried to anticipate the exact moment when he deemed the coals ready for his iron—did they crackle a certain way, or brighten to a specific shade of orange? But I was always off. At what seemed like an arbitrary moment, the iron man exhaled slightly and squatted on the ground. This was the moment my brother and I had been waiting for.

  We watched with breathless fascination as the iron man casually picked up a glowing coal in his hand, “his bare hands,” as my brother often said, and lobbed it over his shoulder into the open iron that was sitting on the stand about five feet away. He repeated this with about a dozen coals, his rhythm unerring as he tossed them like miniature basketballs into the waiting net of iron. He didn’t look back once. In all the days and years that we watched him, Chinnapan never missed his mark or charred his hands.

  “Don’t try this at home,” he would say with a slight crooked smile when he finished.

  Eyes round, we would nod in unison.

  As my brother grew up and became an accomplished ballplayer, he joined his school team and went on to win medals and awards. Yet our neighborhood iron man was always the standard by which he measured himself.

  CHINNAPAN’S WIFE, Jaya, had sharp features, long black hair, and a wide smile. Her only failing was her excessive belief in the cosmetic powers of turmeric. Many South Indian women, my mother included, apply turmeric paste to their faces early in the morning before washing it off while bathing. When I developed pimples as a teenager, the first thing my mother turned to was turmeric, believing, rightly so, that it would heal my skin and make it supple. Turmeric is widely used in Indian cooking for its antibacterial properties.