Monsoon Diary Page 5

  Jaya, however, smeared turmeric paste on her face with a liberal hand every day, with the result that her dark face grew more and more yellow over time. In addition, she applied a bright red bindi on her forehead, which shone like a headlight from a distance. The whole effect of her beaky nose, bright yellow face, and wide smile was that of a jaundiced Big Bird wearing a bindi.

  THE EARLY-MORNING HOURS found my father in the garden tending to the six coconut trees that were like children to him. Having grown up on a large estate, my father missed the wide expanses and profusion of trees that surrounded him in childhood. He remedied that by planting trees immediately after buying the land that would become our home. With typical absentmindedness, he forgot to consider that the land needed to hold a building as well as the trees. When my parents returned after a two-year sabbatical to begin constructing their home, they found a veritable forest covering their land. Besides the six plump coconut saplings, there were neem, banana, guava, and mango trees, not to mention thriving jasmine, hibiscus, chrysanthemum, and bougainvillea bushes.

  The architect my parents hired was appalled when he was told that he could not touch any of the plants or trees. How could he erect a house when there was no central clearing that could accommodate a building? he demanded. Well, my father replied, the neem tree could not be cut because its leaves were a purifying antibacterial, essential for growing children. The drumstick (murunga) tree near it had to live because it housed a colony of caterpillars. Besides, its leaves were full of folic acid and tasted wonderful when ground into dosa batter. We needed the mango leaves on auspicious days to decorate the entrance of the house, so it had to stay. The young guava tree was no hindrance, was it, considering its thin branches. The coconut trees were non-negotiable, and the flower bushes enhanced the beauty of any property. So they would stay. My father’s solution: build the house around the trees. The architect threatened to quit, but my father was unmoved. The resulting construction was odd-shaped and rambling, with rooms ducking in and out between trees and shrubs. It felt like a tree house, adjusting its shape to accommodate my father’s fetish for a garden.

  LAST TO COME in the morning were the two people closest to my mother’s heart: the garbageman and the flower woman.

  The garbageman would push his cart, stand outside houses, and yell “ Kuppa!,” which means “garbage.” Unfortunately, he became known by his yell and people would habitually hail him by calling “Kuppa!” as if that was his name.

  My parents had the greatest compassion for the garbageman. Poor thing, my mother said; he is doing a job that is so necessary but that no one wants to do. My father made it a point to call him by his given name, Natesan, instead of simply saying, “Kuppa, don’t forget our home.”

  Rather than leaving the garbage out front, my mother invited Natesan in. He would walk around the house and stand respectfully by the back door while my mom made him a cup of coffee (in a cup that was not used by anyone else).

  For all the servants my mother had designated dishes and cups, which were to be washed and placed on the kitchen windowsill. The chipped blue cup was the garbageman’s; the brown one was for the iron man and his family; the plastic plate and green cup were for Ayah, who ate as well as drank at our house; and the large brass tumbler was for the flower woman, who drank copious amounts of watered-down coffee.

  A plump, garrulous woman as dark as the night sky, the flower woman would bring several strings of fresh jasmine for the gods and goddesses in our puja room. My mother liked her cheerfulness, especially in light of her situation. She had three young children, who were attending the free government school. Her husband was a drunk who beat her for her daily earnings. Rather than belabor her woes, the flower woman had found an ingenious solution.

  Every day she gave my mother most of her money to put in the bank. My mother had a faded old notebook for this purpose, and every day she entered the amount that she received from the flower woman. Next to every entry my mother signed her name and the flower woman laboriously scrawled her name in Tamil; she could write little else. At the end of the month my dad tallied up everything and told the flower woman her monthly savings. For performing these duties, the flower woman gave my mother a free string of jasmine.

  With her savings, the flower woman planned to buy a gold necklace. She wore tattered saris given to her by her customers; her husband had no livelihood; her home was a tiny thatched hut in the slums; but like all Indian women, the flower woman, too, lusted after gold, and after two years of scrimping and saving she treated herself to a heavy necklace.

  MORNINGS IN OUR HOUSE were a series of comings and goings that began at daybreak and ended only when the chirping crickets went to sleep. My mother couldn’t even take her afternoon siesta without being interrupted by servants with questions, vegetable vendors who walked by shouting their wares, neighbors who dropped by unannounced for a chat and chai, cawing crows, mooing cows, barking dogs, and the shrilling telephone.

  ONE OF THE contradictions of India is the fact that many Hindu families send their children to Christian schools, believing, and perhaps rightly so, that dedicated Catholic nuns impart a better education. I was one of those Hindu children who studied in Christian schools through high school.

  By the time I got to second grade, I proved to be an indifferent student, rebellious toward the structure imposed on me. School, to me, was a never-ending parade of classes. We began at nine and ended at four. The day started when the peon rang the bell by beating a massive iron piece (actually an eighteen-inch piece of railway track, said to have been presented to the school by a retired railway official whose child once studied there) with a big steel rod. This was a call for the children to line up in the courtyard for assembly, when the entire lot of us shouted the Lord’s Prayer at the top of our voices. Many of us could hardly say the words, but that didn’t stop us from developing our own versions. Mine went something like this: “Ah father, Charty Nevin, ah low be thy knee. Thy kin dumb come thy will bidden north cities in heaven . . .” I skipped the line about trespasses, a real tongue twister for me, and went right along to “Amen.”

  After assembly, we had reading, math, handwriting, science, sports, and Scriptures, in no particular order, leavened by a long lunch hour in the middle of the day.

  The lunch hour was what I lived for. Our school didn’t have a lunchroom, so we students were left to fend for ourselves. Some went home (if they happened to live close by), but most of us congregated under the jacaranda tree for a shared meal. We would sit in a circle and ceremoniously open our lunch boxes. There was a clear pecking order that had little to do with each girl’s talents, personality, or brains, and everything to do with her mother’s culinary prowess.

  At the top of our lunch group’s hierarchy was Amina, a Muslim girl whose mother sent fragrant biriyanis, redolent with herbs and spices. Being Hindu, Brahmin, and vegetarian, I was technically not supposed to eat her chicken biriyanis, and indeed, I would have received a clip on the ear from my mother had she found out. I circumvented my mom’s clear instructions not to eat meat by having Amina remove all the chicken and meat pieces before giving me morsels of rice.

  Every Sunday, I cycled to Amina’s house, ostensibly to play chess but really to feast on her mother’s food, something I knew my parents would frown upon if they found out. A thin but definite line divided Hindus and Muslims in conservative Madras. Like other traditional Hindus, my parents bought their groceries from Salim Store, since they considered Muslim merchants more honest than Hindu ones. Our family doctor was a Muslim lady who treated us for myriad health problems but rarely if ever visited our home. My parents encouraged us to befriend Muslim children, but the tacit understanding was that we wouldn’t eat at their homes because they cooked and ate beef. While I had no desire to eat meat, I couldn’t resist the delicious meals that emerged from Amina’s school lunch box.

  After Amina came Annie, a Syrian Christian from Kerala whose mother sent feathery, pancakelike appams with a spicy
stew of potatoes, onions, peas, and coconut milk. The appams tasted somewhat like the idlis my mother made and therefore held little appeal to me. But Annie’s vegetable stew was a world apart from the sambars and rasams that I was used to. It was rich with spices and full of cashews and other expensive nuts, which I loved even more than Amina’s biriyanis.

  Sheela was a Golt (a person speaking Telegu) from the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh. Her food was similar to mine, but her pickles were mouthwatering. Her mother was a genius at taking the simple mango and turning it into a variety of hot pickles. The mangoes were chopped or grated, then liberally doused with sesame oil, mustard-seed powder, asafetida, and lots of chili powder, which turned them into a juicy, spicy, lip-smacking condiment that we never tired of.

  Outside our core group were other girls, “wanderers” who moved between lunch groups in search of the best food. We would only accept a wanderer if she had something we wanted to eat. The wanderers usually had the best food, which was how they bargained their way into whichever group caught their fancy.

  Within the confines of our core group, there were clear rituals. We all opened our lunch boxes at the same time and looked around. The person who had the best lunch, usually Amina, opened negotiations. Amina would casually glance around the circle until her eyes came to rest on a lunch box. If it was mine, I wouldn’t hesitate.

  “Here, Amina. You want my lunch?” I would hold up the entire contents of my lunch box eagerly and hopefully.

  Amina would purse her lips as she studied my lunch box. “Maybe just a tiny piece,” she would say finally.

  Grinning victoriously, I would allocate a generous portion of my lunch for Amina in exchange for a meager portion of hers. Once the first barter was made, the rest of the group could begin negotiations. On a good day, I got bite-sized pieces of everyone’s lunch so that my own humble lunch box looked like a miniature picnic table lined with a variety of dishes. On a bad day nobody wanted my lunch and I had to eat the entire thing myself. Most of the time, however, I would barter my lunch with a few people while the others would pass on my food, either because they were allergic to okra, tired of idlis, hated vermicelli, or just didn’t want to part with their own lunch. The worst days were when Amina refused to share her lunch for reasons best known to herself. Amina was a tiny, pigtailed girl whom I regularly beat in class and at sports, but during the lunch hour she was the queen and could dictate the rules. From time to time she would declare a “no-sharing” day, leaving our hearts broken and our mouths watering.

  I would beg Annie for her vegetable stew. “Nothing else, just a spoonful of your stew,” I would plead.

  Sometimes Annie feared Amina’s wrath and refused to share as well. Other times she relented and hurriedly handed me a secret spoonful. I would swirl it around my mouth as if it was a rare wine, fully savoring the rich coconut milk, soft vegetables, and the bite of chiles. I would close my eyes and swallow, trying to etch the stew into memory. After such scrumptious lunches, it was all we could do to keep awake during the afternoon classes before the school bell mercifully rang at four o’clock, loosening us home.

  VEGETABLE STEW

  The best stew I ate was on a houseboat (called kettu-vellam) in Kerala. At dawn the church bells clanged and woke me up. Mist hung low over Vembanad Lake. It felt like we were floating on a cloud. My parents were still sleeping. I stumbled to the back of the boat, drawn by the smell of piquant spices. A woman was sitting by the stove stirring some stew. She had slick, oily hair and wore a starched white mundu (skirt). When she saw me, she wordlessly ladled out some stew into a coconut shell and handed it to me with a smile and an appam. I went to the front of the boat, tore off pieces of appam, dipped it into the stew, and chewed. The water gurgled all around. The coconut trees swayed, stirring a gentle morning breeze. After finishing my breakfast, I returned to the back of the boat to hand my empty plate back to the woman. She had disappeared. Was she a mermaid, an angel perhaps? I don’t know.

  Making stew in India used to be difficult because the coconut milk was made fresh by grating the coconuts, then blending it, then extracting the coconut milk by hand, that is, squeezing the grated coconut. The first milk, second milk, and third milk had to be separately squeezed out. As a result, my mother made this recipe only rarely, as a Sunday treat perhaps. It went well with almost anything—rice, Indian breads such as puris and chapatis and with appams. Nowadays, of course, coconut milk is widely available in cans, removing all the drudgery and preserving the taste.

  SERVES 4

  2 teaspoons olive or canola oil

  1 small onion, thinly sliced

  2 green chiles, Thai or serrano, slit in half lengthwise

  4 1/4-inch slices ginger

  4 garlic cloves, diced

  2 medium potatoes, cubed

  1 small carrot, chopped into 1/2-inch pieces

  10 green beans, sliced into 1/2-inch pieces

  1 teaspoon salt

  2 cups coconut milk (available in cans in Asian markets)

  10 curry leaves

  Heat the oil in a medium-sized stainless steel vessel and sauté the onion, chiles, ginger, and garlic until the onions turn golden. Add the chopped vegetables, salt, and 1 cup water. Cover and cook over a low flame until the vegetables are soft. Stir in the coconut milk and heat until it just starts boiling. Remove from the heat. Garnish with curry leaves.

  FIVE

  Idlis and Coffee

  “HERE,” SAID MY MOTHER, pressing a slab of asafetida into my hands. “Smell this.”

  I was nine. I obeyed.

  “It smells like a fart,” I blurted, wrinkling my nose as I turned over the hard, pockmarked resin in my palm.

  My mother smiled approvingly, as if I had understood some fundamental cooking concept. “It is asafetida and it actually prevents farts,” she said. “You sprinkle it on gas-producing foods like beans and lentils so that they won’t give you gas. Unless you use onions, which serve the same purpose.”

  We were standing in our kitchen, the mosaic-tiled floor cool against my bare feet, my mother in her starched cotton sari and me in my pig-tails and skirt, ready to flee. My mother was making yet another attempt to reveal to me the mysteries of South Indian cooking.

  She recited complex rules, Indian rituals, and her own beliefs whenever she got the chance. Cumin and cardamom are arousing, so eat them only after you get married, she said. Fenugreek tea makes your hair lustrous and increases breast milk, so drink copious amounts when you have babies. Coriander seeds balance and cool fiery summer vegetables. Mustard and sesame seeds heat the body during winter. Asafetida suppresses, cinnamon nourishes, and lentils build muscles. Every feast should have the three P’s: papadam, payasam, and pachadi—lentil wafers, sweet pudding, and yogurt salad. A new bride should be able to make a decent rasam. If you cannot make rasam, don’t call yourself the lady of the house. And so it went.

  At nine, I had little use for these niceties. The kitchen was merely a place I darted into between aiming catapults at sleepy chameleons or fighting with the boys over a cricket ball.

  Mornings were the worst. It was the time when my mother cooked the day’s breakfast and lunch and needed the most help. Breakfast in our home—or, for that matter, most homes in India—wasn’t simply a matter of popping in a slice of toast or slurping some cereal. No, for us it was hot idlis or dosas.

  My mom would steam idlis, rice-and-lentil dumplings, in the pressure cooker and open it with a pouf of steam just as we came into the kitchen. As we watched round-eyed, she would determinedly stay in place while the steam swirled around her glistening face. “I get a free facial every time I make idlis,” my mother boasted as she emerged. “Why waste the steam?”

  Idlis are made from a rice-and-lentil batter that is allowed to ferment for a day. It is a simple recipe with sensational results. I have never eaten a good idli in America, although countless Indian restaurants offer them. American idlis are hard and lack a tangy sourdough taste. For good idlis, y
ou have to go to my hometown. If you’re lucky, a South Indian will invite you home for breakfast, and there you will encounter the authentic, spongy idli in all its glory. Or you can become your own expert idli maker.

  MY FATHER, MEANWHILE, was obsessing over his morning coffee. In that he was no different from the average TamBram, a member of the Tamil Brahmin community. TamBrams speak Tamil and are Brahmins. Although caste has become a bad word in India and America, it was—and still is—an important part of the way Indians define themselves. Certain words can envelop an entire community and connote all its nuances, including food, clothing, religion, lifestyle, and even intelligence.

  We TamBrams, the stereotype goes, are risk-averse, bookish, and brainy. We also have a fetish for coffee. Not instant coffee and never tea, but “pure” South Indian coffee decocted through a brass filter and mixed with boiled milk and a touch of sugar.

  My father’s own coffee ministrations began at our local Leo Coffee House, where he went to buy coffee. While most families ended up buying preground coffee powder, Dad carefully selected raw coffee beans and demanded that they be roasted before his eyes. The coffee man, a long-suffering soul whom my father called Leo (after his shop), was considerably irked by the fact that he had served my dad for over a decade but still hadn’t gained his trust.

  “I am roasting and grinding over one hundred pounds of coffee per day, and still your father thinks I don’t know my job,” he said bitterly every time he saw me.

  “That Leo is color-blind,” Dad would retort when I mentioned Leo’s grievances. “The coffee has to be roasted so that it is in between brown and black. If it is brown, it is underroasted and won’t give enough decoction; if it is black, the coffee will have a burnt flavor. It has to be perfectly roasted between brown and black, and Leo can never get it right.”