Of Sibling Rivalry - Of Chalks & Chopsticks

So what if she made fun of me? She's always doing that - taking a swipe at people through her dratted blog. Does she think I can't make out who she is or what she does? Just because she lives in this fond delusion that she has a gift for "writing" - and a gift for pretending she can cook and bake - she writes a food blog? Why shouldn't I do the same?

Sisters, I tell you! So irritating! How does she always stay one step ahead? Oh well, maybe it's time I learnt not to compete with her, even mentally. Thank God, I've never said this aloud to anyone, they'd say I was jealous of her!

I can't faff about myself like she does. So self-absorbed, hmph! Who gives a fig whether she went to Japan and had yuba out of a Bento box or went to Taiwan and gingerly tasted one measly pickled chicken's foot? Evoking Grandma at every possible juncture and talking about "my grandma's recipe" in her bl***y blog, never mind that she wouldn't lift a finger to help her! And she doesn't even cook - all that those swooning, frenzied fans of hers see on her blog is what she gets the cook to do, and passes off as hers. She can't even make lime juice, and she has a food blog?

So what if I made guava payasam? It's no worse than onion or brinjal halwa, is it? And Belgian cauliflower fudge - what was so funny? Mum and Dad couldn't even guess what was in it, and neither would this idiot have, if Aunty hadn't let on that she saw me chopping cauliflower. (I'd made the entire thing in their kitchen so it would be a surprise for their wedding anniversary.) Everything had been going fine, they were enjoying the party, had downed quite a bit of the fudge, chocolate fiends that they are, till she had to spoil things by announcing that the supersoftness came from cauliflower. Ever since it happened, the intensification in the look of despair that comes over their faces when they see me has not let up at all. It's not like I poisoned them, is it?

I'd love to teach her a lesson, wouldn't I? I know the password to her blog. Oh yes, I do! I may be a cook unappreciated and unsung, a non-starter of a blogger, but I can observe, spy. She has no love lost for me but that didn't prevent her from using my name and date of birth as her password. Stupid fool!

Pic courtesy: Desi Soccer Mom

The latest is some hare-brained effort to make marmalade. Look at all the fruit she bought for that - she read somewhere eons ago that the fruit should be soaked overnight in water, macerated (which she spells 'masserate', of course) , and that fascinates her. Her friend's mother once fed her pommelo jam and our comics used to carry ads for silver marmalade, made of limes and lemons, and she thinks she's going to get it right just by looking at recipes on the Internet and mixing them up.

Tell me, who needs marmalade? She is fat. I don't touch the stuff. Neither does anyone else. But it allows her to write stuff like: "Yoga done, showered and ready to face the world, I come down to see the rays of dawn illuminate the pantry with a warming glow. The pantry, the kitchen, this is where I bond with my loved ones, these rooms that have so much soul. I take a deep breath of fresh morning air, grateful for the bounty I have been given. As I turn to go out the door and give myself up to the crisp air and the morning dew, I catch sight of my sister's things in the fruit tray. I'm so fortunate to be blessed with a beautiful and brilliant sibling who would think nothing of combining okra with marmalade to give it some beautiful green flecks ... Oh oh, let me go put her charger back where she usually puts it, she's going to worry when she wakes up and finds it missing."

Okay, okay, so I'm getting carried away. Left to her own devices, she would even pickle the charger and not notice. Still, I won't hack into her blog or anything, but I will surely give her a birthday present of marmalade with bits of okra in it. I'll tell her it came for her through some bloggers' surprise event in the mail and feign hurt at how mean she was to hide her blog from me! I bet you anything she will think it's mint or angelica or some other exotic herb until it starts going bad. And then, I will watch the fun.

This piece of utter fiction goes off to Desi Soccer Mom who's hosting Aqua's Of Chalks and Chopsticks July-August. It was DSM's idea to incorporate in this year's round a visual cue, the elements of which would find a place in the story. With life in the real world, burn-out, deadlines and laziness getting in the way, it has been a real challenge to come up with a story that doesn't seem too contrived. But we managed, I think. You can read my previous story here.

Of Chalks and Chopsticks Humour Food fiction

Of Unusual Combinations, and Of Chalks and Chopsticks

The granite tabletop was satiny and cool to the touch. It was one of a few expensive acquisitions he had made recently. He had decided to be less careful and finally enjoy some of the money he had made. Another treat he had bought himself was a 40-inch, full HD, LCD TV.

The treats extended to the smaller and finer things in life too. Most of the food that he had enjoyed in New York 40 years ago was now available in the shiny new supermarkets that had invaded the smallish city he had returned to, in the last six or seven years. Modern retail, they called it. And indeed! What a difference from stopping by the road at a heap of papayas or mangoes spread on the dust and choosing the cleanest one. Or having to negotiate a crowded market where one kept bumping into someone else because the paths were so small. He and his wife could not stop buying their daily needs and luxuries in these places. After a weary day at work, this was what they looked forward to - buying bottlegourd and coriander in air-conditioned interiors. And if the price they had to pay for it was a not so fresh bunch of onions and potatoes, so be it. It didn't matter much.

His daughter was always protesting - she would say that in her many years of living in a bigger city with much older, more evolved stores, the best vegetables were to be found at the neighbourhood greengrocer who sold his wares out of a shack. And he didn't think she bought any of those lovely American and Chinese apples that were to be found throughout the year now - she looked down her nose at them quoting pesticides and unseasonality and professed some sympathy for 'those poor apple farmers' in Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir, and had even lectured the salesman on relegating the Indian apples to a hot and dusty corner of the store while tending to the foreign ones on chilled shelves.

Oh well! One man's meat is another man's poison, he told himself philosphically, removing the strawberries from the refrigerator. The daughter had promised to make strawberry mousse but knowing her, it could well end up as strawberry salad - she was a lazy lump. After weeks of luring him with pizza, she had presented him with a cowpat.

"I thought you were making pizza," he had told her, laughing to hide his disappointment. "Why do you have a cowpat inside the house?" "Very funny, Dad," she had replied, "this IS the pizza. Burnt. I told you I didn't know how to operate a microwave." She didn't. She had refused their offer to buy her one. Well, at least since the cowpat pizza, she had bought a microwave. (Though she didn't make pizza.)

His wife saw him fiddling with the strawberries and said, "Now what?" "She's promised to make mousse," he said. She looked at him scornfully and they started laughing - their daughter's experiments with cooking were legion. The stuff of legend, nay, nightmare. Rarely would anything end up in the intended form. Once an experiment with milk and guava had gone wrong and they had been forced to taste some guava payasam, watery and flavoured with cardamom. Not since his parents died had he shed tears, but on that day, he did. It was awful. He and his wife hadn't been able to discern if the milk had curdled or the ground guava lent it that appearance. They didn't enjoy having to feel bits of the seed on their tongue. It had been so hard to sneak into the kitchen and pour it down the drain with his daughter whizzing in and out of the kitchen with bowls and spoons. Didn't they raise that girl to have taste, if nothing else? How could she create something like that and be cheerful about it?

In came the daughter with some fresh red chillies. "Don't tell me those are going into the strawberries," he said. "They are, Dad, the dish will be redder," she said.
"But just give me some ordinary mousse, the straightforward, no-frills kind I got in the deli in New York all those years ago. I don't want a Cordon Bleu version."
"Don't be silly, Dad. Who has the patience to seed them? I'm making strawberry chutney. I don't have the patience to whip cream and soak the gelatine and all that nonsense."
He wasn't disappointed. Really, he had expected this. But chutney?
"And how do you propose to make the chutney?"
"Simple," she said. "All those strawberries, some soaked tamarind, fresh red chillies and garlic fried, a cup of grated, fresh coconut all whizzed in the mixie together. Seasoned with salt and tempered with the usual mustard, cumin, urad dal (black gram) and curry leaf in oil."
"Really?"
"Really, Dad! My friend's mother, who lives in Mahabaleshwar ... she owns a strawberry farm, I've got the recipe from her and I've tweaked it. And to make it interesting, we can add a couple of pieces of bittergourd too. Listen, Dad, after we make the chutney, let's take a photo with your camera. When I get my food blog going, it will be the first post, and it's a really unusual recipe."

He felt, knew, he had to stem the tide before it got out of hand. Open-mindedness was one thing, waste and bad taste were another. God knew he had put up with enough experimentation. If he were to be God's vessel for South Indian strawberry chutney, he'd have taken to the idea better, he was sure. And what was this girl saying about a food blog? Did she really think she would be read? Could he stand by and watch her inflict her madness on an unsuspecting bunch of foodies? He glanced at his wife, who was watching her TV soap with a beatific expression on her face. No sympathy from those quarters, for sure. She would just tell him that it was all his fault for having food on his mind all the time, and for raising another foodie, and one with a twisted sense of taste at that ...

He rolled out a red mat and spread it on the table. He placed a porcelain bowl and the strawberries on it. He called his daughter. Seeing the camera in his hand, she said, "Oh wonderful, Dad! So we're doing step-by-step photos. One, of the strawberries intact, one when they're being sliced, one in the mixer, one with some chutney in a ladle over the mixer jar and so on, and then the final product. That's what many successful bloggers do."

"Didn't I see some cream in the fridge? Bring it here."

"But, Dad, cream in a chutney?"

"I don't see why not. We're pairing strawberries with cumin and urad dal too, aren't we? But no, you're not making chutney, I have a better idea."

"What?"

"A classic. Strawberries and cream. And I'll relive the time I went to Wimbledon. I'm going to watch tennis with a bowl of this in my hand. This is the last batch of strawberries in season!"

"But it's the French Open that's on now!"

"Doesn't matter, dear! 'Tis the spirit that counts! And what's wrong with starting your blog with a classic recipe?"

She pouted.

"I ate your guava payasam, your papaya-fish soup and I was even prepared to eat your cowpat pizza. Don't you think we can eat something traditional once in a while?"

She started to protest, but the look of abject despair in her father's eyes was too much to bear. She really shouldn't complain, her parents tried their best to be appreciative of her efforts. So what if the idea of strawberry chutney was anathema? Let him have his way today. In any case, these chocolate fiends would find it hard to resist her Belgian cauliflower fudge chilling in her aunt's refrigerator as a surprise for their wedding anniversary tomorrow.

My entry to the event I'm hosting, created by Aqua.

And here's the third link to Haritha for guessing the curry leaf berries right.


Of Chalks and Chopsticks Food fiction Humour

Of Facts, Fiction, Food, Chalks & Chopsticks

In the last few months, a few things happened that were rather stranger than fiction: Long-ago people I was busily and blithely investigating on the Internet got in touch; The Spouse misplaced his mobile phone only to find it on the slope of his car roof, after a 45-minute journey; and for the first time ever, in my entire life, someone told me I looked like the Telugu film heroines of yesteryear. I exchanged my 8-year-old-but-mint-condition fancy food processor for Rs 900 off on a no-frills mixie and wondered if it would ever forgive me for sending it away and almost checked it to see if it was shedding tears. It may be inanimate but couldn't it not have soul?

I'm sure I'm deeply empathetic and highly sensitive but when these qualities cross over into physics and metaphysics, I know it's high time I stuck to something more real. Like rolling up my sleeves and making a better effort at my blog posts, which have been less voluble and more infrequent. I've been missing Of Chalks & Chopsticks, the food fiction event that was Aqua's idea. Some discussion with her, Desi Soccer Mom and BongMom yielded an enthusiastic response and another idea - how about giving participants a picture, or a set of words that can be used in the story they are going to write?

So here it is: This is the picture that you will use for your story. It's up to you to use it or not in your post, but if you do, please mention that it's mine. It's my photo and the copyright to it is mine.

And here are some more rules, most of them copied from Aqua's page:

1. Spin us a yarn - an original one. It could either be based on a real incident or could be something competely imaginary. Explore any genre: humour, romance, mystery, paranormal etc.

2. The story you write has to have some food - it doesn't have to be a recipe.

3. There is no word limit on the story you write, but it has to be written in one single post.

4. Posts written for this event CAN be shared with other events.

5. Please link to this post and Aqua's original post mentioned above.

Post your story and the recipe between now and May 31 and mail it to me at: srablog (at)gmail(dot)com


Include the following details in your mail:

1. Name and URL of your blog

2. Title and URL of your post

I have a reputation for being a strict host and I fully intend to maintain it, so if you have any questions about the event, please leave a comment here, I will answer it and clarify the rules if need be. Happy imagining!

And here's the second of my five promised links to Haritha.
Of Chalks and Chopsticks Food fiction Event Humour

Everybody Loves A Happy Ending - Of Chalks & Chopsticks

When the sweet-faced teenager navigating a shopping cart in the narrow aisle asked her to “excuse me, Aunty”, she turned and stared. “I’m not your aunty,” she told him severely, and as he watched the boy’s face fall, Amar turned away and smiled to himself, but not without some exasperation.

Why couldn’t she let things go? Did she have to kick up a fuss all the time? And it wasn’t as if she wasn’t of Aunty-age, after all … As if she had heard him, she came up to him, wagged a finger and said, “I’m Aunty only to my niece and my friends’ kids, not to every Tom, Dick and Harry in the supermarket.”

Amar knew the quality of the time they would be spending together would deteriorate rapidly if he continued the conversation. They had lost enough time, and he wasn’t prepared to let her slip through his hands yet again.

It struck him that this behaviour was a pattern - he’d say something, she would respond, and a few lines later, he would shut up, for fear of putting her off. When he had finally gathered the courage to tell her he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her and did not shut up easily, it hadn’t worked.

They had spent hours in the miserable canteen, eating those erosive, grey dosas and a chutney which tasted like it had been fermented with great deliberation. Often, the cook would draw off a line of sweat from his forehead with his thumb and flick it off nonchalantly, and continue frying his work of art. Amar had gotten inured to the sizzle of sweat on the canteen-sized tawa but the day she noticed this was the last day both of them ate dosa there.

“Good riddance, at least now you won’t go after those dirty dosas!” she had said, and he looked at her, astonished. Wasn’t it for her that he had gotten used to those foul pancakes, hadn’t it been she who had declared, in that opinionated style of hers, that nothing else in the canteen was worth eating, and how could any sentient human being eat anything but those?

Amar smiled at the memory. Then there was that incident where she had railed, raved and ranted for an entire week because “that debauched lowlife” had asked her to go out with him. He had been pleased, of course, but pretending to be a selfless friend, he’d egged her on gently. “You shouldn’t be so inflexible, he might be worth it, so what if he smokes and drinks a bit?” he’d said.

“Other things aside, did you know kissing a smoker is like licking an ash-tray?”, she’d retorted, and he’d felt himself go red. He didn’t want to ask how she knew - was it from the funny sticker with that line they had laughed at in the gift shop or did she really have some experience …

When Amar looked back on those four years that they’d worked together, his eyes would twinkle at the memories. Maybe he shouldn’t have given up so easily - at least that’s how it felt, though he had then believed he had tried enough.

His mind cast back to the day he had invited her for dinner, all ready with the proposal. He knew she loved good food. Was that the way to her heart? Would a sizeable chunk of velvety rich chocolate cake have her eating out of his hand? Amar caught himself laughing at the incongruity of it - people would have you believe that was the way to a man’s heart, and here he was, wondering whether it would work in her case. Ask her, and she would be certain to say the surest way to a man’s heart is through his chest!

She was bad at remembering birthdays, so he could pretend it was his birthday soon, ask her over for a home-cooked meal and ask her how she felt about him. Thus a Saturday evening three weeks later found him cooking up a storm in his apartment. His roommate had made himself scarce but he had had to keep the door open to let the neighbours, and her, know there would be no hanky panky …

He arranged the meal with great care. He knew of her love for salads, so he’d made a salad of French beans topped with grated hard-boiled eggs. He’d scoured the cookbooks for an exotic recipe and put together another salad made with roasted sweet potatoes, carrots and crunchy, raw chow chow. He knew she liked unusual combinations of ingredients, and he hoped he’d got it, get it, right with this one. This salad had its origins in Brazil. (Now that would be an interesting place to honeymoon in!) Then there was a shrimp and avocado salad. How he had tended to the avocados, pressing them gently everyday to see if they would give just that little bit, had attained the perfect stage of ripeness! Then, for dessert, there was rich chocolate cake, and bread pudding with chunky, bitter marmalade.

She was right on time, with two bottles of non-alcoholic wine in hand. (She had to do that even for his birthday, didn’t she, stick to her no-booze principles!) She pushed the door a little wider open, and made herself comfortable in the sofa.

There was no conversation for a few minutes, then he switched channels and a rain dance from a popular movie came on, patches of the heroine showing through her wet, transparent clothes as she and the hero, wig and false moustache askew under all that water, whirled and twirled around each other. She launched into a diatribe on “exploitative film-makers and ageing, randy heroes” and “heroines who didn’t know any better”. Not the mood he intended to set at all - he jumped up, went into the kitchen, served the tomato soup - and changed the channel. He asked her how her day had gone and managed to steer the conversation to the food.

They ate leisurely, discussing the food, especially the Brazilian salad. She had talked non-stop, had something to say about everything: Chow chow! Really? I can’t believe you used it in a salad, and I can’t believe it doesn’t taste crappy; The sweet potatoes don’t really do it for me, though, maybe you didn’t roast them well enough; That’s grated egg? I thought it was coconut!; I love shrimp, but I dislike the smell of fish; You’d have made a great chef, Amar, maybe you should write a cookbook one day! She ate the last of the chocolate cake and the bread pudding, lapping up every crumb, licking the spoon clean as he looked on fondly.

They went back to the living room, the clock had just struck nine. He offered mints, she didn’t want any. He placed the dish of mints on the table, took a deep breath and leant towards her.

“Deepti, I need to ask you something,” he said.

“Ask away,” she said, eyes fixed on the TV.

“Look at me, it’s serious,” he said.

“Okay, what?” she said, turning to face him.

“Let’s get married,” he said, bluntly, even as he wondered how he’d managed to strip the moment of all romance.

But her reaction puzzled him. She didn’t look delighted, nor did she look offended. She smiled, rather sadly. “I can’t, Amar, I’m not the marrying type,” she said.

“Why not?” he asked. “I’m quite a good catch,” he joked, knowing how it burned her up that traditionally it was the man who was supposed to be the prize.

“Oh, stop joking, Amar! I’m serious. I’m not sure I won’t get bored with the whole thing. And I don‘t like the gender imbalance in a marriage.”

“Gender imb …? Listen, you know you won’t have to bother about that with me. And we love spending time with each other, don’t deny that.”

“Yes, Amar, but we aren’t married yet, that’s why. Marriage kills romance and friendship, and I would hate to hate you,” she said, getting up and collecting her things. “Thanks for dinner, I’ll see you Monday.”

He couldn’t persuade her, though he tried over the next few weeks. Then family circumstances forced her to move back home, and any hope that he had of convincing her died slowly. He didn’t think he could ever look upon her as merely a friend …

But here they were again. He looked the same, but there was a fair sprinkling of grey in his hair. She had greyed too, but her haircut did a good job of masking it. In the same city for the last three years, and neither had known, till they ran into each other in the supermarket. There was only the slightest hesitation before they’d enveloped each other in warm hugs. They had abandoned their shopping, gone down to the cafeteria and caught up with their lives over a cup of coffee, till the waiter finally interrupted them to say it was past 10 p.m. and closing time. The manager looked at them pointedly - the bill wasn’t proportionate to the amount of time they had spent there - and they hightailed it out of there, suppressing laughter and vowing not to go back for a while.

Neither had found a partner, Deepti because she had had no reason to believe her reasoning was wrong (“just look at my friends, caught in a rut, stuck in monotonous matrimony, I enjoy my solitude”) - and Amar because he believed it was wrong to look for a ‘next best’ when he still missed Deepti. Two decades had taken the edge off the ache, but seeing her - and her warm reaction - had rekindled hope.

Two months later, he was again cooking a meal for her, to celebrate her getting a raise and a new assignment at work. She still loved salads, but was going easy on the puddings, she said. And she had allowed him to pick up a bottle of wine, though she wouldn’t drink any. Had she mellowed at least a little bit? You wouldn’t think it given the way she had glared at that boy in the store. And to their utter amazement, the Golden Oldies programme on TV was playing the very same rain dance that had made her erupt the last time they ate together.

“Switch off that darn thing, Amar!” she yelled, even as he scrabbled for the remote control, “I can’t believe this revolting song is haunting us again!” Silence reigned for a while as both of them fell quiet.

Looking at her watch, Deepti got up. “I’ll leave now,” she said.

“Not so fast!” he said, reaching for her hand. “Let’s get married, I’m still a good catch.”

“So’s a haul of smelly fish,” she said, with a straight face, even as she took his hand in hers.

{Fiction ends.}

This goes off to Desi Soccer Mom who is hosting Of Chalks and Chopsticks, Aqua's brainwave.

This story is for all of you who were disappointed with the not-so-happy ending in the previous story.

The grated egg salad is here.

The shrimp and avocado salad is here.

And the salad that did not do its intended job, of getting Deepti to say yes to Amar's first proposal (do you think it was because he was clueless, which guy would woo a girl with chow chow anyway?), will come later. Until then, sweet dreams!

Of Chalks and Chopsticks Food fiction Humour Romance

Of Chalks And Chopsticks - The Round Up

1. The sabzi had become a bit watery and Nikita had acidly remarked that now she understood why there was a water shortage in Mumbai and everyone had laughed.

2. And then after few more minutes her Kaka was gone. With that, he left some wonderful memories to cherish for Vabhavi and her parents. Few years later they also moved to this big city. And since then whenever her Kaka would come to meet up with them, he never forgot to bring a big pack of samosas.

3. She was so engrossed in grating that she gave a start on hearing the door bell. With bits of carrots all over her, she jumped out to open the door, only to get the shock of her life. Standing on the door step was Dev along with few friends. They came to help grate the carrots, and even got the graters!

4. Doctor asked the boy whether he eats all the vegetables and fruits and does he drink milk or not. The boy answered yes I do, I eat everything mom gives. Doctor was happy and gave him a toy car to play and sent him home.

5. 'You have a lot to explain ...', said Sruthi,wiping her tears.

'Relax babe,let me get you something to comfort you ...'

A few minutes later, ... came out with two bowls of soup...

6. I love coriander, but that is exactly why I scaled mountains, I swam rivers, I pierced forests, I fought terrors and obtained coriander seeds!! Now we have acres and acres of land growing coriander for our kingdom! This Prince is hopelessly out of touch with current events!!

7. As I pushed open the door, my senses were gently assaulted with the tantalizing aromas of spicy daal, fragrant rice and vibrant bell peppers nestled on a bed of moong sprouts.

8. She climbed one of the trees with ease and found that there were more green mangoes on that one. She thought about having them with some salt & red chilli powder and that was enough to motivate her to start picking them and throwing them on to the back pack that she was carrying.

9. Her fingers wallowed in the sensuous touch of the sticky, hard, golden lumps of jaggery as she chopped them into tiny pieces and added them to milky grated coconut to make a filling for her karanjis.

10. As she looked at the last dregs of her tea and idly rotated it watching the small tea leaves swirling around the cardamom peels, she realised that she hated being alone for long.

11. The red and green glass bangles on her thin, rough wrists would make a sweet tinkling sound while she rolled the smooth black nora, grating the poppy seeds by rhythmic regular pressure of her hands.

12. “There is not too much space on the counter to knead the dough,” he says. “Let’s quickly vacuum the floor. Then I can knead it on the floor.”

13. She could overhear the guests appreciating the food she had slaved over all day, crispy Aloo Tikkis, spicy Baingan Bharta, creamy Aloo Dum, hearty Palak Paneer, subtly flavored jeera rice, Vegetable Pulao and cardamom infused Shrikhand.

14. Was she as surprised to know he was no longer a dusty, rural lad but a chef in a fancy restaurant in the country's Capital, much celebrated for his innovativeness? "Simplicity, improvisation, imagination," was his favourite, oft-quoted line.

Please mail me in case I've omitted an entry or a link.

Desi Soccer Mom is hosting the August edition - please participate!

Of Chalks and Chopsticks Food fiction Round-up

Cabbage, Chalks And Chopsticks

The jaundice had whittled her down by half or more, and everyone was exclaiming over the transformation. She was just nine, too young to hope the loss of appetite would be permanent in the interests of her figure. Her grandparents fussed over her, making sure she took the Liv 52 and other medicines on time, pleading with her to eat “something at least”. She just couldn’t, she had no hunger and the oil-less food that was served, lovingly and carefully made by Ammamma, did nothing to titillate her numb taste buds.

She welcomed the break from school, though she wondered what it would do to her rank. After three weeks, would she still be able to come first in the monthly exam? Or would she be somewhere in the middle of the list? Dad always said, “If you’re not in the first five, then …” and would trail off ominously.

When she wasn’t lying down and reading books, she would be receiving visitors, mostly her other set of grandparents who lived close by. That grandfather was a doctor, and he would often tweak the skin under her eyes to see if the yellow had faded.

“How are you feeling today?”, he would ask, and she would tell him she was alright. One day, the skin on her lower lip began to chap, and when she pulled at it, it peeled off, just like that. That day, when he came to see her, she peeled off some and showed it to him. “Tatayya, what is this, is this normal?”, she asked, holding out a scrap of skin. “Oh, it’s alright, don’t worry about that. Are you feeling hungry today?”, he asked.

“I want to eat tamata chaaru. Can I?” she said. “Go ahead and eat it, absolutely no harm in it,” said Tatayya.

Ammamma was amazed, even a little hurt, she guessed. “Papa, if you had wanted it you could have told me, I‘d have made it for you for lunch,” she said.

“No Ammamma, I felt it only now, will you please make it for dinner?”

“I will, darling, is there anything else you want?”

“Umm … no, just tamata chaaru.”

That night, at dinner, she ate rice and tamata chaaru to her heart’s content, the grains floating in a thin, red river. There was some spicy cabbage-channa dal to keep it company. The cabbage was a mixture of fiery red and yellow, the channa dal undistinguishable from it at first glance. Had Ammamma got it wrong? It was usually a pale green, why did it look almost orange today?

Hesitantly, she asked Ammamma to serve her some cabbage. She put some in her mouth. It didn’t taste of anything. She had a little more rice mixed with chaaru. Then she had some more of the cabbage. She did this two more times, alternating between the rice and the cabbage. Some taste began to come through - slightly spicy cabbage steamed with dal cooked a little earlier, a little bit of resistance when a grain of dal asserted itself amidst the soft shreds. The tang of the tomato and the heat of the cabbage tickled her palate, and she was on the road to recovery - both of good health and every single lost kilo.


Here’s the recipe for the cabbage:

Cabbage, chopped: 1 medium-sized (3-3.5 cups)
Channa dal/Split chickpea: ¾ cup, soaked for a while and cooked until soft but not mushy
Mustard seed: 1 tsp
Cumin seed: ½ tsp
Urad dal/Split & skinned black gram: 1 tsp
Broken red chilli: 4-5 pieces
Curry leaves: 3-4
Salt, to taste
Chilli powder: 1-1.5 tsp
Turmeric: 1 tsp (or less)
Oil: 1-1.5 tbsp (actually you may not even need that much; definitely not if you’re jaundiced)
Some water, optional

Heat the oil and pop the mustard, cumin and urad dal. Add the curry leaves and red chillies.

Before the chillies and urad dal turn black, add the cabbage and saute well.

Lower the flame and add the salt, chilli powder and turmeric. Mix well, cover the pan and let it cook in its own steam. If you’re not confident of that, add one or two tablespoons of water before you cover it.

Once the cabbage is cooked, add the channa dal and mix well with the cabbage. Cover again and simmer till the dal absorbs the flavors.

Tomato chaaru: Put two small pieces of tamarind, 3 sour tomatoes, rasam powder and salt in about a litre or more of water and pressure cook for a while (or boil for a very long time till it looks all well blended and mushy.)

Temper with ½ a tsp of mustard and cumin and 3-4 curry leaves in ½ a tsp of oil.

This post goes off to Aquadaze's event, Of Chalks And Chopsticks. Spun a yarn yet? Hurry, you have another 10 days left.

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