Nostalgically yours: The ambrosia of yesteryears

My mother neither had a penchant for cooking, nor the time for it. Yet, she looked at food as the dominant factor that decided health, and refused to handover the reins of our family's health to someone else. Therefore, she ended up cooking all our meals everyday, albeit in a hurry.

As an infant, I was probably content with whatever she cooked for me. But once I got into primary school, I fell into the trap of peer pressure. My lunchbox would invariably have curd rice and a poriyal/palya. Day in, and day out. I became known as the 'curd rice' person. That's when I started looking around, and I noticed that all my classmates brought a variety of things for lunch. They sometimes shared their boxes with me, and I tasted in awe the culinary superlatives their mothers cooked for them--neer dosa, akki rotti, paddu-- foods whose existence I had never known of. All of a sudden, my own curd rice seemed too ordinary and uncool. I berated my mother: Why can't you make me something different for lunch everyday?I hate curd rice. It's too boring and tasteless.

My mother tried to talk sense into me. How does it matter what the other kids bring? Don't you like curd rice? I anyway give you different vegetables everyday. Doesn't that count as variety?

I stubbornly nodded a no, and after days of some variant of this conversation, my Mom gave in.

She would make me different things for lunch hereafter, she said. Puri saagu, masala dosa, vegetable pulao, rave rotti now made regular appearances in my lunchbox. But I was unhappy nevertheless. The puri had thick edges. The dosa was not wafer thin. The rotti was not crispy. Why couldn't she make things the way I liked them?

My mother also never made special food on festival days. She would stick to vada-paiyasam, the simplest fried food-sweetmeat combo there was. The most variety we'd get was the alternation between dry vada and thayir(curd) vada. Sometimes, she would get delayed because of work, and wouldn't be able to soak the vadas in curd early enough, as a result of which the center wouldn't be soft, another thing I hated and cribbed about. 

I protested in anger, Why can't you make something else? I am bored of eating the same thing for every festival. 

But I don't know how to make those other things. I watched my mother make them, but I never learnt. Even when I tried, they didn't come out right. She tried to explain herself.

At that age, I could never see beyond my righteous anger. I  believed that as my mother, it was her duty to cook me marvelous things, and I pointed out how bad a cook she was at every opportunity I got.

My mother then tried making snacks. Her first attempt at mysorepak resulted in a rock-like sweet, which I mocked by calling granite-pak. Similarly, her earliest samosas and sweet kadubus split open in hot oil, spilling their contents. Her attempt at kaju katli resulted in a sweet gooey mess that refused to harden. I used to be perched on the kitchen slab during all her experiments, watching on but usually never helping, incessantly chattering on. I used to tell my mother that I was like Tom Sawyer; sitting by and talking while Huck chopped wood.

Eventually, my Mom stopped making rice dosas because my father and grandfather were diabetic, and came up with her own version of a diabetic-friendly batter. I absolutely abhorred this dosa, because you could never make it crisp. Potatoes, raw bananas and many other starchy vegetables also vanished from the kitchen, and I sorely missed them. This is unfair to me! Just because they're diabetic, why can't I eat these things? I cried. She ended up making two versions of several things, one for me and one for them.

I never thought about how it would be for my father, who loved those same things and had to give them up. I never thought about how difficult it would be for my Mom to make two different things, just for me.

I grew up swearing that I hated home food, and cribbed about how little we ordered or ate outside. When I started my undergrad as a day scholar, I ordered my mother not to give me lunch at least on a few days every week, on the grounds that I could eat at the canteen like everybody else. She was hurt, but complied. And then, I grew up, and life changed. I went from being a resident of my parents' house to a visitor. Home made food went from an everyday thing I took for granted to a rarity, something I got to eat once a month at best. That changed everything.

Suddenly, I looked at my childhood in an entirely different light. I remembered the spiciest ever mango pickle in my lunchbox, made just that day from a raw mango, to be savored with curd rice. I remembered the rava rotti, with the goodness of carrots, coconut gratings and spicy green chillies, its softness a texture I had gotten used to and come to love over the years. I remembered a lemon rasam, watery in its perfection, the twang of lemon and the bite of ginger lending it a flavor that other rasams just couldn't match. I recalled a rich sambar with jackfruit seed, so unique even in its starchy taste. I saw balekai palya, the raw banana cooked and then coated with a thick layer of spices, garnished with coconut. I saw her classic amaranthus poriyal, soft cooked greens with crispy fried papads, the alternation of texture just perfect. Why on earth had I complained about my lunchbox!

When I had complained about the non-crispy dosas of the diabetic batter, my Mom gave me another rendition, kuzhi dosa, a deep-fried dosa, made in the vessel typically used for seasoning. I loved this one, and she would make it just for me while everyone else ate the other version. I recall the later samosas, the ones that were yummy. I remember the delicious thayir vades, their gooey-soft centers after they'd absorbed all the curd. I even think of the granite-pak fondly: I ate it everyday for a month, breaking it into tiny pieces, laughing over that experiment. I recall some of her dishes that I have never eaten anywhere else: a delicious obscure sweet made of rava and milk that she used to call jilli, probably because of its resemblance to jelly? I can taste her tomato gojju, that classic simpleton side-dish that is made just from tomato and onion, and yet I can't replicate her version. 

I realised that my mother's expertise or interest in cooking did not matter. It did not matter how much time she spent cooking or how well she made something. There is something in the food that remains uniquely my mother, that I can never replicate or find anywhere else. In that food is one of the strongest connections to my family, to the place I grew up in, to the people I love so dearly. 

These days when I go to visit, I come back with a jar of tomato gojju and store it in the refrigerator. Everyday, I eat the crisp dosas I make with that gojju, and I feel a connection to home. I miss all the food of the past. I miss the lunchboxes my mother used to pack for me. I miss our crazy experiments with food. I wish I had been a better child, appreciative of the food that she cooked so painstakingly for me, trying to cater to my likes and dislikes. I have learnt that lesson now. Whenever someone cooks a meal for me, be it my mother, my mother-in-law, my husband or a friend, I savor it fully and thank them. For the food, the warmth, the love and the memories. 

This article is dedicated to SoulMuser, who inspired and nudged me to write this. :)

Her journey with food is in this beautiful article: Food is home. Home is Food.