Tiffin: Memories and Recipes of Indian Vegetarian Food, by Rukmini Srinivas.

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Tiffin: Memories and Recipes of Indian Vegetarian Food

by Rukmini Srinivas

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One gets the book due to a reassuring title - promising vegetarian, mostly South Indian food, that too light snacks - and the cover photograph. One has no clue what treat the book is, until beginning to read it.

The author could very well be a renowned, popular, celebrated writer, judging from what one reads. Writing about her parents, her early life, lives from Quetta to Tanjore, and so on, she brings a sense of a world of parallel lives to someone whose life hasn't exactly been mundane, at that!

By the time one reads her first recipe, one is so into reading, the snack is merely a stop, recipe read quickly to check on what one knows so far, and an eager pushing on to the next tale. And this continues, surprisingly. The very well known snacks, with slightly quirky individualized recipes notwithstanding, and mouth watering photographs, are a delight, but the autobiographical sketches accompanying them just as much and a tad more so, sort of like another exotic relish to accompany the treat - and that the author is teaching this to Boston, yet another added delight.

As one reads on one is startled to realise that the author is only a little younger than one's mother who grew up in Pune where the author went to school for a few years, and they could have met if their paths had any chances of crossing. At that, the author even had a close friend at school whose name seems to coincide with an adopted aunt who lived in Pune! Could it have been the same person? Doubt it, but only because it's very unlikely that someone from proper Pune society would be attending a convent school in military cantonement, meant for children of British.

And the parallels in this keep recurring. The author's early years of marriage, in late fifties to early sixties, being in Delhi - where we lived, except the author and her family were in the university area, where the couple taught, while we were across the town in South Delhi after initial years in West Delhi. Her children's age seems to match with younger children of my parents. Author travelled with family to California, where I taught much later, but I was in Southern California. Author now lives in Boston where I spent apex of formative years, in eighties, in academic life - her daughter's, she says, are in academia in Boston! Her other home was and is in Bangalore, and her in-laws were settled in Mysore where her husband grew up - one could go on!

Her recipes are an exhaustive list of the familiar mouth watering stuff that, as one reads them, one has a feeling of satiety. How about Indian homemade cool drinks, next?

Lovely photographs of delicious snacks.

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"Though the observance of Pound Day was meant to teach us the joys of giving and sharing, it turned out to be more of a competition among the students vying with one another to be noticed by their peers for their special donation. A bar of chocolate or a box of halwa was worthy of attention; a pound of rice was sneered at. As soon as we received the notice from the school requesting contributions for the Pound Day, Sarasa and I would start working on our parents to give us something other than rice. And so it was that I always contributed a ribboned box of a pound of Darjeeling tea, and Sarasa a pound of sugar. On the walk to school, there would be much discussion amongst the students about the food each one had brought. ‘What did you bring?’ was the question on everyone’s lips. Some seniors would try and exchange their modest contributions with younger students who had brought brightly packaged boxes of caramel toffee or imported canned food."

Sounds like the atmosphere usually created and encouraged by convent and other British schools system.

Author gives two recipes that are definitely not traditional or usual, anywhere.

One is gorgeous paratha which she tells you to gold into triangles and roll out maintaining the shape. This is done nowhere.

Pune and other Marathi homes regularly fold polie into triangle but roll it out to a disk as circular in circumference as it can get, usually the size of the pan. When done, it's folded back into the quarter that's triangle as per the author, for storage and serving convenience. It's never cooked with oil or ghee on pan.

North India regularly sautées paratha on pan, after a preliminary dry roast, but it's never folded into quarter that looks triangular, much less left as a triangle.

It's unclear if this triangle paratha from author was a southern young housewife's adaptation of her Quetta learning, or a British deformation of Indian cuisine.

Also, she gives a recipe that she calls Usal, a Marathi word, and she translates it as salad. It's incorrect in both ways. What does gives is, indeed, salad. Usal isn't a salad, it's well cooked sprouted beans or lentils of suitable variety, consumed as a gravy for rice or chapati.

Her reinterpretation of words and recipes reminds of Tamil customers at a Gujarati eatery who ask for Bombay idli. They mean dhokla. They refuse to learn words of other languages, forgetting that idli came from the other end of the peninsular India and Tamil homes had rebelled against it.

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A recipe she gives of a traditional drink made from raw mango, called Panhe in Marathi and Panhaa in Hindi where it's made, is named mango fool here by the author. It's not clear if she invented the name, but that seems less likely. Author seems again to use nomenclature of British Raj circles inherited in military.

The cream is definitely English or European addition, since mixing it in this is against not only every Indian instinct but expliamongst forbidden mixes in Aayurveda.

Cream, heavier the more, is producer of heat, hence for winter heavy dishes such as chholey and for desserts and so on.

Raw mango comes in early spring and summer, and this drink is for cooling; the mix with cream, or even milk, is simply unhealthy, just as contradictory as, say, a dinner of rice and yogurt would be in Boston winter in February with a heavy snowstorm raging.

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Author gives recipe gor Mysore Pak - the last word from Sanskrit connotes cooking - and while it's a rich, popular dessert, a softer version is far more ubiquitous, popular and available everywhere from Maharashtra to North India, called Besan Barfi in North India and Besan wadie in Maharashtra; alternately, rolled into balls instead of flat diamond shaped pieces, it's called Besan Laddou in North India and Besan Laadou in Maharashtra. The proportion is changed from more ghee in Mysore Pak to more Besan in the other, ubiquitous varieties.

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In describing significance of the festival of Deepavali or Diwali, she misses out on the most important part, which is worship at home (and in business offices) of Laxmi or Lakshmi, Goddess of Wealth, through most of North India and in Maharashtra.

Bengal however worships Kaalie at this occasion, while Lakshmi Poujaa in Bengal is on full moon day following Navaraatri, which is nine days of Goddess worship in most of North India and Maharashtra and celebrated as Durgaapoujaa in Bengal.

Gujarat and Bengal have public celebration during Navaraatri while rest have it at home, although a major part is women visiting neighbours, friends and relatives and being worshipped by each other as Daughters and manifestations of the Goddess.

All the three - Durgaapoujaa, Lakshmi Poujaa and Kaaliepoujaa - are public celebration in Bengal, along with Saraswatipoujaa at beginning of spring through India shortly after middle of January on fifth day of waning moon when later full moon would be in Regelus in Leo.

"What she considers limited to South, isn't. Narakaasuravadha celebration on Narakachaturdashie, day before no moon, is throughout India, an occasion for a thorough cleaning of home.

But again, repeatedly, she interprets Deepavali Celebrations as about victory; in fact Victory of Divine is celebrated at Vijayaadashamie, literally, Victory tenth, the finale of Navaraatri.

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Amazing, the food in Madras college mess included a Marathi home food item!

"PITLA, smooth and spicy chickpea flour snack, rich in protein and amazingly easy to whip up. Originally a savoury street food from Maharashtra, it has found its way to far-off destinations. I visited a women’s hostel in Trivandrum in the southern state of Kerala and one of the popular sell-out snacks in their canteen was ‘pitlo’!

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" ... Avarekai is a bean with a particularly rich and oily fragrance. Bangaloreans, Mysoreans and the people of Tamil Nadu love the flavour of this rich bean, but for many northerners it is an acquired smell. ... "

Here's the obvious - author knows North India, having lived not distanced from locals, but she knows nothing of Pune or Poona, it's people, or Maharashtra in general and Marathi people. This is so, despite her mentioning a close friend in school being from the community!

What she knows as Avarekai or Avarekalu is the greatest favorite of Marathi people, called either Waal generically, or Dalimbya for the delicate variety and Paavate for the robust one, in Konkan and rest of Maharashtra, respectively.

Marathi grocery stores sell it like any other beans, to be sprouted before shelling and then gentle cooking like any other Usal, while south India depends on the fresh harvest annually and consumes it for a short spell every year, bought at greengrocers.

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CONTENTS

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Introduction

My Parents and Siblings

Masala Vadai and Midwifery

A Victorian Meat Grinder in an Indian Vegetarian Kitchen In Somwar Peth, Poona, for Potato Bhaaji and Bhakri

The Impromptu Tea Party Aboard the Deccan Queen

Thayir Vadai and Idada with Lord Rama and Cinderella in Bombay

Pound Day at St Helena's School

Fun and Fasting with Annam Athai

Narayana's Saturday Night

Bajji Holi Feast at the Gol Bazaar

Orphanage in Jubbulpore

Appa's Retirement and the Move to Tanjore

Deepavali Celebrations in Tanjore

Krishnan Nair's Appams in Queen Mary’s College

The Mobile Canteen on the Madras Marina

Pudina Pidi Kozhukattai in Poonamallee

Delectable Delights from Palani’s Bakery

An Eligible Boy, Astrologers and Tiffin

The Farmers' Market in Tanjore

The Phone Call and Tiffin

Meeting at the Ramakrishna Lunch Home in Madras

The Wedding in Tanjore

Apachi Amma, Akki Roti and Mango Seekarane

Kamalu's Avarekai Adai

Gujarati Farsan at the Amins in Baroda

A Metate Comes in Handy in Berkeley

The AAA Meeting in La Jolla

Happy Hour at Stanford University

Of Birthdays and Snacks

Max Gluckman, Bombay Bonda and Shahi Tukda

Padma's Khara Obbattu with Pineapple Gojju

Paul Hockings and Potato Polee

The Return of the Native and Ragi Dosai

Pilgrimage and Tiffin

Vaara Shaapaadu with Vermicelli Upma

Dosai and Its Many Avatars

From Menlo Park to Cambridge, Massachusetts

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Reviews

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Introduction

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"Captain Thomas Williamson, in his The East India Vade-Mecum, describes ‘tiffin’ as a little avant dinner taken at 1.00 or 2.00 p.m., a time which remained unchanged right up until India’s independence from British rule. The word ‘tiffin’ itself is thought to be derived from ‘tiffing’, an eighteenth-century English slang term for ‘sipping’."

" ... Central Tiffin Room in Malleswaram, a suburb in north Bangalore, is low profile and a favourite haunt of the local denizens. ... "

"All the recipes contained in this book include the food I continue to cook in my kitchen in Boston. ... several Indian restaurants by the name ‘Tiffin’ have sprouted, in recent years, from London to Philadelphia."

"Rukmini Srinivas

"Boston and Bangalore"

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January 13, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

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My Parents and Siblings

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"Appa joined the Military Accounts Services in 1913 when he was 21 years old, and his first posting was to Quetta (in Pakistan today). He was married a couple of years later in 1915 to Sahayavalli, my Amma. From Quetta Appa was transferred to Karachi, where my eldest sister Kamala was born in 1921. In 1923, he was posted to Bangalore, where my brother Kannan, I and two of my younger sisters, Sarasa and Leelu, were born. After nine years in Bangalore (a city both Appa and Amma called home), in 1932, when I was five years old, Appa left the city for Poona, where we four sisters joined reputed convent schools."

" ... The reason for the change in schools was the fact that the tuition fees for Indian children in St Mary’s, a school started primarily for the children of British families stationed in India, was double of what the British paid, and Appa realized that he could ill afford it. ... "

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January 13, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

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Masala Vadai and Midwifery

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" ... His single-storeyed house, built of brick and lime mortar with a tiled roof, stayed cool even during the searing heat of summer. A covered corridor connected the front entrance to a spacious central square courtyard open to the sky. Skirting the courtyard was a twelve-feet-wide covered verandah, on one side of which hung a two-seater mahogany swing, around which were arranged a couple of teakwood chairs with cushions and a rosewood recliner with an intricately plaited rattan seat and back. A reed mat was spread on the floor against the wall. ... "

"Dr Chitappa was an enthusiastic and successful gardener, and an avid cook. His garden was a riot of colours—green tangled vines spread over the tiled roof, with bright orange and creamy-white pumpkin flowers and globular pumpkins. Green and purple aubergines dangled from neatly planted bushes interspersed with green chilli plants ringed with beds of coriander, mint, ginger and turmeric. Curry leaf bushes lined the back wall. The garden held other delights for me: ripe bananas, seedy guavas and tender coconuts with sweet water and slippery kernels that would slide down the mouth effortlessly."

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January 13, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

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A Victorian Meat Grinder in an

Indian Vegetarian Kitchen

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" ... Appa was a man of many interests, ranging from philosophy to gardening, birdwatching to cooking, collecting antique furniture to reading classical Tamil and English literature. On his retirement he donated his entire library of English literature classics to the Fergusson College in Poona."

" ... When he joined the Military Accounts Department in Quetta, his friends and colleagues hailed from different parts of India and England, and sharing food with them exposed him to the wealth and variety of Indian and British cuisine. Though Appa remained vegetarian, the food in our home was always an eclectic mix."

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January 13, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

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In Somwar Peth, Poona, for

Potato Bhaaji and Bhakri

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"Occasionally on weekends, my father and I would ride to Sathe’s Restaurant in Somwar Peth, a Maharashtrian neighbourhood in downtown Poona. ... "

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January 13, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

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The Impromptu Tea Party

Aboard the Deccan Queen

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"The journey from Poona to Bombay lasted about three hours, as the train went puffing up and across the hilly ranges of the Western Ghats. The landscape of the Sahyadri Ranges was magnificent and awe-inspiring. The sheer cliffs, green with tropical rainforests, fell steeply away from the train track. All we could see from the train windows was the canopy of trees and glimpses of misty ravines and shimmering waterfalls. Frequently, the train entered a tunnel with a sharp, long hoot, and the entire compartment with many holidaying youngsters would let out excited screams.

"There were very few stops on this train journey. As the train steamed into Karjat, a small station in the ghat section, tribal girls and boys rushed towards us selling small leaf cups of black karvand hill berries (Carissa congesta). ... "

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January 13, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

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Thayir Vadai and Idada with

Lord Rama and Cinderella in Bombay

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Author talks of the plays they put up in Dadar, Mumbai, between cousins and neighbours, with aunts, neighbours and even guests providing snacks in intervals.

" ... We actors had to wait until the play was over to sample the delights that came from the kitchen: flaky pea samosas dipped in a sweet and sour chutney; sojji halwa, seductively soft semolina fudge; idada, white-speckled, steamed lentil cakes; thayir vadai, tart and spongy savoury lentil doughnuts swimming in a pool of aromatic yogurt sauce; vegetable upma; and in summer, slices of sweet, flavorful alphonso mangoes, the prized fruit of the Ratnagiri region in Maharashtra. And at the end of the perfect day, my father would treat us all to marzipan from the exclusive Italian bakery Monginis in downtown Bombay."

Idada was halfway between Idli and Dhokla, and there's a recipe for Samosa too.

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January 13, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

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Pound Day at St Helena's School

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"I remember Father telling me that St Mary’s School was founded some time in the 1860s, and that it was one of the two best schools in the city. It was an Anglican school founded specifically for the education of the daughters of British Army officers stationed in Poona. ... "

He was blind to local culture and Indian schools, or content to follow the colonial rulers, is unclear. There are not only excellent schools for girls as well as boys in Pune (then called Poona due to British distortions of every Indian name), but one even had Indira Nehru as a student for a short while. Education is a legacy of pride of the city, for reasons that have nothing do with anything outside Indian culture.

" ... Though my father was very satisfied with the education his children received and we sisters were all very happy in the school, in a couple of years he admitted all four of us to St Helena’s School because he could not afford the high school fees, as Indian children had to pay double the fees charged from British children in St Mary’s."

This discrimination is all too in accordance with the British caste system established in India which had European caste system at its root and then added lower rungs graded by race, religion and such considerations, including wealth etc.

Sounds like the atmosphere usually created and encouraged by convent and other British schools system.

Author gives two recipes that are definitely not traditional or usual, anywhere.

One is gorgeous paratha which she tells you to gold into triangles and roll out maintaining the shape. This is done nowhere.

North India regularly sautées paratha on pan, after a preliminary dry roast, but it's never folded into quarter that looks triangular, much less left as a triangle.

It's unclear if this triangle paratha from author was a southern young housewife's adaptation of her Quetta learning, or a British deformation of Indian cuisine.

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January 13, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

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Fun and Fasting with Annam Athai

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"During the fast, Athai ate nothing in the daylight hours except… drink several glasses of flavoured buttermilk. The buttermilk, called neer moru in Tamil, was kept in a large stone jar (kalchetty), and we children each got half a glass whenever Athai had hers. In fact, neer moru was an everyday, anytime thirst quencher in the hot summer months. A cool refreshing drink, diluted buttermilk continues to be an addiction of mine. In Tanjore, in the hot summer months, many households, including ours, distributed cool buttermilk to pedestrians from a big ‘panai’ (earthen pot) kept at the entrance of the house. At the creaking sound of the metal gate being opened, one of us would step out onto the front verandah, to pour one ladle of cool buttermilk into the cupped hands of a thirsty passer-by."

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January 14, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

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Narayana's Saturday Night Bajji

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" ... Where Christ Church School was different from St Helena’s was in the fact that most of the students in Christ Church were Anglo-Indian and the teaching staff was from England or Scotland, whereas in St Helena’s the student body was a happy mix of Indians from many communities, including Anglo-Indians and among the teaching faculty, there were two Parsi women, one of whom taught us needlework, which was as important a subject for girls as arithmetic and French. As I remember in Christ Church, in the classes of fifteen to twenty students, there were not more than two Indian Hindu girls in each class; the rest were Anglo-Indians, and a few British girls. Nearly all the middle and high school teachers in Christ Church were British while the kindergarten teachers were Anglo-Indians. There was one other difference in Christ Church. An Anglican church and adjoining cemetery was part of the school campus, and while the cemetery was out of bounds for the schoolchildren, our music class was held in the church. I looked forward to singing in the school choir during the annual Christmas festivities, with piano and organ accompaniments.

"While walking to school, as we sisters crossed the bridge from Gol Bazaar to the Jubbulpore cantonment, we entered the land of wide avenues, grim army barracks, church steeples and bells, British bungalows with well-laid gardens, white women and girls in frocks and bobbed hair, and Tommies walking hand-in-hand with their girls or riding pillion on cycles. An air of quiet and planned orderliness prevailed. This was in sharp contrast to the city where the streets were narrower, crowded and noisy. A variety of vehicles along with cars and cycles transported people and goods. Tongas (horse-drawn carriages), bullock carts and rickshaws shared the streets with pedestrians, children, cows, dogs, goats and donkeys. Temple bells ringing and the muezzin’s call to the faithful brought us back to our part of the world. This was the colourful, vibrant city area.

"Appa rented a spacious bungalow in the suburb of Gol Bazaar, adjoining the city on one side and the cantonment on the other, for three reasons. First, and an important one for us, was that our school was within walking distance from our house; secondly, Amma would feel more comfortable with Indian women, mostly ‘stay-at-home’ mothers; and thirdly, Appa could cycle to his office in the cantonment area. Should I say we lived at the junction of two different cultures?"

" ... One of the regulars at the musical evenings was Appa’s friend Rajagopala Mama, who came not because of a passionate interest in music but to spend a relaxing time with us. He was a fascinating storyteller who held me captivated with his stories of adventures in World War II when he was stationed in Burma (Myanmar today). I was fifteen years old when I met him, and the stories of his escape to India through the jungles and mountains of Burma made him my hero.

"Rajagopala Mama was employed in Rangoon as the manager of a British rubber manufacturing company. With the Japanese invasion of Burma in 1941, his wife and three children, along with thousands of other Indians, were evacuated and left for Madras, but he stayed behind. Some months later, he had to flee Rangoon along with many others. His wife, back home in India, lost all hope of seeing him again. But he was one of the few in his group who made it to the Indian refugee camp in Calcutta after several long months of trekking. Crossing mountains and swollen rivers and ploughing through dense forests, he lost seven of his companions to snakebite and malaria while three of them died of severe exhaustion. ... In 1956, when I was in England with my husband Chamu, I heard similar heart-rending tales of some of his colleagues who escaped from Eastern Europe around the same period."

"On weekends, Narayana set out on his bike for the grocery store-cum-vegetable market in Gol Bazaar. He would get freshly ground besan (chickpea flour), rice flour and wholewheat flour, as also red chilli powder, turmeric powder and garam masala. Those were the days when packaged groceries were not as freely available as they are today. He would pick up an assortment of fresh vegetables and fruit, including raw mango which was the base for mango fool, a sweet-and-sour refreshing drink. It was believed that mango fool kept summer heatstrokes and bilious attacks at bay.

"Narayana took pride in his cooking and his vegetable bajjis disappeared faster than he could make them. He bought the freshest cauliflower heads, greenest raw plantains, tender purple eggplants, firm potatoes and onions, and crunchy lotus roots, and washed and chopped them in bite-size pieces. He then mixed a silky smooth chickpea flour batter flavoured with ground garlic and spiced with red chilli powder. Coating the vegetables in the batter, he deep-fried them, draining them well so they were light and crunchy. Rajagopala Mama would leave, satisfied, late in the night, passing my mother’s invitation to stay and have dinner with the family, saying, ‘I am so satisfied and so full with the delicious bajjis. Thank you.’"

Next recipe is called Panhe in Marathi and Panhaa in Hindi where it's made. Author seems again to use nomenclature of British Raj circles inherited in military.

The cream is definitely English or European addition, since mixing it in this is against not only every Indian instinct but expliamongst forbidden mixes in Aayurveda.

Cream, heavier the more, is producer of heat, hence for winter heavy dishes such as chholey and for desserts and so on.

"MANGO FOOL, in our home, it was made like a thin shake which I prefer to the thick custard I have tasted at some parties. A frequently served summer party drink in Jubbulpore was mango fool with a blob of cream.

"INGREDIENTS TO MAKE 5 SERVINGS

2 medium-size raw mangoes, the sour variety preferably

1 cup sugar or jaggery or brown sugar; more if you want the drink sweeter

a pinch of salt

½-inch piece of raw ginger,

finely grated

1 teaspoon cardamom powder

a few strands of saffron

6 cups water

1 cup heavy cream (optional)

"Boil 4 cups of water in a deep saucepan. Gently drop in the whole raw, unpeeled mangoes. Boil them till very soft. Leave to cool.

"With your fingers, squeeze out all the juice and pulp, discarding the stone and peel. Begin squeezing with the peel. Strain.

"Return the juice with the pulp to the saucepan and add 2 cups water, more if you prefer a thinner drink. Add the sugar, salt and ginger and bring to a boil. Turn the stove off. Stir in the cardamom powder and saffron. Cover, cool and refrigerate.

"Serve with or without cream."

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January 14, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

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Holi Feast at the Gol Bazaar Orphanage in Jubbulpore

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" ... On the occasion of Holi, Amma made special fresh pomegranate juice for the children. Our cook Narayana peeled several dozen pomegranates on the morning of Holi, gently rubbed and loosened the luminous gems of red rubies, mixed them with a little salt and pressed them in a large wooden bowl, extracting the blood red juice, and mixing it with sugar, crushed ice and lime juice. This was a rare delicacy for our friends in the orphanage. Though pomegranate juice was nowhere near the intoxicating thandai, the drink that adults indulged in during the Holi festival, it was nevertheless a cool, refreshing drink."

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January 14, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

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Appa's Retirement and the Move to Tanjore

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"I was now ready to join college and was keen on Fergusson or Wadia College in Poona. But Appa explained to me that he was to retire the following year and he and Amma had decided to move to the south to Tanjore. He suggested that maybe I should consider applying to Queen Mary’s College for Women in Madras. I was not very excited about his suggestion and reluctant to apply for admission for two reasons; two of my buddies from St Helena’s were accepted at Wadia’s and, more importantly, I feared Madras would be too conservative a city for my taste after my earlier experience of the attitude of people in general, and if I may say, the very rigid atmosphere in Good Shepherds Convent when I was a student between the years 1939 and 1941. Two incidents stand out in my memory. My mother’s elder sister lived with her family in Madras and her remarks on meeting Sarasa and me said it all. I was twelve years old and Sarasa two years younger. Our aunt was disapproving of the way we had been brought up—dressed in knee-high dresses, not to mention that our hair was braided in two plaits, and above all, the ease with which we mixed with members of the opposite sex. She firmly advised Amma to dress us ‘modestly’ in a ‘pavadai’, blouse, and ‘melakku’, a length of unstitched material draped over the blouse. She added that we may look better in one plait and that we girls were better advised not to mingle freely with boys. In her view, upper middle class, south Indian Brahmin girls had to look and behave in a particular way! My father was outraged at her lack of boundaries and interference in his family affairs. Amma tried unsuccessfully to explain that her sister had spent all her life in south India and most of her married life in Madras; she had had no experience of different regional cultures and she did not know any better. After the initial unpleasant introduction to this aunt, we had little contact with her during the two years of our stay in Madras. My experience at school was no better. While most of the teaching staff were women, the maths and Tamil language teachers were conscientious, gentle, middle-aged south Indian men. It was so obvious that the nuns were ‘prowling’ around keeping an eye on these two! Without fail, one elderly ‘sister’, and not the same one every day, was seated at the back of my class for most of the Tamil and maths periods. The joke among the students was that these nuns had to earn their maintenance in the convent.

"We sisters had grown up in cosmopolitan surroundings in Poona and Jubbulpore, and looking back, my memory of Madras was of a stifling, conservative culture. ... "

"Touching farewell parties and gifts did not make it any easier, and among the many I remember was a cycle ride with three friends, Shireen Bharucha, Sophia Peters and Kusum Patwardhan, to the foot of Parvati Hill ... "

"The other party I remember was the one I attended with my father at the Southern Command office campus; Appa invited me to go with him as I had a nodding acquaintance with many of his colleagues and he knew I would enjoy the official farewell party for him. ... "

"At that farewell function, I also learnt that Appa was offered a post-retirement job at the Army Staff College in Wellington, near Ootacamund in south India, which he declined. He wanted to enjoy his retirement reading, going for long walks and spending time with his family."

" ... As a mark of respect to Appa’s food preferences, it was a vegetarian evening. There were two soups, green pea soup and, I think, a mushroom soup, with crackers and cheese, followed by a choice of entrêes: trays and platters of tarts, quiches and crêpes, and the grand finale was the chocolate ice cream bomb."

No recipes in this chapter!

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January 14, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

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Deepavali Celebrations in Tanjore

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" ... I wonder even now if I ever got used to life in the hostel. After the first long week that followed my joining the college, I went home for the Deepavali festival. In the convent schools I had studied in, I did not have even one day’s holiday for a Hindu festival, so this was a welcome change."

In describing significance of the festival, she misses out on the most important part, which is worship at home (and in business offices) of Laxmi or Lakshmi, Goddess of Wealth, through most of North India and in Maharashtra.

"What she considers limited to South, isn't. Narakaasuravadha celebration on Narakachaturdashie, day before no moon, is throughout India, an occasion for a thorough cleaning of home.

But again, repeatedly, she interprets Deepavali Celebrations as about victory; in fact Victory of Divine is celebrated at Vijayaadashamie, literally, Victory tenth, the finale of Navaraatri.

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January 14, 2022 - January 14, 2022.

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Krishnan Nair's Appams in Queen Mary’s College

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Lovely photographs and sketches. True to life descriptions of the messes and menu.

Amazing, the food in Madras college mess included a Marathi home food item!

"INGREDIENTS TO MAKE 6 SERVINGS

1 cup chickpea flour (gram flour, besan)

salt to taste

3 cups water

1 cup buttermilk

4 tablespoons oil

½ teaspoon brown mustard seeds

1 medium onion, chopped fine

3 sprigs scallion, chopped

3 green chillies, slit lengthwise and chopped fine

10 curry leaves, torn in halves

½ cup spinach leaves, chopped

1 medium tomato, chopped

¼ teaspoon turmeric powder

½ teaspoon red chilli powder

½ cup coriander leaves and tender stems, chopped

"METHOD

"Mix chickpea flour, salt, water and buttermilk in a bowl. Mix with fingers, breaking up the lumps. Set aside.

"Heat 3 tablespoon oil in a wok on medium heat. Add mustard seeds, and as they splutter and pop, add onion and sauté till translucent. Stir in the scallions, green chillies, curry leaves, spinach, tomato, turmeric and red chilli powder. Stir a couple of times.

"Pour in the chickpea flour batter, and stir continuously till it turns soupy and bubbly. The raw smell of the chickpea batter should disappear.

"Empty into a serving bowl.

"Serve hot."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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The Mobile Canteen on the Madras Marina

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"Buying food from outside was not new for the hostelites, and this need was acknowledged and accepted by the hostel tutors as long as no outsiders entered the hostel rooms. The hostel rules were very clear, especially ones that pertained to banning of entry of males to the first and second floors, the residential section of the hostel."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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Pudina Pidi Kozhukattai in Poonamallee

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"While it retained its rural charm with spacious village houses set in gardens that grew both fruit and flowers, Poonamallee was rapidly becoming a satellite town of the city of Madras. ... "

" ... Made of ground rice and lentils flavoured with fresh herbs and spices, Athai’s pidi kozhukattais were special, studded with beans and speckled with shredded carrot, chopped green dill and mint that she grew in her kitchen garden. As with many of the best vegetarian dishes, the flavour was enhanced by the freshness of the herbs."

Lovely photographs of delicious snacks.

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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Delectable Delights from Palani’s Bakery

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"Palani’s father baked bread and biscuits for the British residents of Santhome. In 1945, Palani, converted the bakery into a small restaurant. The bakery was well situated on the busy Beach Road opposite the city bus-stop and, in a matter of a few days, became a popular tiffin joint for people going to and returning from work when Palani and Muthu added south Indian vegetarian snacks to the menu, and gradually stopped baking western-style loaves of bread and biscuits."

Good recipes for idli and sambar.

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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An Eligible Boy, Astrologers and Tiffin

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"Between the years 1946 and 1955, when I was first a student, and later, a teaching faculty member of Queen Mary’s College, I spent my holidays and long weekends with my parents and siblings at Tanjore.

"Most of the houses in Rajappa Nagar, where my parents lived, were set in plots of a minimum of half an acre each. There was ample space for a garden, and my mother, an avid gardener, created a front garden with many fragrant flowering plants welcoming the visitor, and a back garden of fruit trees, vegetables and herbs, which gave us the joy of harvesting fresh home-grown produce. She had planted a dozen coconut palms around the boundary walls of the plot, mango trees, a jackfruit tree, one gooseberry bush, a guava tree, several papaya trees and a vegetable garden of delicious seasonal vegetables and herbs."

"The front of the house facing east was bathed in the morning sunlight. To the right of the front entrance gate, Amma had planted a parijata bush (Nyctanthes arbor-tristis), commonly known as the coral flower plant, with a profusion of white intoxicatingly fragrant, delicate flowers on coral-coloured stems. The fragile jasmine-like flowers bloomed at night during the months of September to January, leaving the front yard covered with a perfumed floral mat at dawn.

"To the left of the entrance passage was a bed of fragrant sontaka, hedychium multiflora and Hedychium coronarium, members of the ginger family. A profusion of sweet-smelling flowers welcomed visitors during the rainy season, when every stem was bent, laden with snow-white flowers. A competitor was the night-blooming jasmine, leaning against the entrance wall, covered with a profusion of small creamy ‘stars’ perfuming the lane, and at the far end of the front garden to the left was a row of henna bushes (Lawsonia inermis). When the plants flowered twice a year with bunches of fragrant, white, petite flowers, the air smelt so heavenly. But henna was also grown for the leaves, which were gathered a few days before each festival or a special celebration, a birthday or wedding. We girls plucked the henna leaves, ground them into a fine paste, and applied it on the palms and fingers of our hands, drawing intricate designs. When the paste dried a few hours later, it would be washed off to expose the striking orange patterns. ... "

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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The Farmers' Market in Tanjore

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"The vegetables at the Santhe were so fresh and tempting that we ended up buying more than we needed for a week, and frequently, Amma would sun-dry the okra, baby eggplants and chillies and store them. Sun-dried vegetables came in handy at home during the monsoon season, when much of the local fresh produce for the market would be lost in the incessant rains and floods, and there wouldn’t be much of a variety."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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The Phone Call and Tiffin Meeting at the

Ramakrishna Lunch Home in Madras

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"Dr Paramasivam was the chief archaeological chemist at the Brihadeeswara temple in Tanjore. He and his team were working on a project of exposing the splendour of the eleventh-century frescoes of the Chola period in the garbhagudi (sanctum sanctorum) by carefully and laboriously peeling off a superimposed layer of thirteenth-century paintings. The week he arrived from Madras in 1950 to start his new project at the Tanjore temple, he was introduced to my father by the principal of the local Serfoji College, and our families became good friends. From then on, Paramasivam Mama (honorific term for uncle) was a frequent visitor to our home, and because of his special status at the temple, we were admitted to view the astonishingly beautiful frescoes while the work of restoration was on.

"That morning’s meeting with Professor Sankho Choudhary and his wife Ira was truly under unexpected circumstances. Sankho, an acclaimed sculptor in the Fine Arts Department at the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, and his wife Ira, an accomplished potter, were on holiday in Ootacamund in the Nilgiris, and continued their tour of south India visiting temples not as pilgrims but as students and devotees of aesthetics. Moving from the visual feast at the Meenakshi Amman (Sundareswarar) Temple at Madurai, their next stop was at the Uchhi Pillaiyar temple built in the seventh century ad in Rockfort, Trichy. Both the fort and the temple complex built on the rocky outcrop are landmark tourist attractions of Trichy.

"While on their way up to the temple, some urchins drew Ira’s attention to some dirt on her saree. She stepped back into the temple pond to wash off the dirt, and in a trice, her handbag with all its contents was gone.

"The station master at the Trichy junction understood their predicament. On Sankho’s suggestion, he sent a telegram to Dr Paramasivam and paid for two tickets to Tanjore, besides loaning the distraught couple a few rupees! A few hours later, Sankho and Ira were in Tanjore."

"Cut to two years later in August of 1955; a stranger, M.N. Srinivas, a good friend of Sankho and Ira, turned up at the staff quarters. When I responded to the knock on my door, I saw a crouching figure with a head of greying hair, bent towards the ground, fingers tying his shoelace. ‘Sorry about that,’ and he smiled apologetically."

"I realized on the first day that Chamu did not talk much about himself. In fact, I did most of the talking over tiffin of masala dosai, gulab jamun and coffee at the Ramakrishna Lunch Home, and it was mostly about my work and my family. As we drove back to Queen Mary’s College, he told me a little about himself, his mother and his family in Mysore. I learnt that he had resigned from a lecturership in Oxford to start the Department of Sociology in the M.S. University in Baroda, and was still getting used to the change. ... Dropping me back to college, he said he was free the following day, and if I was inclined to go out, he would like very much to spend time in Mahabalipuram. And we did. This was my first experience of the shore temples, and the day went by ever so fast."

" ... By the time we left that night for Madras, my parents knew that I had come with Chamu to introduce him to my family as someone special in my life. And my parents were happy for me. That he was a member of the Shrivaishnavite sect, an Iyengar, and I, an Iyer of the Shaivite sect, made no difference to them. And as Chamu told me later, he liked the interaction between me and my parents, particularly with my father and amongst us sisters."

"Chamu’s mother was excited that her son had brought home his future bride. The evening we arrived from Madras, she took me to her favourite Srinivasa ‘gudi’, which translates to temple in Kannada. The following day, she and I shopped for wedding sarees and a few essential gold ornaments. I did not grow up in a family that placed any importance on jewellery, and she was pleasantly surprised at my refusal to buy expensive heavy gold ornaments. But it was fun shopping with her.

"On that first visit to Mysore, I met the celebrated author R.K. Narayan, Kunjappa to family and friends, and he insisted Chamu and I visit his mother and have evening tiffin with them. The previous evening, Chamu had presented me with a copy of Swami and Friends, Narayan’s maiden novel. I must confess I had not heard of R.K. Narayan, the acclaimed writer and novelist, till I visited Mysore. I had grown up with Thomas Hardy and Somerset Maugham."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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The Wedding in Tanjore

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"Chamu and I decided to get married by the first week of December. He had told me, when we visited his family in Mysore, that he had already accepted an invitation to the USA. He had to leave in August 1956, adding that he had several professional commitments before then, and wasn’t sure if he could take even a week off. I suddenly realized that I should tender my resignation to the college soon after I returned to Madras from our visit to Mysore. ... "

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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Apachi Amma, Akki Roti and Mango Seekarane

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"When Chamu and I married in 1955, his family lived in the modest two-storeyed three-bedroom home on Venkatakrishnaiya Road, built by his parents. What is etched in my memory of the home, when I entered the very first morning in early November 1955 to be introduced to and meet Chamu’s family, is the sheltered patio in the middle section of the house, with a slender pomegranate tree laden with fruit. On one side was a stone bench, on which Chamu’s eldest brother Pachu sat, enjoying freshly brewed hot coffee in a metal lota (tall metal glass). The patio connected the living room to the dining and kitchen area, beyond which was a stone well. Chamu’s mother told me with pride that the pomegranate tree, the seedless ‘Kabuli’ variety, was planted by the deceased father of her children. This is how she referred to her husband. There was no front garden, and the steps from the house led out onto the street. This family home may not have been able to accommodate the expanding family when her adult children got married and had children of their own, but it was a treasure trove of happy memories, especially for Chamu’s mother. ... "

"Chamu and I with our two daughters would spend the first few weeks of the summer vacation with my parents and sisters in Tanjore, and the remaining month with Chamu’s family in Mysore. The pre-monsoon showers, typical of the season in Mysore, were a welcome change from the dry summer heat in Tanjore, and reluctantly, by early June, we left for sweaty Delhi, which, in a sense, was worse than the searing heat of Tanjore. Chamu’s married younger sister Padma, a paediatrician, and her husband, a surgeon, and their two young girls would join us from Chinglepet. The six weeks every summer were a precious time, especially for my daughters and their cousins who met once a year."

"Cooking food, even with the help of a cook, whether it be lunch, dinner or tiffin for a family of twenty, on a daily basis, is no easy task. But the women I have known were blessed with ‘good hands’ and an abundance of patience, their main concern being to keep their family well-fed and happy. Apachi Amma’s kitchen was the stage for her activities and she was in total command. Not everyone was allowed entry into her kitchen, which she kept ritually ‘pure’.

"She would sit with us while we enjoyed the hot, straight-off-the-wok akki roti and mango seekarane to go with it. Making seekarane on a warm summer afternoon was an exercise in testing one’s patience. And she suffered her grandsons’ tricks with a knowing indulgent smile; after biting through and sucking out most of the pulp of one ripe mango, they would beg for another fruit, saying, ‘That one was very sour, Apachi Amma. I want a sweet one.’"

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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Kamalu's Avarekai Adai

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"Kamalu was an epicure. Her meals were well planned and tasty. She put herself out, cooking breakfast, lunch and tiffin on the one day we stayed with her. Our efforts to explain to her that it was impossible to eat three heavy meals in the space of twelve hours fell on deaf ears. She knew one of Chamu’s favourite tiffin dishes was avarekai adai, rice flour flatbread studded with local beans, and his preferred dessert was gasagase payasa, a nutty flavoured milk pudding with a paste of ground almonds and poppy seeds stirred in. Avarekai is a bean with a particularly rich and oily fragrance. Bangaloreans, Mysoreans and the people of Tamil Nadu love the flavour of this rich bean, but for many northerners it is an acquired smell. ... "

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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Gujarati Farsan at the Amins in Baroda

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"In the year 1951, four years before our marriage, Chamu joined the Maharaja Sayaji Rao University in Baroda at the invitation of the vice-chancellor Dr Hansa Mehta. He had resigned from his academic position at the Institute for Social Anthropology in Oxford to accept Dr Mehta’s offer as the professor to start the Department of Social Anthropology. Her support made Chamu leave a stable position in the Institute in Oxford and move to Baroda, a university town of repute in the western Indian state of Gujarat, the erstwhile princely state of the ruling House of the Gaekwads. Baroda is also referred to as Sanskari Nagar, the cultural city.

"Two couples whom Chamu befriended in Baroda remained his friends for life. I have already mentioned Sankho Choudhary, an inspired sculptor in the Fine Arts Department of the University of Baroda, who was the younger brother of Chamu’s friend Sachin Choudhary, the founder editor of the prestigious Economic Weekly in Bombay. Sankho’s wife Ira is a gifted potter. Chamu enjoyed spending time with the fun-loving couple. (The day I spent with Ira and Sankho in 1953 in Tanjore was a fortuitous meeting for me.)

"Sankho and Ira introduced Chamu to their dear friends Nanubhai and Savita Amin. The two couples and Chamu bonded and formed an intimate group."

" ... A widely travelled cosmopolitan and adventurous foodie, Nanubhai would often pay for his gastronomic adventures. Though he enjoyed the novelty of the exotic, frequently he looked to simple vegetarian fare to cleanse his system. ‘I have yet to nurse a stomach upset after eating south Indian vegetarian food even if it be in a remote village in south India,’ he would say.

"Nanubhai’s well laid-out kitchen garden boasted of a wide variety of vegetables and herbs. He grew asparagus and celery, thyme and rosemary as successfully as he did fenugreek greens, spinach, tomatoes, okra, aubergine, chillies and coriander. His daily constitutional around his garden and hothouse decided the menu for the day. Some days, the wicker baskets would be full of small, purple, tender aubergines, a handful of cluster beans, a few vine-ripened tomatoes, a head or two of cabbage, a few green chillies, stems of curry leaves and sprigs of coriander, and on other days, a large snow-white cauliflower, freshly dug potatoes with the mud still clinging to them, and tender stems of aromatic dill.

"I remember one leisurely Sunday morning when Nanubhai harvested over a dozen seedless Dacca lemons, and I helped him make sweet lemon pickle. With a couple of leftover lemons, I made lemon rice and a ginger-lemon drink. We had an elaborate lunch that Sunday with a mixed vegetable sambar, spicy tomato rasam and south Indian carrot kosambari, a fresh, clean-tasting salad. ... Writing about sambar brings to mind a lively yet passionate discussion one evening at Savita’s dinner table, when one of our European friends, a famed hostess of lavish parties in Baroda, argued naïvely that in comparison with Western food, cooking Indian food was ‘easy’, since all one had to do was ‘add curry powder’. She could be pardoned for she was only voicing her cook’s opinion. Months later, to introduce our genteel friend to the plurality of curry powder and the innumerable spice blends that make the Indian cuisine unique, I cooked, with the able assistance of Savita’s cook Manu, four different varieties of sambar, each with a different combination of vegetables, spices and herbs. It was a kind of gastronomic symposium that weekend, with Savita demonstrating three varieties of garam masala, including the famous Kolhapuri masala powder from Maharashtra, and dhanshak masala which is a contribution from the Parsee cuisine. Needless to add, our European friend was left humbled and apologized profusely. She could be excused for her naivete. The Indian cuisine is complex and layered in its tastes."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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A Metate Comes in Handy in Berkeley

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"In the year 1956, a year after we were married, Chamu and I left for the USA, where he was to spend a year as a Rockefeller fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Berkeley in the University of California. I looked forward with excitement to my first trip overseas."

"That summer, we spent a few extra weeks with my parents in Tanjore and with Chamu’s family in Mysore before leaving for Bombay, where we embarked on the Polish liner, the Batory, for Southampton in England, where we had planned to stop briefly and visit London, Oxford, Cambridge and Manchester, and by mid-November, set sail for New York. ... "

" ... Annam Athai did believe in observing all the customs and traditions of the south Indian Brahmin community, and was sorely disappointed to learn that Chamu and I would not be joining my family in the Deepavali celebrations. She came to Tanjore to meet us with a small stainless steel container of badam halwa, almond fudge, she made for both of us. I was touched—almonds were expensive and Athai’s budget for her family expenses normally left no room to splurge."

" ... Fortunately for us, ours was the last ship to cross the Suez Canal before it was closed in November, when the Egyptian President Nasser nationalized the canal, precipitating a political crisis. Israel invaded Egypt, and Great Britain and France sent armed forces to capture the canal. The United Nations’ intervention forced an armistice, and the canal was reopened in April 1957. Once we neared Gibraltar on the western edge of the Mediterranen Sea, glasses clinked, toasts were drunk to the Batory, the ‘Lucky’ ship that had weathered many a wartime adventure on the high seas. The captain of the ship addressed the passengers and held a prayer meeting just before reaching Gibraltar, which would be the last port of call before disembarking at Southampton."

" ... One other delightful memory is of strolling with Chamu through Soho, shelling and munching warm roasted chestnuts sold on wheelbarrows. I had my first taste of dessert wine in a bar in Soho. That was simple, unadulterated fun."

"Friends drove us to the Cotswolds, which had been the favourite holiday retreat for Chamu and two of his close friends when they were students in Oxford in the late 1940s. What I do remember of the Cotswolds now, after fifty-seven years, besides the beautiful church and the yew trees, is the fragrance of the lavender even before I saw the purple fields for miles on either side of the road. I had heard of lavender honey but not of lavender buds used to flavour chocolates. In Boston I finally got to taste lavender honey which is indeed a sophisticated spread. The rolling Cotswold countryside reminded Chamu of the Mysore-Bangalore region where he grew up. I loved what I saw of England. We travelled the length of the beautiful country by car in a matter of some hours! What a difference to the long train journeys extending for days in India. The whirlwind visit to England went by like a beautiful, refreshing breeze, and soon, it was time to set sail for New York."

" ... I continue to shuffle in my saree even during the deep winter in Boston.

"Chamu and I got to know a few of the passengers on our wing of the cabins, and when they learnt that 21 November, the day we would dock in New York, was also our first wedding anniversary, they got together at our table for dinner, popped champagne, and sang to us to the loud accompaniment of the piano. ... "

"While I enjoyed the sights and sounds of New York, I missed Indian vegetarian food. I was tired of soups, salads and bagels. At the hotel where we spent two comfortable nights, a friendly soul directed us to an Indian restaurant, I think it was The Woodlands, I’m not sure, but the traditional and authentic south Indian dinner was delicious and had the flavour of home-cooked food. We were served on metal ‘thalis’, big round plates with a rim. ... "

" ... Chamu was pleased to see Kunjappa, and since a few introductions were in order, I left them to join a group of women, wives of Chicago anthropologists. Later that evening, Chamu informed me that Kunjappa, too, was headed west the following day to spend the year in La Jolla near San Diego, in southern California, where he planned to complete writing his iconic novel The Guide. But we were in for a pleasant surprise. Kunjappa announced over dinner the same evening after the reception that he had changed his mind and postponed his departure. ‘I am a footloose person, Chamu, and have decided to travel by train with you and Rukka to Berkeley.’ If I remember right, it was the ‘California Zephyr’, and Chamu and I shared what was called a ‘roomette’, a sort of self-contained, very comfortable coupé. Sitting in the vista dome of the train travelling through the scenic Feather River Canyon, I was spellbound by the breathtaking visual feast, the panorama of the ever-changing American landscape spread out before me. ... "

"Neither David nor Ruth was prepared for a third person—Kunjappa. The American couple was a little surprised to find a mild-mannered, bespectacled, middle-aged man alight along with us. Chamu introduced Narayan to them. David had, of course, heard of R.K. Narayan, the famous writer, and broke into a wide welcoming smile. The Mandelbaums helped with our luggage, and we left for our hotel on the university campus"

"When Mrs Zimmermann wished me luck in my new home and bade me ‘goodbye’, she choked; she was clearly upset to leave her own home. She had to suddenly put her house in the market for rent as she had lost her dear husband the week before, and her children wanted her to move to the east coast where they lived. She was leaving the house in running condition and was taking only her personal belongings with her. I felt sad for her, but Kunjappa remarked, ‘You have lucked out, Rukka; this is a great find.’ Ruth was pleased that I took a quick decision."

"Kunjappa was a great storyteller whose tales unfolded minute to minute. He spent an entire evening over pakodas and coffee narrating Raju’s dilemma of ‘living up’ to the image of a wise man and a spiritual leader among his local followers."

" ... Chamu and I left Berkeley for India in October 1957, and Kunjappa left to spend some weeks in New York before returning to Mysore. Biligiri stayed on to complete his graduate studies, and bade Chamu and me a touching farewell at the railroad station. I remember he gave me a beautiful card with a photograph of the Berkeley hills, with an inscription that said ‘Till we meet again’, and surprisingly, we did meet in Bangalore in 1993 at my daughter’s wedding, when he arrived as a member of the bridegroom’s party! And we picked up the conversation where we had left it in Berkeley thirty-six years earlier."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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The AAA Meeting in La Jolla

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"The first day of our trip was leisurely. We drove down the coast on a sunny day with intermittent winter showers, stopping every few hours to just wallow in the natural beauty of the coast and countryside, or to take in a dark and beautiful monastery or church and allow enough time for Margo to genuflect at every shrine. Our picnic baskets came in very handy. We stopped for the night at Millie’s Motel not far from Pebble Beach.

"On the second day, we drove down the cliff-side, past seemingly unending stands of California eucaplyptus with piles of tinder and layers of dry leaves. Chamu said in passing, ‘Looks like the perfect place for an arsonist.’ Julian laughed. I didn’t give a thought to Chamu’s remark. Soon, we left the eucalyptus groves and drove through exclusive residential estates, when flashing lights and highway patrol cars blocked our way. The Malibu hills were ablaze and smoke and flames fanned by strong winds were spreading for several miles around. We were ordered to turn around.

"Julian briskly headed down a narrow road to a bridge across a fast-flowing stream and climbed up a steep hillside. Despite all our protests that none of us remembered this road, he charged ahead. After driving for about an hour up that road, which became narrower and narrower as it wound up the hillside and finally became a dirt path, Julian slammed the brakes and we came to a rude halt before a menacingly huge metal gate with a NO ENTRY sign. Powerful lights were turned on our car. It turned out we had arrived at some top-secret government facility! The eerie silence in the car spoke eloquently of our anxiety. Julian nonchalantly reversed downhill in the darkness of the night, with the only light coming from the glow of the burning hills in the distance. Margo clutched her rosary. I was petrified, since I was sitting on the side overlooking the steep cliffside and was convinced that the car would plunge over.

"I was relieved when we made our way to the state highway again. It was past midnight. Exhausted and famished, we found our way to a small motel, I think between Ventura and Oxnard, where we spent the rest of the night. ... "

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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Happy Hour at Stanford University

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"Early in 1958, a few months after we returned to Baroda from Berkeley, Dr V.K.R.V. Rao, well-known economist and, at the time the vice-chancellor of Delhi University, invited Chamu to start the Department of Social Anthropology in the Delhi School of Economics (DSE). In 1960, I, too, joined DSE as lecturer in the newly established Department of Geography. ... "

"In 1964, Chamu was invited to spend a year at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) in Palo Alto, California. Delhi University was kind enough to give me leave of absence from my department and my teaching commitments so we could spend the year together as a family."

" ... To ease the stress of the more than 20-hour flight, Chamu arranged for a break of a few days in Rome. Even so, travelling with two young children, one an energetic, curious child and the other an infant, though, thankfully, a placid contented bundle. The journey was tiring, although in those days of international travel, children were well looked after by the stewardesses; colouring books, crayons, chewing gum and mint kept them engaged. The stewardesses were beautiful, and my older daughter Lakshmi instantaneously decided she wanted to be an ‘air hostess on the Pan Am’ wearing the ‘blue wing badge’ and ‘stewardess cap’! That was her ambition as a child."

" ... Lakshmi could not understand how, after such a long flight, we could arrive in San Francisco a few hours earlier on the same day we had left Delhi. She asked her father, ‘How can it be Saturday today also, when we left yesterday which was a Saturday?’ Her little mind could not wrap itself around this big mistake."

" ... Milton, the son of a rabbi, would never refuse an invitation to share a meal with us at our home, ‘Rukka, I know you keep a kosher kitchen, and Mary and I will join your table even at short notice!’ Milton was a renowned scholar of Constitutional and Labour Law, Civil and Human Rights at Cornell University, but his scholarship sat ever so lightly on his slender shoulders. He knew about the Cochin Jews but was eager to learn more about them from Chamu. Both Mary and Milton were especially fond of our young daughters and would stop by even without an invitation to dine with us. They welcomed masala chai."

"A few weeks later, three of the Fellows’ spouses came to me with personal requests. Their teenaged sons and daughters, who had turned vegetarian, were ‘living on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches’. ‘My daughter Cherisse who could earlier boast of a beautiful figure is now obese,’ said Marianne. Could I teach these kids to put together a simple, Indian vegetarian meal? Some time later, she suggested I send in vegetarian recipes to the Sunset magazine, which I did, and to my surprise, they were published. I was even more surprised with a cheque for a ‘stuffed bell pepper’ recipe I had submitted.

"I started classes for six kids in my kitchen in Menlo Park—and thus began my foray into teaching Indian vegetarian cooking to non-Indians in America. ... . I organized trips to the Farmers’ Market and to the orchards and farms in the Los Altos Hills neighbourhood for fresh vegetables and fruit. It was a revelation for them to see the variety of seasonal fruit, vegetables and herbs, and they were clearly excited plucking the apples, peaches and lemons and gathering eggplant, tomatoes, bell peppers and strawberries. We had fun together."

"What I did though during our stay in Palo Alto in 1970 was to organize informal classes, and not on a regular weekly schedule, for a few of my friends who wanted to learn to cook simple Indian vegetarian dishes. My neighbour Susan would call her friends and whoever was free would come over. Six of us would meet and cook in the spacious enclosed patio in our house on Amaranta. The house was set in a large lot, the front garden with holly bushes and in the backyard a cherry tree, several apricot trees, two almond trees, a magnificent fig tree, a plum tree, a persimmon tree and several artichoke plants. This was my introduction to enjoying artichokes and persimmon fruit. We cooked in this sunlit patio on a makeshift wood stove put together by the house owner, who was an environmentalist in the Stanford faculty. My friends would also come over to harvest the fruit to ‘can’ them; we also made dozens of pies for the Center’s Friday Night Happy Hour dinner parties. I have never seen so many birds as I did in our orchard that year in Palo Alto. That winter, Lakshmi and I rescued many blue jays inebriated with gorging on holly berries and bashing into the glass doors and windows facing the front garden."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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Of Birthdays and Snacks

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"In 1966, Chamu and I, with our two children, returned to Delhi from Palo Alto after a memorable 18-month stay. Chamu resumed his responsibilities as Chair of the Sociology Department in the Delhi School of Economics, and I went back to teaching in the Geography Department. ... "

"Cavalry Lane on the Delhi University campus was a quiet tree-lined dead-end street with six bungalows for professors and their families. The trees were home to a variety of birds. A pair of white owls nested in the neem tree across from our bedroom. There was great excitement on our entire street one year when a peahen hatched her six chicks at the base of an old magnificent jacaranda tree opposite our front lawn."

" ... Chaat was the number one favourite with the children and they couldn’t wait to order the combination of their preference. Would it be pineapple chunks, apple slices, grapes and banana discs with a dusting of black salt and a generous drizzle of sticky sugar syrup drenching the fruit, or would it be star fruit, sweet lime and orange segments, raisins and pomegranates with a sweet and sour yogurt dressing? The combination of fruit did vary with the seasons, and while some were happy getting the fruit they liked, others were disappointed. The proprietor would be heard consoling them, ‘Beta (my child)…jamun fruit is not available now. That you will get only in the rainyseason. Try this other combination. I am sure you will like it.’"

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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Max Gluckman, Bombay Bonda and Shahi Tukda

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" ... Max did enjoy spicy food, but once in a while if he bit into a green chilli, with eyes tearing and amidst sniffles, he reached out for the mango slices and shahi tukda which I had planned to serve for dessert.

"Two discoveries of his in Delhi were that vegetarian food was most suited to the hot weather of the tropics, and the wonder of a ‘phat-phatti’, the four-seater rickshaw that took him across the length and breadth of Delhi. He found it the most affordable form of intracity transport. Didn’t he find the ride noisy and rocky? No, he loved it. He proudly informed his family and colleagues back home that he rode in it to Teen Murti Marg when he interviewed the then prime minister of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. He was hoping it would be introduced with some modifications as a form of both intra- and inter-city transport in the UK. Decades later, I was delighted to find ‘auto-rickshaws’ plying in Times Square in New York. ... "

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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Padma's Khara Obbattu with Pineapple Gojju

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About a destitute mother and young son whom the author helped

"Padma also introduced me to the two-day Groundnut Fair, the Kadalekai Parishe, a carnival held annually in the suburb of Basavanagudi. One of the oldest cultural events in the city of Bangalore, the carnival dates back to four centuries, when peasants and traders from the neighbouring villages would come with freshly harvested peanuts as offering to the deity of Basava in the famous Bull Temple. Literally, hillocks of groundnuts would be up for sale. Numerous stalls cropped up overnight; village crafts of wicker and raffia, clay and wooden toys, locally made sugar candies and more, attracted people from near and far. A giant ferris wheel and magician’s tents added more attraction to the carnival."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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Paul Hockings and Potato Polee

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" ... Paul knew of my interest in home wine-making. Over the years, I have made several gallons of wine—red, white and rose—with his gift. And thereby hangs a tale of missed opportunities. Chamu’s young friend, I think Raghu was his name, was employed with the United Breweries in Bangalore, and after tasting the rose wine at our home, he insisted he get the contents of one bottle tested for all that it takes to produce and market it. He got back to us excitedly, saying the colour, body and taste had passed the strictest of tests. I mentioned this to our friend G.V.K. Rao, who was then the chief secretary of Karnataka, and he encouraged me to start a women’s cooperative promising to lend his official support. Although that story stops there, over the years I have shared my home-made wine, made with Paul’s gift, with many friends.

"Paul had a pad in Bangalore not far from our home and would visit us whenever he was in town. If he was not dining at Koshy’s, a favourite restaurant for Bangaloreans and visitors alike, he would stay on for a glass of home-made wine, and sweet potato polees and instant dosai, neither of which needed elaborate preparation work."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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The Return of the Native and Ragi Dosai

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"The grand-nephew of Enayathullah Mekhri, a public-spirited freedom fighter from Bangalore after whom the Circle on Bellary Road in Bangalore is named, Chamu’s classmate and friend, Mekhri grew up in Mysore. They were childhood buddies while they were both students in Maramalappa’s High School in Mysore, and their friendship continued through their years in Maharaja’s College, also in Mysore. They played cricket together on the same team. Mekhri continued to be a frequent visitor to the family home even after Chamu left to join Bombay University for higher studies. In 1949, post partition of the Indian subcontinent, Mekhri moved to Karachi in Pakistan on the insistence of his wife, who had relatives there. Chamu told me this was Mekhri’s first visit to India since leaving for Karachi.

"It was an emotional home-coming for Mekhri. When he entered our home on Benson Cross Road, he embraced Chamu, reverentially touched the floor, and said, ‘This is my mathru bhumi, my homeland.’ He drew up a chair, sat me down, and told me stories of his friendship with Chamu, R.K. Narayan, Raja Ramanna, the scientist, T.S. Satyan, the photographer, Van Ingens, the taxidermist brothers, and other mutual friends in Mysore. Then he turned to me and asked, ‘Rukmini, nimmige Kannada barutha? Do you know Kannada? And more importantly, what’s for tiffin?’ adding, ‘would it be too much of a trouble to make ragi dosai with coconut chutney? I long for the taste of Mysore Badami mangoes. These are some food items I have not tasted in decades after leaving Mysore.’ I was with a friend I had not met!"

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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Pilgrimage and Tiffin

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"Chandru, son and heir to Ramaswamy, known in his village as Mirasdar Ramu, was the only surviving child of four children. Ramaswamy owned two villages in the fertile Cauvery delta in the Tanjore district of south India, and was one of the wealthiest and influential landowners for miles around. Heir to the vast property, Chandru was married to his mother’s brother’s daughter, his maternal cousin Vijayalakshmi, when he was not quite fourteen and still a student at the High School in Kumbakonam, the nearest big town. Vijayalakshmi had just turned ten. The ‘coming of age’ celebration for Vijayalakshmi was a public event, a dazzling spectacle with a procession, culminating in a feast to which many relatives and villagers were invited. And my uncle added, ‘It was a public announcement, nothing was private and personal.’

"A few years went by and the couple remained childless. Both sets of parents and close relatives were gripped with anxiety over the possible discontinuity of the lineage. The family astrologer was consulted, and on his advice, the couple went on a pilgrimage to Rameswaram to worship at the temple of Shiva, praying for a virtuous son like Rama. The temple is situated on an island off the southern tip of Cape Comorin in south India and across the Pamban bridge. The journey by train took several days."

"In due time, the couple was blessed with eleven children, six sons who inherited hundreds of acres of wet paddy land in the fertile Tanjore delta, and five daughters whose weddings were landmark events in the village. A quarter of a century and eleven children—the family astrologer was vindicated."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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Vaara Shaapaadu with Vermicelli Upma

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" ... The children had left their homes in one of the outlying villages to come and study in Tanjore. They were staying with relatives, who were kind enough to give them shelter in their modest homes but did not have the means to feed them. Two of the boys, Mani and Shiva, came for meals every Tuesday, while Kuppan came every Thursday. On their way to school, they would come to the back door of the house exactly the same time every morning, wash their hands and feet at the garden tap, pick up a banana leaf kept near the door, and squat crosslegged on the cement floor in the verandah adjoining the kitchen, with the leaf placed in front of them. My mother served each one of them with the same care as she would her own children. Steamed rice with sambar and yogurt or buttermilk was the lunch she served them. The institution of vaara shaapaadu (translatable to ‘weekly meals’) was common when I was growing up; you could call it community service.

"Shiva completed the tenth standard board examination, joined the local Serfoji College, and went on to study at the Presidency College in Madras. He was a merit scholarship student in both colleges. On one of my visits to Tanjore many years later, my father handed me an envelope addressed to him and my mother. His eyes were misty with emotion. Shiva was currently living in Washington DC and was working in the World Bank. He was in touch with Mani, who after graduation joined a school in Trichy as a biology teacher, and had brought his parents from his village to live with him. Mani visited my parents one summer, and informed them that Kuppan had joined the postal department and was working in Kumbakonam."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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Dosai and Its Many Avatars

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" ... Ruth, our orthodox Jewish friend, hosted several ‘blintz’ parties, and was keen that I host a dosai Sunday brunch party for four Jewish academics in her home, when Chamu and I lived in the suburb of Bondi in Sydney. The Greek corner store stocked many of the ingredients I needed. I soaked the grains and ground the batter the previous evening, and left it to ferment in a deep enamelled Dutch oven in Ruth’s kitchen. ... "

"Some years back, I visited a dosai ‘camp’ in Bangalore, a three-day fair where several kinds of dosai were made and consumed. I was amazed at the fifty and more varieties, including dosai with ground bananas in the batter competing with instant dosai, ragi flour dosai, both sweet and savoury, paneer (farmer’s cheese) dosai, crisp rava dosai, egg dosai, jackfruit dosai, aval (flattened rice flakes) dosai, jaggery dosai, coconut dosai, neer dosai, green gram pesarattu, Mumbai roadside dosa, a wrap with an innovative filling of spicy stir-fried noodles, cucumber dosai, winter melon dosai, cabbage and other vegetable dosai, as also a Gujarati ‘puda’ counter, to name a few. Gujarati pudas are made with chickpea batter, and as children growing up in Poona, we called them vegetarian omelettes.

"Without exaggeration, every counter in the dosai camp had a long line of enthusiastic customers, the business brisk and efficient, with giant-sized griddles which could make eight dosais at a time! To wash down the dosai, the ‘elaneeru’ guy was near at hand with a mini hillock of tender coconuts piled on the pavement."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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From Menlo Park to Cambridge, Massachusetts

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"Chamu, my spouse and companion, Lakshmi and Tulasi’s father, passed away in November 1999 in Bangalore, and since February 2000, I have been spending more time with my daughters Lakshmi and Tulasi in Boston, where both are academics. I accepted their invitation to live with them as they expressed their inability to travel to Bangalore, as often as they would have wished, to spend time with me. My life here is as rich and fulfilling as it has been all these years. Boston is a beautiful, multicultural, city with a strong presence of many academic institutions of world renown. It is a ‘happening’ place."

" ... I was invited to put together courses on Indian vegetarian cooking for adults at the CCAE, the Cambridge Center for Adult Education. The Center officials knew Tulasi who had, on a few earlier occasions, introduced groups of students to Indian spices. I took this further and designed seven courses, of which four are offered every term; The Indian Vegetarian Harvest Dinner, The Healthy Indian Cuisine, Snacks and Appetizers, Crêpes and Wraps, Indian Pickles, Indian Desserts and A Tour of the Boston Indian Bazaar are participatory courses, with a fixed menu for each class, where I lecture and demonstrate, and students join me in cooking. I introduce them through food and, very often, through ‘tiffin’ to the rich, multicultural country that is India. As they have often told me, ‘Rukka, your narratives of personal experiences spanning several decades with food as the central theme make the classes interesting, and often, when we try cooking at home with your recipes, the stories pop up in our minds and we share them with our families.’ The students, young and not so young, both men and women, are enthusiastic and look forward to learning to cook ‘home-style’ fare, and add, ‘It’s no surprise, Rukka, that you don’t eat out at an Indian restaurant.’ I can say with some satisfaction that my classes are fully registered and students want more of the experience and taste of vegetarian India. On hearing the remarks of my students, Lakshmi and Tulasi pointed out to me that their oft-repeated suggestion that I share my memories and stories with a wider audience should now become a reality. Though I am not a food blogger, I now post recipes to former students and friends and sometimes to total strangers via e-mail! I also have friends like Jackie Manne, now ninety years young, who told me just three days ago that she still remembers my teaching her Indian cooking when we spent time in Palo Alto, and I shared some recipes with her, adding, ‘Alas, Rukka, I don’t cook much anymore but I can still make lassi.’ I wish I could cook for her, but she lives in Stanford, California! Jackie and Alan Manne, with their three children, have lived in Delhi whenever Alan was posted in India as a USAID official. But I first met her in 1964 when we lived in Menlo Park, and we have been in touch for half a century. Jackie fondly reminded me of our last meeting in the 1970s in our Benson Town home in Bangalore. She hosted parties in Stanford wearing a saree, looking very comfortable in it. Whenever she cooked Indian vegetarian food, she kept it simple and authentic.

"And now requests like, ‘Rukka, I have six people coming for tea this Sunday, and I have remnants of hard cheese, zucchini, eggplant and onions; what Indian tiffin can I make?’ Quick and easy would be cheese pakodas and vegetable bajjis, would be my response, or a quick vegetable stir-fry, and I e-mail a list of ingredients and the method of preparation. I now meet friends either in my home in Arlington, Boston, or in their homes in the Massachusetts area, for ‘cook and eat’ Indian tiffin sessions. It’s so much fun."

"What started for me as a perceived necessity by mothers for their children in Palo Alto in 1964 is still seen as a need by adults who have travelled widely and would like a cosmopolitan global table at home, and additionally, an informed health-conscious class that shuns diet fads. At the same time, they look for interesting food menus not too elaborate and that are easy to comprehend and replicate. ... "

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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Acknowledgements

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"Tiffin, which I write about, is made even more appetizing thanks to the photographs of Mahesh Bhat in Bangalore and Nina Gallant in Boston."

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January 15, 2022 - January 15, 2022.

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January 13, 2022 - January 15, 2022

Purchased January 10, 2022.

Kindle Edition, 352 pages

Published July 1st 2015

by Rupa Publications India

(first published January 1st 2015)

Original Title Tiffin

ASIN:- B0192WXNZ0

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................................................................................................

Tiffin: Memories and Recipes of Indian Vegetarian Food Kindle Edition

by Rukmini Srinivas (Author)

Format: Kindle Edition

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0192WXNZ0

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rupa Publications India

(1 July 2015)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Tiffin by Rukmini Srinivas

January 13, 2022 - January , 2022.

First published by

Rupa Publications India Pvt. Ltd

2015

7/16, Ansari Road,

Daryaganj

New Delhi 110002

2015

Food photographs by

Nina Gallant in Boston

and

Mahesh Bhat in Bengaluru

Family photographs

from the author’s album

Book design by Maithili Doshi Aphale

The views and opinions expressed in this book are the author’s own and the facts are as reported by her which have been verified to the extent possible, and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-81-291-2390-9

First impression 2015

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https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4475588144

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Reviews - Books I Read - DRJG

Saturday, January 15, 2022

Tiffin: Memories and Recipes of Indian Vegetarian Food, by Rukmini Srinivas.

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