Tag: food

Musings

येळवस

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Vela Amavasya (वेळा अमावस्या or येळवस) is a major socio-religious event in Vidarbh, Marathwada region. This was my second time in Harali around this time. The excitement was palpable the whole week. The Anandshala meetings leading to it were planned keeping the event in mind. The Saturday before Vela Amavasya, the weekly meeting was wrapped up in time to visit the weekly bazar at Jalakot. In addition to the regular fare, the market was brimming with produce needed to cook the special dishes for the day.

Vel amavasya is celebrated on the no moon day in the month of Margashirsh. A hut made of dried remnants of the crop is erected in the farm. Stones or mud roundels symbolising 5 pandavs and Draupadi are placed in it.

Naivedya is very specific: बाजरीचे उंडे steamed balls of millet flour, भज्जी mixed leafy veggies stew (?), गव्हाची खीर wheat pudding, दाण्याची पोळी flatbread stuffed with peanuts and jaggery. And most important आम्बिल, a refreshing drink of millet flour soaked in buttermilk, stored in an earthern pot.

At Harali the pooja was performed by various staff members and guests by offering flowers and lighting one of the wheat flour lamps. The pooja is to ask for blessings and thanksgiving for a bountiful future harvest. As one of the team had started a new venture to lease farm equipment, the crowd suggested they ask for blessing for that as well. As various researchers stepped forward there was further banter about blessings for various research projects. Overall everybody was in a jovial upbeat mood. The holy water was sprinkled around the hut and all over to bless the farm and the people.

The pooja at the main location was done. Got some of the Prasad to mix it with the food being cooked in the communal kitchen. Gauri offered Prasad to the old gentleman, he received it in his cupped hands kept on his back. As he explained, ‘a blessing like that should take a bit of effort’. There are three more places the pooja is traditionally performed at JP Harali. One at the well, another in the mango orchard. Places that were once owned by other villagers. The traditional places of importance need to be honoured.

Throughout the week I received invitations from various team members to visit their farm for the special meal. I was able to manage a visit to Santosh dada’s place and had to be satisfied just to see photos sent by others. Next time need to plan in advance to spend the day visiting more people.

Musings

Lost in translation

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As we travel, interact with people of different states, translate and re-translate colloquial names of vegetables and food ingredients, it has turned into a proper mashup. It might also be as some of us have lost the link between growing and consuming. It might come across as nit-picky when I correct word usage but in less than 10-15 years wrong usage of some of the words has become more and more embedded, especially as Google keeps compounding the initial error. Here are some examples.

Lentils: Masoor. For some reason this word is used to mean Daal or the split version of any legume. For example ‘lentil fritters’ is used for bhaji, it may or may not be masoor flour. In most cases it is chickpea flour. I thought it was a problem in the USA, but I see that now in Delhi as well. It is problematic in practice as all Daals are not made equal in terms of taste as well as digestibility.

Laal Math: A type of Amaranth. I have seen it translated as ‘red spinach’. It is nowhere close to spinach. Spinach is Spinacia oleracea and red amaranth or लाल माठ is from the genus Amaranthus. The usage probably started because of colloquial usage of the generic word Keerai in Tamil that is translated as spinach instead of ‘green leafy veggies’. That is where the word Malabar spinach (Basella alba) originates from, another vegetable that is nowhere close to spinach. I realized this goof up when I ordered spinach seeds from a south Indian grower and ended up with Amaranth seeds. Unfortunately now if you google laal bhaji or red spinach you will get boatloads of

ओव्याची पानं / Indian Borage / omavalli / Ajwain patta: The plant with leaves that smell like carom seeds. This has created so much confusion on OTG groups everywhere. People trying to grow Indian Borage (plant with leaves that smell like carom seeds) with carom seeds. Correcting the misconception is my pet peeve. The confusion started because of the name “ओव्याची पानं” literally carom leaves, instead of “ओव्याचा वास असलेल्या पानाच झाड” literally the plant with leaves that smell like carom seeds. The leaves of carom plant are

The colloquial names for plants if not matched with the colloquial knowledge of plants – the way they look, smell, their texture, the season they are available, how to grow them if not self seeded, and how to cook/use them – then a lot goes wrong in translation.

Musings

खतखत्याचा बेत

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Among the fond memories of my childhood are the Khatkhatyacha bet (vegetable stew special) and rasacha bet (sugarcane juice special). The most prominent ingredient in both was the whole family coming together.

Khatkhata is a mixed vegetable stew. At my mother’s place it was an important dish for Anant Chaturdashi made with 21 vegetables. We did not celebrate Ganesh festival so khatkhata was made on a whim.  Once it was decided to make khatkhata, a sunday trip to Marketyard was planned. In addition to the regular culprits of the veggie world potato, radish, eggplant we also needed green bananas, a variety of fresh beans – cluster beans, string beans, fava beans, VaalPaapdi (lablab), fresh groundnut, and most importantly ears of corn. The beans were bought as a mix as altogether we needed less than a quarter kg of each.

Back home all of us sat down to prepare the veggies for the stew. My mother would take care of cutting the big ones: potato, corn etc. while we helped with deveining, shelling, or breaking the beans in big pieces.

An extended family Khatkhat event at maternal grandmother’s house.

The pieces went in one by one as per the time needed to cook. It is one of the simplest recipes with very few spices that highlights the taste of each and every produce item going in, at the same time creating this most layered soupy goodness. Highlight of the event was sucking on the corn on the cob. The day we had khatkhata there was not much else cooked except rice and may be chapati. I love it the most with rice.

In US this dish was the epitome of luxury and comfort food on a chilly wintery sunday. We made it with whatever vegetables we could find as far as we could get our hands on the ear of corn.    

Khatkhat bowl on a cold wintery day

Dilli Diary

Story of a sapling

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I was waiting imptiently for the weather to warm up a bit to make a garden shop run. A deadline for paper submission behind me in the first week of March I decided to go to Barafkhana to get some seeds and seedlings to start the season.

Not good pickings but we decided to get some anyways in case the Corona threat resulted in a lockdown. One of the wiser decisions in early March. The tomatoes, chillies, eggplants were all easy to pick but the gourds were a problem. Really small saplings with only one or two true leaves meant I wasn’t sure what I was buying. The seller had musk melons and some gourd variety vegetable.

I wanted a ridge gourd. Tori in Hindi. But we have seen some smooth varieties in Delhi that we don’t like. So we proceeded to explain what we really wanted. The ridged variety. A lot of confusion ensued as both the seller and us reached the far end of our vocabulary in each other’s languages. We looked for photos of a ridge gourd on our mobile to show what we mean by the ridged variety. After a lot of mumbling on his part we got a sapling. Me promising myself to come back after a week or so if needed.

Saplings all in their respective new homes that evening, I forgot all about the confusion and the doubt in my mind as we got busy preparing for the lock down. The vine grew beautifully and started flowering. Then there was a female flower. If you are a gardener you will know that gourds have a little version of themselves on the female flower. If you can’t identify a plant, looking at the female flower is a sure-shot way to know what the vine is proposing.

A beautiful round fruit to be. Surely not the ridge gourd I thought I planted. Parag and I thought back to our conversations with the seller trying to remember the names he was throwing at us. Parag thought he said Kakari. A cucumber? That didn’t make sense with the perfect sphere we had. Somebody on the gardening group suggested Kachri. With similar pronounciation to Kakari we thought that was a good candidate. Kachri is a wild melon that looks like a mini water melon, bitter when green and sour as it ripens. Used as a meat tenderizer. None of these things were super exciting or useful for us.

Somebody suggested it might be a Muskmelon but we were sure it had to be something different, a vegetable not a fruit, as the confusion was about the gourd sapling and not the Kharbuja, the musk melon. But we hoped and wondered as the fruit grew. The vine was trained on a vertical mesh assuming it was going to be a ridge gourd. Just in case it was a musk melon, I built a hamoc to support the weight of the fruit.

As the fruit grew in the hamoc, it started becoming stouter in a pumpkin kind of way rather than growing a bit oblong like a kachari. Was the hamoc shaping it differently or was it the natural shape? More discussions among my various gardening groups ensued. It is a musk melon I thought. In the meanwhile Parag tried to taste a fruit that had dropped due to heat. His contorted face said bitter as hell. Kachri it is then.

The color started changing and we waited with bated breath. Smelling it once in a while. Musk melon smell is unmistakable and the aroma catches attention when it is ready, I was told. No aroma. Kachari it is. And then like magic, one evening we found the fruit sitting in the hamoc, unattached from the vine, exuding its signature smell.

Looks like the seller gave us a sapling from the wrong tray. I have never grown a musk melon before so this whole process was utterly fascinating, especially the back and forth every few days wondering if it was Kachri or a musk melon. The aroma was so intoxicating (may be more so after all the drama) that I kept walking to the kitchen to smell it every half an hour. We compared it to the musk melon we had bought the previous day. The size isn’t too small in spite of the limited resources. I am not a fan of musk melon but this one was the most wonderous fruit I have had in my lifetime. Definitely a keeper in the list of plants to grow next spring.

Dilli Diary

Organic Mela

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One of the most interesting Diwali explorations was the Organic Mela at Indira Gandhi National Center for Arts. I was astonished at the sheer number of stalls and representation from all over India. I have struggled to find organic or conversations about organic in Delhi for the last six months. It was heartening to see that the organic growing and environment friendly living movement has caught up and spread considerably.

20181026_194212.jpgThe focus was mainly on grains with a push for millets and indigenous legumes. Spices and herbs was another category. I bought some Turmeric from a farmer family from Amaravati, maharashtra. It was heart warming to have a leisurely conversation in Marathi. Found at least four more stalls of people from the general area. One of the farmers informed that he visits a farmer’s market in Mumbai every week. They were savy in dealing with non-marathi people. Unlike the Maharashtrian farmers, the couple from Tamilnadu manning an organic seeds stall was new to the Delhi crowds and managed to communicate mostly through gestures. In spite of the handicap, they were doing brisk business. After all it is planting season in Delhi finally. Sahaja seeds from Karnataka also had a stall with a pair of women, one farmer and one from the NGO. They sell organic, open pollinated, public domain seeds.

The stall I remember the most however was Bare Necessities by Harsha Patil. I was pleasantly surprised to see the mooncup displayed among the other eco friendly products. In a country like India where talking about menstruation is a taboo it was quite exciting to see the product out there in the open. I hope it peeked interest and started conversations about menstrual health and environmental friendly sanitary products. 20181026_183738

Some other interesting stalls and organizations that I will explore further:
Beejom from NOIDA. They have a dung farm and were selling related products like dung pots, natural liquid fertilizer and pesticide, compost. They also had farm produce – fresh veggies, grains, and daals.

 

Dilli Diary

Ramleela

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After agonizing over which Ramleela to go to we selected one at the Red Fort. We started towards the pandal we could see as we were coming out of the station. The red fort is closed for the duration of the festivities. P1030213.JPG

The first reaction when we entered was excitement like a child. There were joy rides including multiple ferris wheels; all the mela food items – buddhi ke baal (cotton candy), bhel and variety of chaats, barfacha gola (chusky/shaved ice) were right there with the other fun stuff like photo studios, stalls where you could win gifts when you throw a ring or shoot correctly at a target, kid’s toys, haunted house. Basically all the things you experienced in a mela as a child or saw in an Indian movie where the brothers get separated. LOL.

After taking in all that was on offer, we made a beeline to the Ramleela stage. On both sides of the stage there were empty pandals, some with lavish seating. As we realized later, these were for the special guests of people who paid for these spaces as a contribution to the Ramleela.

No crowds at this time so we decided to explore the huge food pandal in front of the stage. The stalls were beautifully decorated with the ingredients of dishes they were selling and the chefs and servers were dressed impecabelly. The pandal had much more of a royal feel than the food stalls we saw coming in.  We ended up trying three snacks – Mung chilla, Kulle, and paneer mava tikki. The green and mithi chatanis were nothing like I have had before. Thick and flavorful.

After PetPuja we decided to explore the rest of the mela beyond the stage. To our greatest surprise it was the LavKush Samiti’s mela right next door. The feel was much different than the New Dharmik Samiti mela we had just left behind. It was also bustling with people. The ramleela was going on the stage already.  No royal looking food stall here though it was full of the same kind of stalls and food items but with slightly less fanfare. Both the Samiti’s had put up digital screens as backdrops but the Lavkush also had huge screens further away from the stage that showed multiple storylines going on the stage. When we arrived Ram and Lakshman were walking in the forest probably after Sita’s abduction. The song narrated their dialogue. For a long time they kept walking slowly across the stage so we decided to go back to the New Dharmik to see what was going on there.

We sat for a long time waiting for some movement. The volunteer kids dressed in white and khakis arrived, had their food, took their places for crowd control and tied the remaining food in a bag next to their posts to the bamboo poles dividing the seating zones. After a short chat with them we realized that the performance will not start for another hour and will go on past midnight. The weather was beautiful, the air smelled of grass clippings, so we decided to settle down with our main course of dinner.

Throngs of crowds started arriving and we realized it must be time. Ram, Lakshman, Sita arrived in a chariot and went round the huge seating area. Then Bharat and Shatrughna arrived and did their rounds. The story moved faster. The background music was sophisticated and more importantly the acting was really good and believable. As the scenes unfolded on the stage, newer characters came out to make their rounds through the crowds.  We liked the imposing Ravan the most.

Ready to go home we reached the metro station and realized there was a third mela organized by the Shri Dharmik Samiti, next to the first one. We had missed it as we came out of the metro with our backs to their entrance. This one needed an Entry Pass. We were told this was the best one that we should not miss and some person at the door made sure that we got a pass. Visits to the three melas was a lesson in sociology and how the class differences play out. We realized that the placement matched exactly with the classes that gathered there Lavkush, New Dharmik, and Shri Dharmik – everybody going to the one that they felt most comfortable with. The look and feel was different; the security arrangements were different; some food items in Shri Dharmik weren’t available in others and some of the toys on offer showed the class divide as well. I wondered if the Shri Dharmik used the passes as a special effort to keep what they thought as the ‘rifraff’ out. It was quite an education about Delhi society.

New Dharmik
Shri Dharmik

Some interesting things we saw in Shri Dharmik Samiti’s mela:

dessert
Very traditional Ramleela stage
Jatayu waiting in the wings to fly in

Musings

Navaratri vs Durga Puja

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The Navaratri vs DurgaPuja fights continue. I wrote about the meat shop closures in Gurgaon and Faridabad couple days back. That was Delhi NCR, so although ignorant, I can understand it somewhat.

Now hindutva groups are taking offence to a Bengali advertisement by Fortune foods that shows a woman planning for the 4 day feast including fish and meat. See Scrolls’s coverage here. According to Scroll the organization translated the lyrics in Hindi. From what I can see it is a completely wrong translation that adds the Navaratri ethos to a Durga Puja related video and creates a completely different story. I could not find that translation but on twitter found the @HinduJagrutiOrg congratulating themselves with followers commending them and the Hindu Ekta/unity.

Hindujagaran.org has a message about the advertisement on their site  “इस विज्ञापन में महिला को आदिशक्ति दुर्गामाता के रूप में दिखाया गया था आैर उसके हाथ में शस्त्रों की जगह विविध प्रकार के खाना बनाने के चम्मच दिखाएं गए थे । इस तरह मां दुर्गादेवी का मानवीकरण कर उसका अपमान किया गया था”

So the outrage here seems to be about humanizing the goddess. The problem however is that Bengalis do consider Durga as if she is a family member coming down to her Maayaka for the four days with her family and pamper her as if she is the daughter of the house. She is the mother and the daughter and a lekurvali as we would call her in Marathi. This is my understanding from interacting with Bengalis around me. This advertisement perfectly showcases the Bengali spirit during Pujo times. You can see that in the comments from Bengali people on the youtube video. It sounds somewhat like the liberties we take with Ganesh, our favourite deity. It is done out of love and sense of closeness. How can that be insulting?

Last year Javed Habib similarly had faced outrage for ‘using’ Durga in his print advertisements that show Durga coming to his saloon with her family. Here is the Indian Express coverage.  I am told that it is a tradition for Bengalis, in print media and cartoons, to showcase Durga with her family doing everyday tasks. The article at the end also shares some of the print ads that have appeared before. Habib is not insulting a Hindu goddess, he has depicted the Bengali spirit perfectly.

These episodes were pretty disturbing for me, much more than the meat shop closures. Both these advertisements were targeted at Bengali people. It wasn’t even in their North Indian backyard. The hindutva organizations in both these instances have gone looking for insult and excuse for outrage. Is this a pre-election ploy to get people riled up about things that don’t matter or do not even exist?

The people responding to the tweet are Marathi and Hindi. Marathi probably because ShivSena is part of the consortium of hindutva organizations. That scares me. I wonder about the future of my home state Maharasthra, the social activism hub of 19th century. It is unfortunate/alarming if this is what we are leaving behind for the next generation when the previous generations left us the legacy of Phule and Karve.

To improve your mood a bit after all this doomsday talk, here is one more Pujo song from Sawan Datta. Enjoy!

Musings

Your food, my food

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I am pretty excited about pendal hopping for Durga Puja. I know it is not Kolkatta but I will take whatever I get as my first experience of Durga Puja in  Delhi – the dhak, dhunachi, the dance, the merrymaking, and most importantly the food. Started the planning already by joining a pre-Durga Puja guided walk (more about it here) and googling for lists of ‘do not to miss’ pendals and food items.

Although Bengali Durga Puja is about the goddess and coincides with the Navaratri celebrated in North India, it has a completely different ethos. Navaratri is about fasting while food, dressing up, and merrymaking are the integral part of Pujo. These are both Hindu people celebrating Hindu festival but the practices are completely different. During the pre-Durga Puja walk a north Indian couple of foodies were telling me about how difficult it is for them during pendal hopping as they see all this wonderful food but can’t touch it as they don’t eat non-veg (meat, seafood) during Navaratri. They were at the pre-Durga Puja walk so that they could eat what they would otherwise miss during the actual celebrations.

In the popular media however, there is utter ignorance about other communities living in such close proximity. Not just ignorance but belief that their version of the Navaratri is The Hindu version of what happens during the nine days.

A comment on article about ‘not to miss food items during Pujo’ ridicules the author for mentioning non-veg dishes. “How can you be stupid to add this during these days. Don’t you know people don’t eat non-veg during this time?” is the general tone in many places on the internet as Bengali people remind sommenters that for Bengalis the rules are different. The bhog for the goddess includes illish, the fish most favourite of the bongs.

On this background I read the news today that a consortium of 22 Hindu groups has threatened to force shut all meat shops in Gurugram (Gudgaon) during the festival of Navaratri. Shivsena, one of the member of the consortium, has gathered 125 members to coax or coerce meat shop owners to comply. First of all what is Shivsena doing in Gurgaon of all the places. It is a local organization from Maharashtra. Secondly, who gave them permission to decide what people should or should not eat during Navaratri.

I am not quite sure if this is being portrayed as a religious thing – Hindus vs other meat eating religions. It is wrong even then. However, it is worse as one way of being a Hindu is being touted as The way. How about look just a few miles away in Chittaranjan park, shops brimming with mutton and fish readying themselves for Durga Puja. Those are Hindus too. That is also a ‘traditional’ way to be a hindu.

This monolithic image of a Hindu being touted and enforced with threat of violence is the most dangerous thing about the right wing spread.  I always thought that acknowledging the different practices of Hindus makes them open to live with people of other religions peacefully and participate in their celebrations.  If we loose sight of the colourful diverse canvas of hindu practices and our ethos of celebrating each one, there is no hope left for harmony among religions.

Dilli Diary

Delhi Unseen

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Coming home late nights or getting out early morning, you see a completely different Delhi.
Tonight we saw this gentleman heating milk on the road outside his dairy. The milk will have to cool down in shallow rectangular trays which will take beyond midnight on a hot day like this. Then put the ‘khatai’ to make dahi / yogurt ready for tomorrow morning.

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On a parallel road cooking commences early in the morning. At 6 am when we walk by we see men who man the ‘cool water’ carts get ready for the day with a hefty breakfast of Puri bhaji or rajma roti or chana roti.

Dilli Diary · Musings

Food for thought: Vegetarian Delhi

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I was perplexed when we encountered multiple situations where our search for a house bumped against the ‘vegetarians only’ requirement. Till then I thought of Delhiites as a staunchly meat eating people. When I thought of Delhi I always thought of it as a Muslim and Punjabi city with Mughlai and Punjabi food influence, in my mind heavily dependent on meat.

When house hunting, contrary to this belief, we found many more eateries serving purely vegetarian food, many times vegetarian versions of what I thought was predominantly meat dishes like chaap. Chaap as far as I understand is minced or cubed things cooked on skewers. The area we live in is full of chapp places selling paneer, soya, green jackfruit, and so on. I assumed it was a very specific thing about our neighbourhood.

Today the INTACH heritage walk however completely changed my understanding of delhi residents. We were supposed to meet near the Jain Temple in front of the Red fort. I was curious how a Jain temple ended up just outside the Red fort gate. It was astonishing to learn about the importance of Jain treasurers in the Mughal courts. The history books told us about the Rajput and maratha warriors in the court but I never heard the stories of other communities. Our walk through Chandani chawk and surroundings with multiple Jain temples, and havelis of Jain merchants further wiped out my mental map of delhi as a culturally/historically Muslim and Punjabi city.