In God's Own Kitchen (Part III)

A picture is worth a thousand words 

And there is a story always peeking around a corner.

It stands behind the curtains waiting for an audience

It hides in dark rooms waiting to be rescued

And it creeps through long corridors on stormy nights 

To ambush me and you. 

My stories have pictures

My pictures tell stories

Of a God that resides in coconut trees

And is sometimes benevolent and sometimes not.

Of a fisherman's songs

That match the ebb and flow of the tides

Of men with red and green faces whose dance

Chases away the hobgoblins of my nightmares.

Of food that makes you weep

With its aroma of love, loss and longing.

Of food that makes you love

And the memories that it evokes

Of a thousand tinkling laughs in a thousand glass bottles.

And so begins my story often meandering and often tall

Dear reader, do not judge me, for I might just trip and fall.

They twirled in a frenzy of skirts and swords
They bickered, they twittered, they growled, they jousted
They loved, they hated
They were men who played with dolls
They were men who fenced with papier mache sabres
They were the gods and demons from dusty old books
Brought to life by your grandmother's rusty voice
On hot summer afternoons
Cooled by bamboo curtains sprayed with scented water.
Stabbed, bruised and burnt, he collapses into a colourful heap of red, white and gold.
He dies with his eyebrows puckered in surprise.

The Chinese went in two by two...hunting for the fish that had vanished from their own seas.
They built giant creaking contraptions like the machines of Mordor. Sprinkled with fairy dust, the eye of a newt and the ancient songs of the sea, these nets were the scourge of the sea as well as the boon for starving fisherman.

In Fort Kochi, every time you see the sign which says Catch of the Day, its probably found its way to your plate through the Chinese Fishing Net. Every time you feast on the perfectly grilled fresh red snapper, think about how many hours ago it flopped to the floor with a last dying sigh after being caught in a Chinese Fishing Net? Every little crab that you ever ate around these parts walked sideways into a Chinese Fishing Net before appearing on your plate in a healthy shade of tomato red.

I always wondered why we never had gingerbread men in our country.I also wondered about the nomenclature of certain foods and why the only 'bread' in the little gingerbread man was in its name. I was more fascinated by the confection than the fairytale itself where the ginger bread man came to life. Through my travails, in the kitchen, I have peeled endless sticks of ginger. I have smelled ginger powder, eaten ginger candy, gorged on ginger biscuits, julienned ginger into elegant strips and consumed nearly a ton of ginger paste.

However, I have never ever seen a ginger bread man. And as the smells of this dried ginger factory percolated through my olfactory nerves, my heart filled with this unrequited desire to meet and eat a gingerbread man.

All Spice Market was home to the wonderful allspice, a miniature globe containing the whole world within its circumference. the Gods decreed that all the spices would drop their essence into this tiny, innocuous, mud-coloured ball and rolled it off the heavenly plates into the dense forests of kerala. With a plop it fell into the Brahmin's bowl of morning milk
And the rest as they say is all history

Thousands of years later I haggle, I shed tears and I swore like a fishwife to get my precious share of the queen of exotic spices - Mistress Allspice.

Avial, a simple, steamed vegetable dish transformed with freshly ground coconut and tempered with just a hint of mustard seeds and curry leaves. It is highly recommended that you eat avial while listening to Avial's (the Malayalee rock band) earthy rendition of Nada Nada complete with clanging guitars and metal tinged grunts and screams.

Uruli, the light of my kitchen, the fire of my stove, my faithful sidekick, my cauldron of delight. Oo-ru-Lee...the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Oo. Ru. Lee.

Hidden away in a freezer far from prying eyes and known only to a select group of die hard carnivores, beef is a rare (excuse the pun) commodity in Delhi. "beef" is also a dirty word in Delhi. Gau Mata would be a more appropriate title for this half goddess-half beast of burden. Our Gau Mata however, spends a large part of her time negotiating city traffic, scavenging rubbish heaps and languishing on the narrow dividers on arterial roads.

It is a strange journey from drinking cow urine to increase one's longevity (a practice made popular by Hindu nationalists) to eating the most succulent chunks of roast beef cooked in a mild coconut gravy and topped with a layer of crispy potato slices and fried onions. A strange journey indeed!

The red fire burned in his belly.  He clutched his sides in pain. It was an hour too late. He keeled over and collapsed in a heap.
The red, hot curry was always a dangerous idea. It had the seductive charm of a praying mantis attracting her mate. It would pull both skeptics and believers into its fiery pot of deceit.

"I told you not to mess with me," she said.
"I told you not to make me angry when I cook," she continued and patted him gently on his head.
"And I told you that you'd burn in hell, my love," she concluded with a sweet smile.

Postscript:
Just for a moment, I shall stop playing the fool
Only to say that the red fish curry is all about dreams of drool

Rub a dub dub,
Three men in a tub,
And who do you think they be?
The butcher, the baker,
The candlestick maker.
Turn them out, knaves all three.

The nursery rhyme that always came to mind, the song that fluttered on my lips and the image that floated before my eyes, like black spots appearing before a perforated retina every time I saw a bakery.

A strange three-headed monster or divine avatar
A freakish mutant or a lesser God
Gave birth to a hundred coconuts
That went forth and conquered the world.

A hundred coconuts sunning themselves in the sun by the sea.
A hundred coconuts oozing their sweet milk over the land.
A hundred coconuts nourishing the soil with its succulent flesh.
A hundred coconuts dropped out of nowhere.
Just like a hundred fallen moons from some distant galaxy.
A hundred coconuts were reborn as the quintessence of fish curries, pot roasts and custards.

A hundred coconuts cracked open to reveal a glimpse of a colonized world of the future 
Of kitchens in thrall of this alien fruit
Of cooks offering deep obeisance to this grand oval of green
Of mothers using the hard brown nut
As a charm against all evil.
Of little children sucking the last drop sweet coconut water through cheap plastic pipes.
Of big corporations marketing the coconut and its byproducts as new age organic mumbo-jumbo

A strange three-headed monster or divine avatar
A freakish mutant or a lesser God
Gave birth to a hundred coconuts
That went forth and conquered the world.

Priestesses of this temple and storytellers beyond compare, Anu and Aniamma are the keepers of this patch of paradise. There is a bit of magic in their lives as the simple raw vegetable turn to gourmet creations beneath their deft fingers. A sprinkle of this and a dash of that yields a spectacular symphony of flavours and textures. Grand conductors of the kitchen, they cajole you into taking a ride into their world. Love pours out of their kitchens, heat exudes from the food. The land screams its history and the river sings a song through their food. One of the last frontiers of a harmonious world, eating in their kitchen is a peaceful homecoming.

finis