This is no lily-livered tale

LIVER, n. A large red organ thoughtfully provided by nature to be bilious with. The sentiments and emotions which every literary anatomist now knows to haunt the heart were anciently believed to infest the liver; and even Gascoygne, speaking of the emotional side of human nature, calls it "our hepaticall parte." It was at one time considered the seat of life; hence its name— liver, the thing we live with.

Ambrose Bierce The Devil's Dictionary

My earliest memories of Liver were bitter - they were of cod liver oil capsules

Then i remember liver being spicy.

It was my grandfather's favourite Sunday afternoon nosh and wound up on our tables ever so often without any preamble unlike the fussy mutton curry and rice which announced its arrival hours before it made its way into our bellies. Spiced and fried into a delicious kosha alu mete (a spicy fried liver and potato dish), it embedded itself as a taste memory of my childhood.

In my terrible teens, liver became the stuff of horror movies - Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs destroying my sleep with a single line:
"A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."

 And somewhere in the recent past, liver got pounded into becoming a chronicle of my kitchen.

While I am no lily-livered kitchen warrior, this particular skirmish with liver left me pale faced. It is a good thing that chicken liver has fantastic restorative properties and it especially helps the production of red blood cells. Thus I survived, though there were other casualties...

a. my World War II era Sumeet mixer grinder
b. my favourite paisley-patterned-pretty-pink apron
c. my already shaky self confidence in my somewhat questionable and often flawed culinary abilities

and all these great sacrifices of objects grand and inconsequential - for one measly little hospital-white soup bowl of liver pate...sigh...I wallow in the slush left behind by all my flimsy food fantasies.

And this particular episode was inspired by a book. Ha! Of all the foolhardy things to use as a guide...a book written by a neurotic non chef having an early mid life crisis...a book so close to my heart and a protagonist who could be my soul sister...it reeked of a bad idea. And it was a meaty kind of reek.

Yet, since my life is a case study where idiocy usually triumphs better sense, I did eventually follow Julie Powell's excessive obsession with offal. For weeks on end, the only thing i could think about was offal. I fell in love with the syncopated syllables of the word that had previously existed in my vocabulary as one of those dirty words that could desecrate a place by its mere utterance. I was fascinated by Julie's downright graphic description of these bitlings of meat and sex and forbidden fruit all rolled into one.

And after obsessing about it in theory, I went on an eating spree. I revisited all the offal I had ever eaten from the squidgy heart in a broth to the divine devilled (tee hee...i love the silly oxymoronish nature of offal) kidneys on toast, from the fiery capsicum and onion braised ox tongue to the lovely creamy-kernel of carnivorous pleasure, every gourmand's favoured posion - the exquisite liver pate.

If i ever wrote a book on food, I would devote an entire section of it to foie gras. Sophisticated, sexy, stark, with a touch of S&M (the obese goose with its bulging fatty liver), it was a bit like a jazz maestro delivering his magnum opus before slitting his wrists.

It was fresh new love forever etched in my memory. I tasted foie gras for the first time at a French restaurant in a wonderful colonial hotel circa 2001. Where every mouthful of beauteous beige tasted even sweeter because it was the fruit of hard labour. It had been earned over a month of hour long sweaty bus rides populated by lecherous groping hands and foul breath and fouler tongues over the winding streets of Old Delhi.

It was a grown up romance. A sinful duet of minced meat that would melt in your mouth and a surprising centre of tender foie gras that would settle on your tongue for a second before melting away and leaving behind memories of gold. It was a quiet candle lit anniversary dinner at a quaint manor hidden amid leafy vines circa 2010.

It was a meeting between old lovers over a glass of their favourite spiced wine. It was foie gras, radiant in all its glory unmasked, unpretentious, demystified. Served on fine white porcelain, it was devoured by twin forks awkwardly touching in the quiet scuttle for the last dashes of this precious organ.

I speak of a time past and a time that is yet to come. Through all of it, the obsession with foie gras remains constant.

Meanwhile, in the recent times I was dreaming of liver and its meaty, dark and brooding flavours, I would wake up in the morning hungry. Like there was a little gooey liver coloured man in my head, asking me to feed it...well...liver. 

After scouring five meat shops and two supermarkets, I manged to collect what looked like a respectable amount of chicken liver. Alas, my meagre bank balance and an obvious scarcity of cackling white geese around these parts makes raw goose liver a hard thing to come by. So I settled for chicken liver which strangely enough I have developed quite a soft soft for.

I mention the word 'strange' because there is not too much that is likeable about chicken liver. It turns an ugly grey once cooked. It is bothersome to cook. If overcooked it turns hard and mimics the consistency of cork and leather cricket ball. If undercooked it resembles a bloody science experiment gone wrong. However, if cooked right, it can knock the wind out of your gut with its powerful aromas. And I mean that in a good way.

I ran my fingers through the red, jelly-like nearly alive bits of liver in my kitchen sink almost trilling with pleasure at their velvety softness and fatty trims. I washed, patted them dry and dressed them in a winey, herby, buttery sauces. Then waving a metaphoric good bye to my little meatlings, like the veritable Mother I grilled them, broiled them and pureed them with a dash of this and that .

I survived some tragic losses. I broke some family heirlooms and nearly lost a finger. I nearly required smelling salts by the time the whole process was over and also nearly destroyed my own liver with the copious quantities of alcohol consumed in a really short capsule of time.

Yet, at the end of it. There it was. Love on a plate. Sex on toast. My liver pate in a bowl.

To be lovingly shared with the husband. Since I can't sing, I will render my love song in pate.

We smeared it over our crackers, our whole wheat loaves. We stuffed it into tarts. We paired it with jellies. We laced it with crisp salad leaves and bounced olives off its buttery crust.

It was liver-induced madness. With a hint of humour lurking around its edges.

The Shop around the Corner

I live, like many other migrants to Bengaluru, in a well-guarded multi-storied bastion, keeping the rest of the world out. I also live on a bustling main arterial road and the nearest market is a good 20-minute walk, 20 minutes too long after a long working day. My early days in the city thus saw me heavily dependent on a well-known supermarket chain which has its outlet right within the campus of my building. While it is adequate enough for daily groceries, it is a disaster as a greengrocer. With maggoty fruits, holey salad leaves and bruised veggies, this was the nail in the coffin for my supermarket adventures which had started with a rat which jumped out of a shelf full of wilted spinach in a neighbourhood supermarket in Delhi. For me, that moment marked everything that was wrong with our so-called retail food boom.
I had grown up in Kolkata, going to the local market with my grandfather, where everyday's veggies were bought fresh from the vendors whose burlap sacks upended piles of fresh seasonal vegetables straight from the local farmers. There was no excess and there was no wastage from the seller to buyer and from the cooking to the eating. It was a way of shopping and eating that has become alien in our workaday lives. We now live away from our families and their expansive kitchens. We shop on weekends at chain stores, buying stuff for the fortnight and the food we eat comprises limp, half-frozen vegetables that are turned into quick and insipid curries.   
In my mind I was an old-fashioned sort. It is the early morning market visits with my grandfather which taught me that. I liked handpicking my veggies. However, as a recently grown up, working and married woman who had recently left her pampered home and hearth, these shopping rituals were hardly a luxury. From Delhi to Bengaluru, my experiences with local sabziwallahs have been complicated. As they looked at my discomfiture vis-a-vis veggies that I had grown up hating, they would give me withering looks. My naivete made me especially gullible to the vagaries of these men and women who would convince me of the seasonal freshness, the problems with the crops and the unfamiliarity with the local prices.
This is what drove me to a supermarket and its everything-under-one roof convenience. As I would move from aisle to aisle towards the vegetable section with my hope still afloat. Every single supermarket disappointed. Every fruit and vegetable on the shelf looked like it had travelled the breadth of the country fighting disease and deprivation till it reached this particular metal shelf—its chosen spot for its last breath. It was organic carnage. The potatoes had either turned green or into mutant flowerpots with little leafy stems. Tomatoes would burst into a bloody mess the moment I dropped it into my empty cart and once, I even saw a few little worms clinging to the plastic of the cling-wrapped Washington apples.
My local sabziwallah would set up his cart-shop ten minutes away from my apartment every evening from 5-9 pm without fail. I would return to that shop over and over with a woebegone face. I imagined him smirking as he imperiously tossed fresh-from-the-field veggies into my bag while charging me a premium and dismissing my arguments about the supermarket deals with a single "take it or leave it" look.
It is quite the conundrum, one that eludes a perfect solution. Bengaluru is a city of many choices from the exorbitant organic to the weekly farm-fresh produce in mandis at the other end of town. However, in all these situations, the idea of being an incompetent haggler in an unfamiliar language was as unpleasant as it is was a blow to the ego of a bargain hunter such as myself.
In my search for options, I often ended up at a bright, airy and air conditioned gourmet store sprawled across the top floor of a swanky city mall. The visit to this store ended up being weekend entertainment like visiting the zoo rather than a chore. As unfamiliar food and artistic culinary displays have a strange allure for me taking me to unknown lands on the culinary map. This particular store with its piles of delicate berries, smelly cheeses, exotic mushrooms and candied fruits, is my vicarious food trip across the world. Rare mushrooms, Mediterranean peppers and hairy tropical fruits jostled for space in this alien smorgasbord straight out of a Ridley Scott masterpiece. The end result, I purchase no useful staples that we can actually eat, but overpriced and useless exotica which sit uneasy in a good home-cooked meal.
Despite my aversion to aisle store fare, I do recommend its fair pricing. In the many veggie cons that have been pulled on me, most famous was the one where I went to a specialist Bengali market where I met a vegetable seller with the gift of the gab though and I was the recipient of the one standout sale he made that day. I bought a lau (a bottle gourd), which according to him had arrived that very day from Kolkata on the superfast train. And with such a narrative flourish, he sold us a `15 vegetable for more than five times its worth.
As I returned time and again to my neighbourhood sabziwallah, his grouchy face seemed to occasionally carry the hint of a smile. It was a less-than-perfect relationship. Yet, we learn to make do. And he always sold me the plumpest, reddest and freshest tomatoes which made up for my disillusionment with the pre-packaged "lowest price" supermarket rotters.

'Keep Truckin - like the Doodah Man'

Weaving his way through a sea of bright red plastic chairs is a little boy who cajoles every passerby with a wave. He tempts with his little plate of wonders. Piled high with fat, freshly baked parathas with a big dollops of white butter or a spicy plate of rajma chawal or even a simple dal-sabzi-roti this is sin in a stainless steel thali.

White, brown and cream  roundels of just-baked unleavened breads stuffed with generous helpings of fresh white radish, greens and white cauliflower florets, and a medley of leafy treats and little coin sized servings of spicy, orange pickle. These are the predominant colours of spring for a truck driver or businessman doing the familiar circuit down the NH1.
Haryana in spring is like a mischievous bride who is somewhere in between puberty-inspired awkwardness and dazzling beauty. There is the proverbial spring in the step as visitors, locals, friends and foes bounce from one charpoy to the next...

Driving down the highway in Haryana, one learns to eagerly wait for these dhabas with their freshly made rustic fare served in without any fanfare under dusty umbrellas and fringed by acres of mustard. The whole scene could be a set piece out of a glorious Bollywood romance. A dhaba in Haryana is her gift to overworked truck drivers, young holidaymakers, enthusiastic Enfield biker gangs and adventurous city folk alike.Interstate travellers on NH1 stop for a stretch, fresh air, potty breaks and the glorious parathas. One of the first pit stops for highway crawlers is Murthal. Barely 50 kms out of Delhi, this little town in the Sonipat district of Haryana has seen a fair bit of development due to its location right by the highway. Its claim to fame however is its beribboned and streamer festooned dhaba. There is a dhaba nearly every 100m the moment one steps into the Murthal stretch and this particular culture has extracted the town from its anaemic existence and given it shot of pizzazz...akin to the tiny servings of red onion juliennes doused in red chilli powder and lime juice that transform a simple meal of dal-chawal.Though primarily vegetarian, some of these eateries will serve tandoori chicken to go with layered parathas and dal tadka. Early to mid March is a lovely time to visit as the weather is perfect for a leisurely afternoon meal on a charpoy. Spring time veggies and greens just make the experience more enjoyable. Homemade  butter comes as a side order with anything that you order here. Don't forget to order the spicy bathua raita (a Haryanvi specialty made with curd, bathua saag or pigweed and dried spices) that will send oodles of pleasure to every nerve fibre on your tongue. 

Further along the NH1, many cheerful establishments just  pop up on either side of the road and sometimes pass by in a blur of colour as your speedometer registers a 100kmph and the milestone reads Panipat - 1 km. Tinny sounds from the radio play herald and a string of  light bulbs twinkle like a minor constellation. These are the sights and sounds that welcome you to Panipat. The dhaba land of Panipat is distinguished by a new sign. Pachranga is to Panipat nearly what the first, second and third battles of the selfsame Panipat are to the annals of Indian history. This local pickle manufacturer has built its brand for nearly a century and has carried rich aroma of its pickles and chutneys to every corner of India and abroad. A special seasonal favourite is the carrot, cauliflower and turnip pickle that is matured in the sun through the winter months and is ready for the first taste with the end of the cold season. From the ubiquitous mango, lime and chilli to the more exotic lotus stem pickle, Pachranga pickles are available at nearly every grocery shop and dhaba in Haryana. Those merely passing through can buy bottles of this divine concoction at the numerous makeshift tents and roadside stalls. Bring a bottle of Pachranga pickle home and watch your end-of-the-day, five-minute meal transform into a tingling feast for the taste buds.

Continue driving down the long snaking artery through Haryana’s heart and you will reach the town of Karnal. Famous for its dairy research centres ( yes they actually study milk and its varied produce), the undisputed cereal queen or Basmati rice and Liberty Shoes (remember its cute, retro-pop advertising?), this town is recommended for your sweet tooth. From ghee-soaked and piping hot jalebis to the much lauded rewri and gajjak. These peculiar too-sweet molasses and sesame seed concoction are oddballs in my sweetmeat heaven. Yet, they seem to be incredibly popular around these parts. Big piles of these sweets dominate every glass-fronted, fly-encrusted sweet shop in this town. Around Basant Panchami or the spring festival, there is a new entrant on the scene. Like the Coldplay song, like a surly teen's jaundiced vision, every thing is yellow around this time, around these parts. Mithe chawal (a traditional delicacy prepared with rice, dried fruits, nuts and saffron) is a confection in yellow, eaten by people dressed in yellow sitting by fields aglow in yellow. 

As the NH1 passes through the age old district of Kurukshetra, the pre Cable TV, Sunday morning 9 o clock ritual comes to mind. Doordarsan gave us Ravi Chopra's magnum opus called Mahabharata and as you drive through the forlorn streets of Kurukshetra, fuelled by an empty stomach and hyperactive imagination, you can feel yourself ducking magical arrows with multicoloured sparks. And shocking a placid cow with your acrobatics.Notable because of its Mahabharata connection, Kurukshetra is a religious hub and a picturesque rural retreat. Jyotisar which is a short detour off the NH1 is a lovely spot where Krishna delivered the Bhagwad Gita. This is also a good pitstop if your hungry stomach is playing tricks on your mind. Their simple and hearty Makki di Roti and Sarson da Saag will not disappoint in all its buttery effusion.

Now just before the highway enters Punjab, the land of five rivers and Fish Amritsari and the real Tandoori Chicken, a  largish industrial town materializes from the fug. Ambala, a genteel town with rough edges is part colonial, part Punjabi, part Haryanvi and all chaos and colour. This major railroad junction and army/air force base is a repository of different types of cuisine and celebrations. The spring breeze tied to a kite string flies from roof to roof spreading warmth and joy in every passerby's heart. 

Moving up from the heart towards the gullet that is, one must take a detour off the NH1 into the Halwai  bazaar or sweetmaker's market. One of the interesting things about halwais are that they are versatile and try their hand at delicious savoury treats like pakoras, kachoris and the lovely chaats glutting you with multiple sensory experiences till you are ready to swoon. 
This particular bazaar is a collection of halwai shops, reeking of the pungent aromas of spicy dipping sauces,  the oily perfume of onion fritters and the gently tantalizing whiff of sweet ghee and molasses. You cannot return without having dipped your chops into the golgappas with seven types of flavoured water and bhalla chaat ( a sweet and sour symphony in curd, mint, tamarind and lentil dumplings. 
Strangely bereft of meat, this road trip can wind up or down at the meat lover's Mecca - Puran Singh ka Mashhoor Dhaba. Strangely enough the success of the original spawned many clones and all of them mushroomed around the same spot. Arm your nose with a Holmesian instinct and walk around from one Puran Singh Dhaba to the next, sampling its tender mutton curry till you find your personal favourite. With this last stop, the NH1 enters Punjab. Our well-sated trucker has eaten his fill. He has stopped for a customary pee in the mustard fields, he has heard his old battered CD of Dilwalein Dulhaniyan Le Jayenge on loop and revelled in the clean spring air.Now its time to return to the highway again.

(A more journalistic version of this piece appeared in the Jan-Feb issue of India Today Travel Plus)

Kerala Redux

Once upon a time in Kerala

My story stood peeking around a corner.

It waited on tiptoes behind the curtains, waiting for an audience

It hid in dark rooms, waiting to be rescued

And it crept through long corridors on stormy nights

To ambush me

And you.

This is the story of a God that resides in coconut trees

And is sometimes benevolent and sometimes not.

It is a story of a fisherman's song

That matches the ebb and flow of the tides.

It is a story of men with red and green faces whose dance

Chases away hobgoblins.

It is a story of food that makes you weep

With its aroma of love, loss and longing.

It is a story of food that makes you love

With the memories that it evokes.

It is a story of a thousand tinkling laughs in a thousand glass bottles.

It is a story often meandering, and often tall,

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

A strange three-headed monster on certain full moon nights

And a lesser god on the other days of the year

This tree gave birth to a hundred coconuts

That went forth and conquered the world.

And one fine day,

A hundred coconuts dropped all at once and were scattered over the land.

Riven from the sheltered boughs and protective fronds.

These orphan spheres appeared on the horizon

Like a hundred fallen moons from some distant galaxy,

The hundred coconuts came of age under the sun and by the sea.

The hundred coconuts oozed their sweet milk over the land.

The hundred coconuts nourished the daughters of the soil with their succulent meat.

The hundred coconuts were transformed into the mysterious quintessence

Of fish curries, pot roasts, avials, and custards.

The 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 of sweet coconut water

Through neon-green plastic pipes.

Of big corporations marketing its coconut products

To divas with Gucci sunglasses perched on their delicately powdered noses

Carrying retro jute bags and eating organic tofu.

The hundred coconuts changed the destinies of men.

The hundred coconuts created food fit for kings

The hundred coconuts desiccated the swamps and turned them into plantations

The hundred coconuts became signifiers of health, wealth and prosperity

And many years later

The hundred coconuts blew away in a gale

Leaving behind a seed of doubt and possibility

In the minds of men who had lived through these times.

Many moons passed

And many a child grew into the pink of youth

In the midst of political turbulence

And economic upheavals.

Young men left the land in search of greener pastures 

In the desert land across the world.

They built double-storey homes with pink walls and bathroom tiles 

Perched precariously on their picturesque village greens.

They came home two weeks in a year,

An army of haggard men,

An army of bent men

An army of hollow men

Lugging their broken spirits and slipped discs along with the new 21-inch colour tvs.

The coconut crops had been failing

The water wasn't as sweet anymore.

The people forgot the lesser gods

Who presided over domestic corners. 

An amnesiac race poured gallons of milk 

Over the Creators and Destroyers of the world.

Only a handful of ancient, toothless women would go hunting for a coconut tree

On the hottest summer afternoon of the year.

"We must find him. The God of all our Small Things," they would mutter and hobble away into the distance. 

One spring morning, 

A young bride dressed herself in her day-old wedding finery

She tied her vermillion smeared hair 

Into a loose knot

And walked hesitantly

To the bullock cart which would carry her toward adulthood

In a matter of a few hours. 

She swayed from side to side 

Her shoulders grazing those of her husband of a few hours.

She shed a silent tear 

Of love, loss and longing 

As the trees and fields of her childhood games 

Filtered through the flimsy gold gauze of her wedding veil

Disappeared into the horizon 

With the suddenness of a magic trick.

A random stone 

Crippled the bull

And punctuated the doleful ride

With a much-needed stop.

The swollen-eyed bride peeked out from under her veil 

And looked skywards on a whim.

And a few feet away, she saw it for the first time.

The strange three-headed monster

That was growing out of the soil.

A hundred baby coconuts hung ponderously from its delicate limbs.

The bride looked up in awe forgetting her veil and her husband of a few hours

She simply pointed and muttered a half remembered phrase from her grandmother’s tales,

“This is the God of Small Things.  

He has returned to our land again 

And now we will live happily ever after, she said with a watery smile."

A Devil and a Crab

Prologue:

My earliest crab memory dates back to when I was a wee child who woke up in the middle of the night to a strange rustling sound. 

I awoke from my stupor and swung my legs over the side of the bed only to land on something hard, scaly...and moving...

Too young to know about the critters and too old to believe that the ground had turned into a hungry monster, curiosity made me flip the switch of the night lamp.

And there...scurrying away from the warm yellow spotlight...on the purple tiled floor of my parent's 1st floor apartment in a respectable neighbourhood...was a red crab the size of my fist. I quickly yanked my foot away from the ground...only to see another cheeky creature dashing under my bed.

I remember yelling like a banshee. I remember jumping up and down on bed thinking it was the worst nightmare come alive. My house was overrun with crabs and we were about to be taken down by the scarlet army waving their pincers high!

I also remember thinking that it was the most exciting thing that had ever woken me up in all the years of my existence.

Soon, however, the parents appeared along with the cook who was the cause of the crustacean invasion. She had bought fresh (read: alive and scuttling) crabs in a basket from her seaside home and somehow over the course of the next five minutes the two errant escapees were restored to the basket and it was secured again. 

I remember feeling a little bad for the poor creatures who had attempted to escape their cruel fate (read: our lunch the next day)

I also remember eating the selfsame crabs the next day. And believe me tinged with guilt they tasted sweeter - a bit like the famed forbidden apple.

That was the original sin.

Chapters 1-10:

You nipped at my feet

On an expansive stretch of pristine white sands

On a moonlit night

By the silvery waters of the Andaman Sea

You scuttled sideways into my plate

A study in scarlet.

Buttered.

Boiled.

Blanched.

Batter-fried.

Curried in a medley of orange and green

Devilled in a duet of cheese and pepper

Steamed in a bouquet of butter and garlic 

Fried with the trio of tomato, onion and potato

You came to me in a goblet of silver on ice.

You came to me on a banana leaf with rice.

I tore you apart with my ten digits

I hacked at your sweet creamy innards with my gleaming fork

I attacked your pincers

With my powerful weapons of crustacean destruction.

You waged a mean battle 

Even as a dead one

Refusing to yield 

Nice and easy

To a gentle poke

Or a violent jab.

I am not sorry I ate you.

My dear “pair of ragged claws”

You made a sinner of me.

Crab a la Shampa di which needs to be patented

Epilogue:

This post is a vindication of my sin. It is dedicated to all the little river crabs and all the giant sea crabs that have found their way into my belly.