Illustrated by Nidhi Joshi @thatnoviceartist
(Winner of Bound’s Food Essay Contest)
I am flipping through Amma’s recipe book this evening. I can hear the rain outside, from where I am sitting on the dining table. The pages are populated by a mix of Kannada and English words scribbled in haste. Most of it is illegible to me, partly because I’m a terribly slow Kannada reader but mainly because it’s a language my mother shared with her mother, her neighbour, and herself. She can make out exactly what her shorthand of the time was, a cipher she hasn’t passed to me. Before I can ask her why, she says ‘Why do you need this tattered book? You’ve got YouTube.’
This recipe book, to me, is more than what any video can offer. When I first scanned the pages, I felt like an intruder, prying into those moments she stood next to Jaggu Aunty (her neighbour) who laboriously demonstrated every single dish she thought Amma should know, and made sure she took down detailed notes to replicate them at home.
I could even sense the whispered anticipation of their conversations as they decided what dishes might be better than others to cook for her new husband. ‘Jaggu Aunty (Jaggu being the name of her husband, she’s known to us all as this, I cannot recollect her name) taught me a few dishes when my marriage was settled.’ I have heard a lot about her and her family. I have met them only a few times, but I know them as the family that cared for her as if she were their own daughter.
“These pages tell me what she was aspiring to, what drew her fancy and how often she immersed herself in it. “
It is a journal of Amma’s few months of engagement in her home in Mysore, her early years of marriage in Saudi and her time as a mother in Bahrain and Bangalore, though she doesn’t see it that way. When I ask her if I can read it, she laughs and says, ‘It only looks like a diary, it isn’t one.’
These pages tell me what she was aspiring to, what drew her fancy and how often she immersed herself in it. It is not a straightforward documentation of events, but the notes crawling on the sides about how to adjust serving sizes tells me how many people she had to cook for and the time it would have taken her to do all those dishes after the meal was done. The language in which she’s written tells me where she drew her recipes from or how comfortable she was with the cook that demonstrated them.
A few pages have a different hand. I wonder aloud if she was testing that too. ‘No’, she says, ‘Jaggu Aunty went to great lengths to help me, that’s her handwriting. It’s a steadier hand, devoid of errors, see,’ she points at the words. I don’t agree. Errors here mean that there is room for exploration, trials of small and grand scales. I remind her of 2004, when I had rushed back from school, telling her I had been asked to make something for the annual carnival. The challenge here was, the dish had to be simple enough to have been made by an eight-year-old whilst not being a mere sandwich. Amma looked into her book, combined two dishes and arrived at a modest bread pakoda. 64 pieces in all, they sold out easily as kids came with painted faces and took as many pieces as they could clutch in their hands. ‘Today, I make it a little differently’, she responds, ‘I add rava, carrot and onions and it is closer to the cutlets you like than the pakoda of that day but the inspiration remains the same.’
In the book, she has dog eared some pages. I can tell these are recipes she goes back to even now, since I am familiar with how they taste rather than how they look on the page. These are where her memories lie in the food she cooks. We all have loved the stuffed badnekai (brinjal) subji she makes, and the book is a silent observer and documenter of that. ‘It was Sheela Aunty who told me how to make this’. Sheela aunty is a family friend of ours whose house we frequented every weekend for dinners and get-togethers in Bahrain. ‘This must be around 2003, it was one of those dinners where the kids played and the adults had time to talk. She had made stuffed badnekai and I saw how fascinated all of you all were with the dish and I made a mental note then to get the recipe from her.’ She tells me it’s best eaten with rice roti, the soft plain textures of it envelop the masala heavy lumpiness of the brinjal. This time, it is I who makes the mental note.
“The pages in which the ink has run and bled and the chutney spread, speak to the moments of doubt where she relies on the recipes since otherwise, she thumbs through them memorising all the steps before starting a dish.”
I was moved by how she gave herself so fully to her family’s palate. She senses my question lingering in the air. ‘I loved the taste and I wanted to share that with everyone. It helped that you enjoyed it too.’ The dish is a fond reminder of the vegetable she has slowly but surely replaced in her cooking. ‘I was told that it contains worms which can’t be washed away, and I don’t feel comfortable cooking with it after that.’ She firmly refuses brinjal at restaurants as well.
The pages in which the ink has run and bled and the chutney spread, speak to the moments of doubt where she relies on the recipes since otherwise, she thumbs through them memorising all the steps before starting a dish. The slight quiver in her roadrunner attitude in the kitchen. I, on the other hand, have multiple tabs open on my phone to check and counter check my measures and ingredients. In all my years, I can count the number of times I have seen the book on the kitchen counter, on my fingers.
“As she walks me through these experiences, I think of what little importance these rituals have in my life and how different our practices and persuasions are. Despite it all, I long to hold onto these stories she’s shared with me.”
As I write this, the mixer is whirring coconut into fine powder that’ll go into the sweets for the Habba tomorrow. I pause to offer my hands for service, already knowing her answer. When she’s done turning me down, I open the page in which she’s written the recipe for Karigadabu (a sweet stuffed pastry that has fried grams and desiccated coconut filling and is deep fried), the sweet she’s preparing. Caringly written words, illustrating how to make it leave me pondering. She spent her time learning all these new dishes knowing she’d be cooking them for herself and her husband, a man she was yet to know. What must she have been thinking at this time? I ask her if she was anxious about what lay ahead. ‘I was, of course, but it was something for me to look forward to, and all this was a way to prepare.’
She continues, ‘the preparation dates further back, I remember how sincerely I prayed during Bhimana Amavasya (Married and unmarried women fast and pray for the prosperity and longevity of their husbands’ lives and hope for a healthy, well-rounded husband respectively) and my memory of those days is the Karigadabu, which would be the sweet with which I broke my fast.’ She learnt how to make this from her mother, my Ajji. In all our years living in Bahrain, she would make little sweet and savoury packets during festivals to distribute to her friends. The Karigadabu was a constant in those. As she walks me through these experiences, I think of what little importance these rituals have in my life and how different our practices and persuasions are. Despite it all, I long to hold onto these stories she’s shared with me.
This book has Macaroni Mexican sitting below Paratha. One which disappointed her every time she made it, even as she rewatched those Khana Khazana episodes and one whose stuffing grew in size and varied with her confidence. I can smell and feel her tastes shifting as she writes, picking and choosing from the array of delicacies demonstrated on the cooking shows. A few pages later, amidst the English text, sit Eight Jewel Vegetable and Lotus leaf rice. I don’t remember her having made these, but they stick out of the pages (literally too, I need to find a way to preserve this book) because she had wanted to, at some point.
I stumble across a recipe titled Pasta Arabiyaka. I inquire if this was her own invention inspired by the Gulf and she blushes and walks away. Upon insisting, she tells me she had misspelt Arrabiata. ‘They didn’t subtitle all the shows then, I wrote down whatever I heard,’ she explains. My brother and my reluctance to eat south Indian food every day, made her sit through countless episodes of different cookery shows, where she picked and selected things that she could make in her kitchen.
“On coming back to Bangalore, she reduced the scale of these meals because the ecosystem didn’t allow the space for the same enthusiasm. Not everyone appreciated innovation.”
‘I experimented a lot in Saudi,’ she smiles. Her enthusiasm, directly proportional to the time she had, childfree and alone at home as her husband went to work. While her neighbours napped, she was trying new things in the kitchen which she would serve over dinner to their numerous guests. She lists the number of courses on her fingers, ‘A welcome drink, soup, starters, main course with Chapati and subji, rice and raita, dessert with an ice cream.’ My father also loved the food she made, so much so that he would bring his friends from the office to their home for lunch and so she cooked these grand meals for both lunch and dinner on some days.
On coming back to Bangalore, she reduced the scale of these meals because the ecosystem didn’t allow the space for the same enthusiasm. Not everyone appreciated innovation. Compliments and motivation were few and far in between and spending hours on end in the kitchen made her an outsider to the conversations that happened in the living room, which she now sought to be a part of to anchor herself amidst her extended family. The freedom of Saudi and Bahrain with circles of friends were distant now, it was mostly family and relatives that came over during festivals.
I turn the book a few times and I notice on the front page that it is an old diary from 1990 (gifted by Jaggu Aunty), a few years before she got married. The address reads: Devaraj Urs Road, Mysore. Her home, my home. Places where we each have grown to be the women we are today. Mysore to Saudi Arabia to Bahrain and finally to Bangalore, the book has survived all. ‘How else could I have retained home in a land that was not my own? I carried the roots of the recipes with me everywhere I went.’
“While I’m closing the book, I find a page with scribbles all across the recipe, a sign left behind by a meddling child with a pen.”
The last page of the book, written in Jaggu aunty’s hand reads: Mrs. Narendra. I think she was testing out with Amma how her new name would feel. While I’m closing the book, I find a page with scribbles all across the recipe, a sign left behind by a meddling child with a pen. This book has not just documented Amma’s time around the house, but our (my brother and I) times on the kitchen counter or on the floors as Amma rustled up meals for us, fed us, nourished us in more ways than just through the stomach and bookmarked the dishes we favoured. I am unable to tell what her favourite is amongst all the recipes, something she doesn’t give away very easily even now. One thing I notice is missing in the book are baked items. ‘I don’t understand why you would spend so much time waiting for the oven or fridge to do the work when it is cheaper to buy from the store and will save us all the preparation time,’ she lovingly mocks me.
I have a complicated relationship with food, one Amma still doesn’t understand. But through her food diary, I have understood parts of her we haven’t spoken about before. As I tell her I am writing this essay, she mentions that her Amma, my Ajji, has contributed to the extensive pudi, chutney and gojju section in the book.
Through this, I have discovered a shared love for documentation and writing and doodling (in the margins). ‘I got bored during the commercial breaks and they weren’t long enough for me to do anything else, so I drew.’ I say a silent thank you to Ajji, Jaggu Aunty, friends of my mother, Sanjeev Kapoor’s Khana Khazana, Tarla Dalal, Saviruchi and Sihikahichandru’s Bombaat Bhojana, for collaborating on a journal that I know my mother spent years writing in, hours poring over, and moments cherishing as she continues to read it.
She hasn’t written in it for years now. Much as she denies, she’s a child of YouTube too.
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This piece is thanks to Mangala Narendra’s recipe documentation. I have merely put it together to share the labour of love that this book was.
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Namrata Narendra is an architect and urban researcher based in Bangalore. Her practice and research are rooted in community engagement and art. She loves to draw everything she writes, explore cities by foot and pedal, and make things. She captures her questions and imaginations dealing with cities, human behaviour and everyday life through visuals, words and verse at namratanarendra.in.
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