Month: April 2015

“Anu atha, this Madras is soooo hot… I’m itching all over,” my nephew Shriram tells me, soon after moving to Madras and joining his college hostel.

“Let me take a look,” I’m wondering if it’s prickly heat. Nothing much except a mild rash though.

Give him something for it and then we continue our conversation about life in the hostel. How’s the food, is my inevitable first question!

Then questions about who cleans the room (the students!), who washes clothes – is there a laundromat? Expecting that this being one of the most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the country, of course there’d be  a veritable bank of washing machines!

Yeah, there’s  a washing machine but it hasn’t been working for two years! He doesn’t seem to be particularly perturbed, so I ask him how he’s washing his clothes. Considering that he’s a basketballer and that Madras is the sweatpot of the world, there must be loads!

Oh, I wash them by hand, he says breezily. Nosy parker that I am, I ask for details (I’m secretly impressed that he even knows how to wash clothes!)

“Oh, there’s nothing to it, Anu atha, he says, I don’t know why we even need a machine or people make such a fuss about it.” I am by now seriously in awe!

“You just put them in water, add some washing powder, shake them about a bit, then hang them out to dry. That’s all,” he says!

“What about rinsing them out?” I ask.

“What’s that?” he asks!

“You know, you need to get the soap out, right, so you rinse it in plain water?”

“Do you have to do that, Anu atha?”

“Well, duh!”

“Oh… oooh... ooh... so that’s what my clothes are so stiff after they dry?”

“Yes, and that’s also why you’ve got itchy skin!”

And so begins a lesson in washing clothes – for kids who’ve been brought up on machines, this seems like quite an esoteric skill to acquire!

I have an epiphany on perspective. For those of us standing on the other side (the pre-side) of the Great Washing Machine Divide, we look at the machine in wonder. For those on this side, the handwashing days are positively exotic!

And, oh, by the way, he says, the food in the hostel is great!

A few weeks later, the food is okay… and then a month later… I’m coming home now...

Hostel food is a legend in itself and how the generations before Maggi survived in hostels is one of the great mysteries of life.

Researching hostel foods, I stumbled on this brilliant dish – called, would you credit it? – hoppel-poppel! Serious  – it was invented in Germany and was originally called Bauernfruhstuck (there’s an umlaut over both the u’s but I don’t know how to put them in here!)

Presenting the… ultimate hostel comfort food…

HOPPEL-POPPEL

• Two medium potatoes – scrubbed and sliced into thick slices. Don’t bother to peel because I’m sure you won’t have a peeler in a hostel! And the peel is good for you, anyway! 
• One onion – chopped / sliced – what you will.
• One large tomato – sliced
• Capsicum – 1
• Any herbs – coriander/mint/basil
• Eggs – 4
• Oil / butter – 2 tbsp
• Salt and pepper
• Jeera/cumin seeds – optional extra! – 1/2 tsp
• anything else youu feel might do well in this dish – mushrooms, cheese

Heat the oil/butter in a large saucepan. Add the jeera.

Arrange the potato slices on it. If you’re using a capsicum, arrange that first! 

Sprinkle the onion slices over. Cook on a gentle heat turning over occassionally.

Add the tomatoes, salt, pepper  and mix. Pour the eggs over the top and stir to mix well with everything else. As soon as the eggs begin to firm up a bit, sprinkle the herbs on top and take off the heat.

Enjoy your hoppel poppel straight from the pan – why add to the number of dishes to wash up?!

Do remember to rinse out your pan though, after you’ve used soap!

“Please can we have purple pulao?” squeaks my littler one – who is – you guessed it – on a purple streak right then!

For about six months, we’ve been wearing purple, drinking purple (grape juice is good but she’s willing to try even purple cabbage juice), drawing everything possible in purple, covering our books purple and even choosing restaurants based on whether the signboards outside are purple! There are two conspirators in this – K and her best friend Tara – so we’re even seeing double in purple!

It puzzles us mothers a bit – when we were that small, I doubt we knew a colour called purple – if we ever thought about it, it was a shade of violet! And belonged on the then-reviled-now-much-loved vegetable called a brinjal! So we humoured them, me going so far as to buy purple food colouring to make purple milk!

But and everyone has a breaking point  – mine came with the request for purple pulao. NO WAY!

But, amma… it’s so beautiful... am sure you will love it too – says the artful wheedler! Sorry but I’m thirty years ahead of you in this game!

Mahomet knows when she’s beaten though and trails off, to find the next best thing to wheedle her mom out of!

We go through many phases like this – all capitalised in my memory thanks to the intensity with which K always pursued her passion of the day – the FLUORESCENT GREEN phase (you try finding a food that colour in India – back in the early ’90s!), the DOG phase (if you can’t have a another baby, at least have a dog! Or even a monkey!), the RAHUL DRAVID phase (he’ll take one look at me and beg me to marry him! Nothing loth on confidence, the kid!), the AMMAMMA phase ( for which she created an anthem – it went something like this…

Ammamma, 

I love you.

Please don’t

go to Australia

tum-de-dum

tum-tum-tum,

tum-tum-tum-tum

tum-de-dum!

Thankfully, for the past few years, we’ve been on a reasonable diet – it’s a green one this time – she did try a few months ago to convince me we might all be better off on a gluten-free diet but I put my foot firmly down – eggs and bread are the most convenient breakfast and I refuse to eat idlis every day of my life, much as I love them! Luckily, she wasn’t quite sure of this one and decided that maybe, mother knows best, after, all!

So here we are, with this very green, very delish Rajasthani version of  an old favourite…

PALAK PANEER

• Paneer – 250 gm – cut into 1 cm cubes and soaked in warm, salted water for ten minutes. Drain and rinse.
• Spinach / palak – 2 large “cuts” – about 5 cups – clean, chop roughly.
• Ginger – 1″ piece
• Garlic – 1 flake
• Green chili – 1
• Onion – 1 small – sliced
• Tomato – 1 medium – chopped
• Cumin seeds/  jeera – 1 tsp
• Saunf/aniseed – 1/4 tsp
• Bay leaf – 1
• Cinnamon – 1/2 ” piece
• Cloves – 2
• Turmeric – 1/4 tsp
• Red chili powder – 1/2 tsp
• Salt
• Ghee – 1 tsp
• Butter – 1 tsp
• Milk – 1/2 cup

Heat the ghee in a pan. Add all the whole spices and fry for a few seconds.

Add the onion, garlic and ginger and ginger and saute for a few minutes till the onions turn golden brown. Add the powders and the tomato.

Add the spinach and quarter cup of water.

Cover and cook for a few minutes till spinach is wilted.

Cool and puree.

Return to stove and bring to the boil.

Add salt and paneer pieces and cook for 3-4 minutes more. Add butter and switch off.

Add hot milk slowly in a strem, stiriing continuously.

Serve with puris, roti or rice.

And stay on the green kick – it’s easier for all concerned!

Remember those little printed booklets of song lyrics that used to be sold outside cinema theatres in the ’70s and ’80s?

Printed on the cheapest of paper – cheaper even than the Deccan Chronicle’s  paper quality (and that, let me tell you, is saying something about just how cheap it was!!) and sold for something like 25 p – chaaranne (four annas) as it was those days, these little booklets gave us tremendous joy.

You’ve just come out of the theatre, heart filled to overflowing with the antics of Jeetendra prancing like a monkey in his trademark white shoes, white suit outfit to the refrain of Piya tu ab tho aaja or thrilled to an Amitabh Bachhan saying in that t0-die-for baritone, Mere paas maa hai or swooned over Rajesh Khanna’s unmatchable romanticism as he croons Raina beeti jaaye and you melted into a puddle of sentimentality on the seat… (it could of course be that the thrifty theatre owner had switched off the airconditioning during the most intense moments on the screen when the audience is so engrossed that they don’t notice that the temperature has climbed -unexplainably!)

As you walk out, head in the clouds, heart somewhere in Kashmir with our hero and heroine, the heat and dust and stench don’t make any kind of impression on you! But you do notice the rows of vendors squatting by the roadside, hoping that one of these starstruck teenagers will buy a chaaranne ka song pamphlet from you!

And some always do, of course. And go around for the next few weeks (that’s how much time it will take them to gather together the price of the next movie ticket – if I remember right, the balcony ticket – the highest denomination – was 4 or 5 rupees! Cheaper tickets could be had, of course , for something like less than a rupee!) gazing soulfully into the distance mentally singing Kuch  tho log kahenge to a dreamy Sharmila Tagore as the reality of a dad or a mom yelling at them (those clearly gender-delineated days, it was the dad’s job to yell, mostly!)  to get back to their books – otherwise they would end up selling those booklets on the pavements for a living while their luckier classmates would become doctors or engineers, or even fly off to America!

More about these little booklets – the paper so cheap it left marks of ink on your fingers when you handled them, they taught a generation to sing and romance and swoon and sigh and dream… who cared about the paper quality?! And of course, the pleasure of listening to these songs tuned in to Binaca Geet Mala on the radio waiting to hear the radio jockey (I’m pretty sure that is not what they were called those days!) Ameen Sayani – a cult figure in himself – he rubbed shoulders (for all we knew!) with the likes of Kishore Kumar and R.D.Burman!

I remember an aunt and uncle, so crazy about movies that they saw every single pic that came to town – the “good” ones because they were good, the “bad” ones because we have to figure out why people are saying it’s bad, no? But of course you do!

Now this same aunt and uncle had four children – theatre tickets plus popcorn for six people would have put a serious strain on the family budget so what do they do? Stop seeing so many movies? Whaaat?? No way! So, we buy tickets and we take our own snacks to the theatre (allowed those days!). To prevent bickering in the theatres with whispers of “You got more than me” and “Pass that bonda” my wise aunt took to packing six little newspaper packets of snacks – everyone was happy!

Here’s the cause of the happiness (other than the movie of course!)… another variety of…

MASALA VADA

• Chana dal – 1 cup – soaked for two hours and drained
• Green chilies – 2
• Chopped onion – 1 large
• Red chili – 1
• Jeera/cumin seeds – 1/2 tsp
• Ginger – 1/2 ” piece
• Garlic – 1 or 2 flakes
• Curry leaves – chopped – 2 sprigs
• Fresh coriander – chopped – 1 tbsp
• Chopped mint – 1 tbsp
• Cloves – 2
• Cinnamon stick – 1/2 “piece
• Pepper corns – broken- 1/4 tsp
• Saunf (aniseed) – 1/2 tsp
• Salt
• Oil to deep fry

Grind the dal to a very grainy texture along with the garlic, ginger, onions, dry spices and salt. 

Add the crushed pepper and all the herbs. 

Shape into small, uneven vadas (uneven edges leave more room for frying and therefore more crisp surfaces!) and deep fry till golden brown. This vada is so tasty it needs nothing as an accompaniment! 

Just like the songs in Amar Prem… 🙂

The person in front of me is looking a particularly sickly pea-green. The area around her mouth is white and she seems to be in real agony. I quickly step aside so that I won’t be at the receiving end of whatever she does next. She steps to the side right along with me and we are facing each other again. I look at her in mute agony – how am I going to talk to her – she probably does not know English… She looks right back at me with the same agony. Then I look again – she looks Indian and probably can understand me. She too looks back at me with a faintly puzzled expression…

It’s a mirror!

And the woman who looks like she’s going to throw up is me! I run to the side of the boat so I won’t throw up on myself!

The sea stares back at me – glassy calm – the bluest sea in the world – the Mediterranean. One of the crew strolls up and greets me – “Lovely calm sea, ma’am. Beautiful weather for sailing!”

Oh yeah? Then why is my stomach feeling like it wants to uproot itself from my middle and throw itself overboard? There are two more right next to me on the deck  – all green faces staring down at the famous blue of the Mediterranean – my two daughters – we are not good sailors!

We are on a cruise in the Mediterranean – the very first time I have been on a boat on the sea – and right now, it feels like it should be the very last time too! The ship’s doc comes to the rescue with pills and in a few hours of lying down in our cabin staring at walls which move, we are all feeling better. The blue beckons and we go to the deck quite happily.

Car sickness, reading-in-a-moving-car sickness (for some reason I can read in a train but not a car!), flight sickness, mountain road sickness, anything that can churn my stomach does… and I love traveling! 

But there are solutions – in the form of little pills which make your sickness go away – I am a single-person significant market segment for all of these pharma manufacturers – I really think they should give me a discount!

I am so well after the first few hours that I am ready to face dinner – in a really beautiful restaurant on board… and surprisingly find an amazingly large array of vegetarian dishes.

Sickness is forgotten. The blue black of the nighttime Mediterranean, the lights and music, softspoken people, superb and all-new-to-me veggie dishes – what more could I ask for? I determine to be a good sailor!

Here’s a really simple cold salad from that on-board menu…

EGYPTIAN LEMON AND POTATO SALAD

• 1 kg red potatoes (I use regular or baby potatoes in India). Scrub well – do not peel.
• 1/2 cup chopped parsley (sometimes substitute with fresh dill or mint or a combo of both)
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• Juice of 2 lemons
• 1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Boil potatoes. Cool and slice into fingers. Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Chill and serve.

Don’t forget those pills now!