Month: September 2015

“Amma, can we play your monkey song?”

“Huh? What? What monkey song?” I ask.

The baby – that’s what she is – a little short of two years old – takes her fingers out of her mouth (where they have an almost permanent abode!), to answer this slightly dim mother patiently – “You know, amma, yesterday you played it… ”

I think back.

It’s siesta time for the baby and I usually sit with her on my lap, on a rocking chair and play one of the cassettes of childrens’ songs that she loves. Or I sing to her (okay, okay calling what I do singing is a bit of a stretch but I do! Sing the Hanuman Chalisa to her!)

After having played “Old MacDonald” for the millionth time, I want to murder every duck which goes “a quack, quack here and a quack, quack there.” So one afternoon, as she’s dropping off, I quietly play one of my old Hindi film song cassettes. From the movie Sangam. One of the songs is Tere man ki Ganga, mere man ki Yamuna ( the Ganga that is your soul and the Yamuna that is mine). The very sleepy baby perks up immediately.

“Amma, what is that?”

“Amma’s songs,” I answer.

“Can we have Paapa’s songs?” she asks. She refers to herself as Paapa – baby.

“Every day we have your songs, paapa. Today can we have amma’s songs?” I request her politely.

She ruminates over this with her fingers stuck firmly in the mouth. It seems a reasonable request. “Okay, amma,” she says – she is a very reasonable baby!

She then listens carefully to “amma’s songs” before going off to sleep – though the catnaps that she takes can hardly be called sleeping! Kanch is one of those babies who never seems to sleep – preferring to catnap through the day and night. She hardly ever cries, but will wake up through the night wanting to play! For two working parents, it is pretty stressful to make do with a few hours of sleep every night!  But the grin that is an invitation to join her in her playtime – at two in the morning – is completely irresistible!

Having listened to my songs one afternoon, she makes a request for it again the following day.

“Can we play amma’s monkey song?”

Used to listening to animal songs, she thinks the Hindi tere man ki Ganga is a song about a monkey – phew!

Of course I can – and I do!

This baby definitely has a lot of affinity to monkeys – being born in the year of the monkey according to the Chinese calendar and being more than a little bit of a monkey in her nature!

And here’s an old favourite at home – for the very special monkey in our lives…

 

OMAPODI/SEV

 

• Besan/gram flour /senaga pindi/kadalai maavu – 1 cup
• Rice flour – 2 tbsp
• Ajwain/omam powder – 3/4 tsp
• Salt – 3/4 tsp
• Red chili powder – 1/2 tsp
• Asafoetida powder – 1/4 tsp
• Melted ghee – 1 tsp
• Curry leaves – optional – a few sprigs
• Oil to deep fry

Mix the besan, rice flour, salt, ajwain, red chili powder and asafoetida together.

 

Pour the ghee into it and mix with your fingers till it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add enough water and knead into a semi-stiff dough.

 

Squeeze through the fine holes of  a murukku maker into hot oil. It will sizzle up and turn golden yellow. Do not let it brown. Turn over and cook for a few seconds.

 

Remove and drain on kitchen paper.

 

Fry the curry leaves till crisp and add on top. Store in a container when cool.

 

The most addctive tea time snack ever-  much like the monkey song!

“Haanh, haanh,” he shakes his head vigorously.

“What? What did you say? Yes or no?”

“Haanh, HAAAN!” Any more vigorous waggling and the head would fall right off its stalk!

“What ARE you saying?” asks the official at the consulate in increasing frustration.

“I said na? Haanh?!”

“Naah? Haan? What? WHAAT?” as he mentally clutches his head…

Jiggle, jiggle, wiggle, waggle, woggle goes the head round and round, in a weird imitiation of a Tanjavur doll (see pic!)

“Now please listen to me, Sir,” tries the frustrated official again (thinking in his head – this guy’s cv says he holds a master’s degree in engineering, he’s got to know English!), “DO-YOU-SPEAK-ENG-LISH?” he enunciates each syllable.

Joggle, joggle, bobble, bobble goes our man’s head, frustratedly trying to convey agreement and wondering why on earth this man does not get a simple head-woggle! Surely English is the language spoken in America – what’s wrong with this guy?!!

Ever had this experience?

When this head wobble is done in silence, as it often is – Indians tend to be dilatory, putting the listener into a semi-comatose state much of the time, where the only thing the guy can do is to stare at you silently as you speak and bobble his head occasionally! Ever seen a snake charmer with a snake and how the snake follows the movements of the pungi – the gourd-like instrument he plays? Basically the snake is caught – in the player’s headlights, so to say – and can’t get free! This is pretty much what happens when Indians listen to other dilatory Indians, expounding on their favourite subject – anything from movies, to cricket to theology to politics – we are all caught by the speaker’s voice and stunned into a torpid state where all you can do – pretty much – is to bobble your head!

The other thing about this bobble is how infectious it is – watch a guy doing it for a few minutes and I defy you not to bobble your head the next time someone asks you a question!

Ever realised just how universal it is across India – with variations – less in the North and intense as you travel down South to Kerala. It may mean slightly different things but basically it could mean anything from vigorous understanding (this gesture needs a neck brace after you’ve done it – there is serious danger of you losing your head!) to acknowledgement of a fellow traveler on  a bus, for instance (ah, yes, I see you, I recognise you, glad you are here!). It could also be you are following your own train of thought and nodding away in agreement with your inner self – the need to acknowledge it is enormous – resulting in an almighty bobble sometimes!)

There’s been all this fuss about Facebook coming up with a ‘dislike’ button or a ‘something’ button to signify sympathy/understanding/agreement/whatever – why don’t they just use the Indian head bobble – why reinvent the wheel???!

And so we go round and round with our heads… rather like this savoury teatime snack from Karnataka… the famous…

 

KODUBALE/CHEKODI

 

• Rice Flour 1 cup
• Fine semolina/Chiroti rava 1/4 cup
• Maida / plain flour 1/4 cup
• Grated coconut 1/2 cup
• Any vegetable oil or butter 3 tbsp
• Red chili pwd -1/2 tsp
• Asafoetida 1/4 tsp
• Salt 1 tsp
• Ajwain/carom seeds 1/2 tsp
• Water 3/4 cup
• Oil for deep frying

Dry roast semolina for 2 to 3 mins. Add the maida and mix well.

Grind grated coconut and red chili together to a fine paste with little water.

Mix semolina, maida, rice flour and the grated coconut, red chili pwd.

Add salt, carom seeds, water, asafoetida and oil with the flour.

Knead into a smooth, pliable dough.

Now roll it into long cylinders about the thickness of your little finger – 1/3 cm thick.  Cut into to small pieces – about two inches long.

Roll it to small rounds/rings, pinch edges together

Heat oil to medium heat for deep frying.

To check if oil is in correct stage to start frying, just drop a small piece of dough, it should pop up immediately.

Gently slide in the rings to fry. Fry till the oil stops sizzling and it turns a deep golden brown.

Drain and set aside. Tin when cool.

Store in an air tight container.

 

Okay? Got it? Bobble, bobble?

“Hi ma… how are you?… bzzz bzzzz… ” murmurs hubby indistinctly.

I am still in a post operative haze after my second child is born and can barely hear what he is saying… beyond some soothing noises.

I make some noises back – at least I think those are noises I am making, I cannot recognise my own voice… before sinking back into unconsciousness.

He tells me later that he said something nice and kind and the “right” post-wife’s-delivery things to me in my stupor and I corrected his English before slipping off into unconsciousness! I, in a very-undutiful-wifely manner, giggled at the story – serves you right!

Yes, I am one of those horrible people – and I know there are millions of us – who automatically correct everything they see – including billboards on the highway, advertising copy, the English in pamphlets thrust under your nose as you’re walking on the beach and which it seems rude to refuse and worst offender of all – subtitles in movies! These used to irritate me no end til I figured out the way to deal with them was to read them as they are and then fall off the sofa laughing! Many a serious drama has turned into an unintentionally gut-busting comedy by this simple expedient!

Indian film songs are the best when subtitled… sample these:

Nazar ke saamne… jigar ke paas...

Translation: In front of my eyes, near my liver! (okay, that’s creepily close!)

Beedi jalaiyle jigar se piya, jigar mein badi aag hai...

Tr: Light your cigarette with my liver, my liver is on fire! (wow, dial the ER, don’t sing man!)

Tohfa, tohfa, tohfa… laaya laaya… laaya

Tr: Gift, gift, gift… I brought, I brought, I brought! (ok, ok, thanks!)

Gorey gorey mukhde pe kaale kaale chashma… tauba khuda khair kare… khoob hai karishma…

Tr: Black, black goggles on a white, white face… God ha’mercy, what a miracle, what a miracle! (God ha’mercy, indeed!)

Aaao… tumhe sikhaaooo… ande ka funda!

Tr: Come… I will teach you… the basics of an EGG! (huh?)

Or one of my favourites: Samundar men nahathe hue tum aur bhi… namkeen ho gayi ho… !

Tr: After bathing in the sea, you have become even more salty!! (Guy after my own heart, I’m sure, everything depends on the five tastes!!)

Nothing, however, changes how delicious this sweet dish from Karnataka (variations are made everywhere but the original is from Karnataka and Maharashtra!)

 

OBBATTU/POLI /BOBBATTU

 

 Ingredients for the dough

 

• Maida/plain flour – 1 cup
• Chiroti Rava/very fine semolina -3 tbsp
• Turmeric-a pinch
• Salt- a pinch
• Sesame oil – 1 Tbsp
• Water

Ingredients for the filling

 

• Grated coconut – 1 cup
• Grated jaggery – 1 cup
• Poppy seeds – 2 tbsp (optional)
• Cardamom powder- 1/4 tsp
• Ghee – 1 tbsp

 

Knead the dough first by mixing together maida, chiroti rava, a pinch of salt, turmeric, oil and add water little by little to make a very soft elastic dough, softer than roti dough. Smear a little oil all over the dough, cover and let rest for 2-3 hrs.

Roast the poppy seeds in a pan till aromatic.

Add the grated coconut and roast for a few minutes and then add the crushed jaggery, ghee and cardamom.

Mix well and stir for a few minutes till the jaggery melts.

Let it cool for a few minutes and roll out lemon size balls of the mixture.

For making the obbattu, grease your palms and on a wax paper or a clean plastic sheet, take a table tennis ball size of the dough. Pat it into a small round, place the stuffing on it and cover it like how you would do for stuffed parantha. Greasing your palms well, pat or roll out into a thin roti.

Heat a tava on medium high and cook the obbattu on each side for about 2 mins till golden brown in colour. It will puff up a little. Do not flip over again and again. Add a few drops of ghee while frying.

 

Stored in an air tight container, it can last for up to a week.

It’s been a miserably hot day, like most other days in Madras and I am happy to sink into my bed with the a/c on at full blast. The kids – there are three of them today – Vinski (real name Vinaya but she’s such a tiny half pint that there has to be a diminutive!), Archana’s closest chum, is also spending the weekend with us. The a/c in the kids’ room has conked out (again!) and they have all piled into my bed. Thankfully, we have a large bed and hubby is not in town so there is enough room for everyone.

Before I can sink into sleep, however, a bony elbow pokes me in in the side. I shift. Soon a bonier knee pokes me in the fleshy part. Owf! I move again, turn over and try to shut my eyes tightly. The pokes become more pronounced. I give up.

“Not able to sleep, baby?” I ask the poker.

“Anu auntie,” in the most impossibly high register comes back a squeak. “I’m thinking of that sitaphal basket sitting on the table. Do you think it will be safe?”

“From what?” I whisper back, trying not to wake the other two – though it would have taken an earthquake to make a dent in their slumber!

“I don’t know. Maybe a rat? Maybe… maybe monkeys, you think?”!! Always blessed with the most vivid of imaginations, this kid is the lead creator of all new games and of course, the instigator of a lot of unexplained mischief!

I know what’s going through her mind – all through dinner, her eyes have been on this bunch of big, beautiful sitaphal (not easy to get the really good ones in Madras). I ask her if she wants one after dinner but she shakes her head – she’s full. Her tummy that is… but the heart evidently has other ideas – as evidenced by the midnight poking in my ribs! And so, we finally sneak out of the room, sit and polish off two large sitaphals in companiable silence, and stomachs and souls sated… we got back to bed, to sleep with no more poky bones!

We are a bunch of fruit lovers – able to polish off prodigious quantities with no perceptible effect on our appetites for dinner! I have, on my own, as a child, eaten twenty sitaphals at one sitting and could have eaten more if they hadn’t run out!

Which is why my favourite desserts tend to be fruit-based too and even favourite prasadams, like this…

 

SATYANARAYANA SWAMI POOJA PRASADAM (which I will make without a pooja!)

 

• Fine semolina/rava – 1 cup
• Ghee 1/2 cup
• Milk – 1 cup
• Water – 1 cup
• Sugar – 3/4 cup
• Saffron – a few strands
• Edible camphor/pacha karpooram – 1 tiny sliver about the size of a mustard seed
• Cardamoms – 2  – powdered
• Sliced banana – 1
• Fresh coconut – cut into slivers – 2 tbsps
• Slivers of almonds/ cashewnuts and whole raisins – 3 tsbp
• Tulsi/sacred basil leaves – 3-4

Roast the rava in a dry pan till it smells well, “roasty”!

Heat a tbsp of ghee in a pan and fry the nuts and raisins till golden. Remove and set aside.

Add the rest of the ghee and drop in the tulsi leaves. Add the roasted rava and fry till pale yellow.

Mix the milk and sugar together and pour into the rava, stirring constantly. Add water.

Cover and cook on a low flame for 5-6 minutes till the rava is tender.

Add the saffron, edible camphor and cardamom and mix well. Switch off. Cool a bit and add the sliced bananas and coconut.

 

Dat’s it – easy peasy – a ten minute dessert!

Save it from the monkeys – for your own monkeys!

I remember, as a very small child, tending to think about things that puzzled me and – there were many of these – trying to figure out explanations for the bits of the world that worried me. With both parents away at work, adult explanations are not always forthcoming when you need them. We are plentifully supplied with dictionaries and encyclopaedias and atlases at home (people tend to underestimate the parental function of information-supplying hugely!) but some questions are just too difficult to find answers to…

Till about the age of nine, I had a very clear picture in my mind of what the inside of the human body looked like. My picture was based completely on observation. So we ate, food went in somewhere and then some was wasted. There had to be a connection – there just had to be! And so having seen many pipes – large ones, lying around by the roadside waiting for one of those interminable government-run projects in India to take off – the solution – so simple and so beautiful, it just had to be true, presented itself to my mind. Plus I had heard of something called a food pipe. There was a pipe – a broad one – connecting the mouth to the unmentionables! Food went in, slid straight down whoosh and finished up elsewhere!

Then we come to class five. And we are introduced to the human body… by way of the digestive system… and the alimentary canal… aka food pipe! It curves all over… it has parts… there is a stomach – a pink, bulbous organ, many intestinal things – in grey and blue… each part does different things… there is no simplicity… alas there is no beauty! Bang go the ideals of childhood!

It is disappointing – but I get used to it and begin to figure that maybe it’s not so bad after all – the pink bits and the grey bits and all the other little bits hang together and do a sort of synchronised dance. I’ve got it – it is simple and beautiful, after all! The joy lasts for a few months… till we move into class six and suddenly, all the bits I knew have disappeared from the picture in my textbook! Instead they are all replaced by other bits – hard bits – bony bits – the musculo-skeletal system! Several months later, more complications are added in the form of arteries and veins and other soft tissues! Now, we have to throw out all the previous bits and learn new bits! No one tells us how these are all related – we are, for some strange reason, expected to figure it out for ourselves! We do – about two or three years later… by which time some of the class has decided that Math is easier to deal with and decides to leave the biological sciences by the wayside!

Not me though – I am quite, quite hooked by now and decide I want to learn more about this and want to go to med school. Ah well, that was not to be but I learn as much as I can anyway… so much so that my dear father-in-law’s sobriquet for me was “nambaathu arai korai doctor”! (the half-fledged doc in our home!)

And so, here’s a “healthy” snack for all the bits – the pink and grey ones, the hard ones, the soft ones, the blood ones and everything else. Super as a teatime snack when you really want those bajjis or bondas but know that the pink bits will protest!

 

ZUCCHINI FRITTERS

 

Recipe courtesy my younger daughter Kanchana – idea, execution, consumption- all hers!

 

• Zucchini – 2 – grated and drained. Don’t discard the water. Squeeze a little lime or lemon, add a bit of chaat masala or pepper and crushed mint and chill for a healthy ‘juice’
• Besan/chickpea flour/senaga pindi – 2-3 tbsps- enough to bind the zucchini together into a semi-soft batter
• Dhaniya/coriander powder – 1/4 tsp
• Jeera/cumin pwd – 1/2 tsp
• Black salt or chaat masala – 1 pinch
• Garlic – 1 flake – crushed – optional
• Green chili – 1 – crushed
• Ginger- grated -1/4 tsp
• Mint or ajwain leaves – crushed – a few
• Salt
• Coconut oil – 1 tsp

Mix everything except the oil together into a dropping consistency batter. In a non-stick pan, pour a few drops of oil, drop spoonfuls of the batter and pour a little oil around each. They should be little, flat discs.

Cook till golden, flip over and cook again.

 

Serve hot with chutney or ketchup and the zucchini juice for a guilt-free teatime snack.

The pink bits will thank you!