Kitchen diaries

(1)

My memories of Mama cooking are so hazy as to be nearly non existent. Food was not something to be made much of a fuss about. The idea----- and I realised this many, many years later when I began cooking for my children -----was to make sure that the healthiest possible food was cooked in the least possible time. Different cuisines? Weekly menus? Desserts? Three course meals ? These were luxuries Mama could not afford, with long hours at college, and three children to bring up, including a son who had decided at a very early age to assume the role of rebel. Very often, she had to walk long distances, or travel hours by bus, or wait by the roadside for a shared auto rickshaw,. How could she have the desire or the energy to then toil in the kitchen?

Nevertheless, the food was always delicious, with chapattis being served straight off the griddle, and the lentils topped with generous globs of snowy white butter.

Sometimes, I would be roped in to pound masalas ---- the mortar was a mottled grey-brown, and I was convinced that Mama possessed superhuman powers to be able to lift it and wash it and place it on the floor, before she handed me the wooden pestle. I would sit cross legged, and pound the onions and garlic and ginger, absorbed in the task, hearing only the pressure cooker's whistle. If she were in a cheerful mood, Mama would hum as she cooked ---- and the songs linger in my memory thirty years later.

Very often, lunch would comprise fruits ---- apples, oranges, bananas, as many as one could gorge on. Those were the days when Mama would return home late, then hurry to the kitchen to make preparations for dinner even as she handed Papa his evening tea -----but never before taking a bath and changing out of her sari. She cooked always at lightning speed, and it remains a mystery to me how she managed to combine speed with robust Punjabi flavours.