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Articles > Magazines > Saveur > Nalla-ma
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Nalla-ma
- By Shoba Narayan
(This article originally appeared in
November 2001)
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When my grandmother was born, the village astrologer said that she was an Abhishtu- a "wrong soul."
"Too many contradictions in her face," the astrologer said. "A pleasantly round face with a square, stubborn jaw. Proudly flaring nostrils above curving, suppliant lips. Soft, doe eyes under sharp, straight eyebrows. An unlucky black mole and a lucky dimple on the same face! God has placed the wrong soul in her body."
Over the years, my grandmother maintained that the astrologer was right, that she should have been born a man, or at least born in another age when she wasn't so shackled by the caste system and convention that ruled Brahmin society in the early 1900s.
She unleashed her frustrations by cooking vast feasts executed with military precision for every birth, christening, engagement or marriage conducted in our rambling ancestral home with its sloping red-tiled roof and mosaic floor burnished by hundred of bare feet. The kitchen was her domain and she stood in the middle of the dark, cavernous room, barking orders at her band of helpers who stirred pots of Sambaar or sauteed a vegetable curry. "Rama, get some more firewood. Have you cut the banana leaves? Sheila, bring the ground coconut. The Sambaar needs it right now. You sleepy pumpkin! Who asked you to add more water to the sweet? I told you to put saffron." Coal embers burned like beacons as blurred figures rushed about inside the smoking mists. Children ducked in to sneak a snack and received a clip in the ear from my grandmother. They din was unbearable--clanging vessels, shouting men, bubbling rice, and hissing firewood. The smell of spices mixed with human sweat added to the swirling energy of the kitchen.
My grandmother was a proud, passionate cook. She took no advice and brooked no questions. Once she upturned a container of rock salt into a sweet halwa because someone dared question her choice of sweet for the occasion. "You want something salty? There! Eat salt," she growled as she stirred white specks of salt into the honeyed halwa. She terrorized her daughters-in-law with rapidly hurled insults, most of which had to do with food. "Why are you so bitter? Like dried up okra," or "Her conversation is like watered down rice gruel."
I think of my grandmother often as I sit in my New York apartment, watching the smog-filtered rays of the evening sun burnish the sleeping face of my 3-year old daughter, Ranjini as she smiles and puckers at the angels and monsters that populate her dreams. Most people say that Ranjini looks like her father. "It is lucky," my Indian friends insist as they study the questioning curve of her ear and the dark sweep of her eyebrows above wide, deep eyes. While my daughter may have inherited her features from her father, her mannerisms belong to my grandmother, her great-grandmother, known to everyone as Nalla-ma (Good mother).
Ranjini's tapping feet as she waits for the traffic light to change reminds me of Nalla-ma's impatience with anyone who could not keep up with her lightning speed. Ranjini's red-faced rage when she cannot finish a puzzle reminds me of Nalla-ma's vitriolic temper when confronted with imperfection. Maybe Nalla-ma's soul has come to roost in Ranjini's little body. Or maybe I am just missing my grandmother.
As an Indian, I have a healthy respect for astrology and the after-life. But a decade of western education has taught me to question Indian notions about reincarnation. Still, the idea that my grandmother has reincarnated as my daughter is irresistible, especially since Ranjini was conceived right after my grandmother died.
Nalla-ma died four years ago, just 2 weeks shy of her 80th birthday. We received the transatlantic call at midnight. I heard the regret seep into my husband's voice as he spoke. He hung up and looked at me, his eyes worried. I nodded and hugged my knees. I knew what the message was. A few days earlier, my mother had called to say that Nalla-ma had been admitted into the ICU. Her heart was giving trouble again, only this time, the medicines she took constantly didn't seem to be having any effect. The only other option, according to the cardiologist, was bypass surgery. And even with that, there were no guarantees given her age.
"I am coming home," I said when I heard the news.
"Don't be silly," my mother replied. "You've just started your new job."
"I'm coming home," I repeated. "My boss will understand."
As it happened, my boss didn't understand. I quit the job I had tried so hard to get, called several airlines, and shopped for gifts that Nalla-ma would like. Dozens of empty, multicolored, plastic spritzers that she would fill with sesame oil, coconut, gingerly, mustard, and corn oil to spritz on her curries as she stir-fried them. Boxes of large ziplock bags that she would fill with the various curry powders she concocted and distributed to her nieces, daughters, granddaughters, and daughters-in-law with the instruction, "Use your fingers to add salt and spices. Only then will the food carry the scent of your hands." Gallons of Fantastik, the all-purpose cleaner to keep her house in pristine condition, WD-40 to oil the squeaking doors that drove her crazy, dozens of photo albums and McDonalds ketchup packets that I stole by the hundreds because she loved them, all the more because they were free. "Mix the ketchup with boiling water, and some paprika, and voila! You've got rasam," she would say.
When I heard that she had been admitted into the ICU, it seemed cardinal that I see my grandmother. I wanted to spend at least a month with her. I would take her up on a balloon- something she had always wanted to do- as an 80th birthday present. I would cook her favorite meal: saffron rice, stew with coconut milk, fried eggplant stuffed with spices, tomato sevai, onion sambaar and chutney. I would sue the nasty neighbor who had destroyed her mango saplings by erecting a shed near them and denying them sunshine. I would take care of all her desires and vendettas.
Two days before I was to depart for India, I sat surrounded by bulging suitcases oozing with gifts and listened to the news that my grandmother had died. Death is never convenient. But for me, living a continent away from home, ensnared by airline schedules, project deadlines, canceling subscriptions and all the minutiae that accompany a long journey home, death overtook my voyage, leaving me with regrets and memories.
Nalla-ma wasn't a saint. Rather, she was all too human, full of contradictions and frailties. She would take me to the bazaar in the evening, extol the virtues of honesty and slip an extra carrot into her grocery bag when the cashier wasn't looking. She delighted in performing hilarious imitations of her neighbors, most of whom she cordially disliked. Nalla-ma had feuds with everyone in the neighborhood. The funny thing was that they all showed up at her funeral.
Once, Nalla-ma became convinced that a neighbor was stealing coconuts from her trees. She decided to set up a booby-trap. That evening, she stirred up a black, tar-like concoction, containing a poison ivy-like plant, guaranteed to cause itching and rashes. She smeared the concoction on each of the coconuts with a brush tied to a long stick. "Let him try to steal my coconuts now," Nalla-ma said darkly.
Our summer vacations with her were like an army boot camp with strict routines. In the morning, Nalla-ma put us all to work. My job was to follow the maid from room to room to make sure that she was cleaning the corners. The maid, an old woman of indeterminate age called Mary, would sing mournful Christian hymns as she slowly swept and swabbed the floors. I would perch in a corner by the windowsill and watch her unwinkingly. Occasionally, Nalla-ma would blow into the room, scold Mary roundly for her slowness and sweep out to supervise another task.
I remember those Christian hymns with astonishing clarity as I cook in my tiny New York kitchen on a cold winter morning, wishing that my grandmother's reassuring bulk were beside me. A smell can carry a memory and food can compress an entire childhood into one sublime taste. For me, the taste of childhood was my grandmother's cooking. It has been four years since Nalla-ma died and I cook to remember her and to forget that I will never see her again.
During the spring or summer, when a sudden thunderstorm lashes the windows, my daughter and I huddle inside the damp apartment, eating boiled peanuts, drinking masala chai, and telling stories. It is a long tradition, this telling of stories, and I inherited it from my grandmother. After lunch and siesta, Nalla-ma would sit on the bamboo mat, surrounded by a clutch of eager, waiting grandchildren. "Your mother was pushed into the buttermilk when she stole betel," Nalla-ma would begin expansively. "It was at Kicha's wedding conducted right here in this house, oh, some twenty years ago. The whole backyard was like a battle-field with large brass vats filled with rice, sambaar, buttermilk, payasam and cumin-water. You should have seen those vats! They were made of polished brass that was beaten with a thin hammer. The surface looked like tiny ripples on a golden sea. A grown man could hide inside one of them. In fact, when the British came to search our house during the freedom struggle, your uncle Hari hid inside one of those vats. The British never guessed. So there you have it! 12 vats standing like soldiers on the green grass in our backyard. Your mother hid between the vats and began to chew her stolen betel. It was there that your Uncle Ravi found her. He grabbed her long braids and began taunting her. He would tell everyone about the stolen betel, he said. You know Ravi. He is more jumpy than fried mustard seeds. Well, what does your mother do? She pulls off Ravi's spectacles from his face and stomps on it. No half-way measures for that girl. Ravi is standing there, almost crying with anger, he can hardly see. He rushes at your mother and chases her around the vats. Your mother rushes up a ladder, silly girl. Ravi rocks the ladder, and your mother falls, plop, right into a vat of buttermilk. Thank God it was cold buttermilk. Can you imagine if it had been some boiling water, or even curried sambaar? Now, these vats are huge, like I said. Tall, about twice your mother's height. And the girl can't swim. So she sinks into the buttermilk, rises up, gurgles like a toad and goes down again. Ravi is petrified by now. He climbs up the ladder and tries to reach for her. Your mother, of course, grabs Ravi and pulls him down with her. It was your Great-aunt Gita who found them, two slithering masses, soaked with the white buttermilk. She grabbed your mother by her long braids, and pulled Ravi out by his ears. That's why your Uncle Ravi's ears are pointed. Because Great-aunt Gita grabbed them when he was a kid and yanked him out of a vat of buttermilk."
What my grandmother did best was tell stories. She had a phenomenal memory that stored colors, textures, sounds and smells. With a few words, she painted a vivid portrait of her father, their life under the British rule, about her years as a child-bride, and about my antics as a baby, about her parents, grandparents, my ancestors. She was my umbilical cord to my past. In her stories as in her interaction with us, she presented herself with ruthless honesty, almost in spite of herself. In this age of political correctness when most people are afraid to voice their opinions, my grandmother stands out as someone who revealed herself completely, warts and all. What greater gift could she have given to the all-absorbing minds of her young grandchildren?
I wish my daughter could have known her.
This article originally appeared in
November 2001.
Copyright © 2001 Saveur. All rights reserved. |
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writer :: reporter :: foodie :: mom
