Desicritics

Bazaar Walks: Today at Dadar

Deepa Krishnan — Wed, 3 Dec 2008 07:46:05 EST

I went to Dadar today, to chalk out new routes for a Dadar Bazaar Walk. Here are impressions from today's walk, clicked on my Nokia E90.

At Phule covered market - crabs for sale
There were mussels, dried fish, bombil, and all sorts of other fishy treasures on sale. The fisherwomen as usual, had tongues as sharp as their curved fish knives. I was asked if I wanted to hold a live crab. My hurried refusal led to much merriment.

Resting after the morning's sale
See the green and maroon khun blouse? The fabric is probably soft and comfortable after repeated washes. Have you ever tried a khun? It is an absolutely beautiful brocade. Rich as silk, soft as satin, with the coolness and comfort of cotton - what more could a woman ask for! This is me, in case you're curious, in a glorious golden khun.

Outside the covered market - Goddess in Finery
Someone please, please tell me what's going on with the coconut + eyes + jewellery + new clothes thingy. I'm dying to know. Is this Lakshmi? Durga? Some other devi? I wrote about it earlier as well. I know this mystery woman is a goddess that the fisherfolk worship.

The Goddess obviously has a thing for bright skirts!
Lots and lots of women were buying things from these stalls. We asked them, but got incomprehensible answers. "It's for puja", they said. All I gathered was that there was a festival this month.

I call him The Yam Accountant.

She was concentrating on making a "veni" - flowers for the hair
The flowers come from the wholesale market nearby. If you want to see what the finished veni looks like, I have a photo here.

Plastic covers for computers and television sets
So it's not just Goddesses who like colour - see how the Indian love for colours transforms even these practical covers into a feast for the eyes! Near the plastic covers, green bangles (favoured by married women) are stacked in a basket in sets of twelve.

We stopped for lassi and snacks at a nearby restaurant. I had misal-pav, a brilliant Maharashtrian invention that doesn't get the press it deserves. Misal is a tangy spicy dish, eaten with bread. In my hurry to eat it, I forgot to click a photo, but if you want to see what misal is like, there's a great photo here. The most satisfying part of the misal is when you dunk the last of your chunky bread into the last of the gravy, and polish it all off with a final tasty mouthful. Sigh.

It is clear to me, people. I have inherited my mother's love of bazaars.

Masala Central

Deepa Krishnan — Fri, 23 May 2008 09:07:46 EDT

I was walking through Crawford Market looking for pasta, when a row of bottles with neat blue labels grabbed my attention. I paused for a closer look.

"What a great collection of specialty Mughlai masalas", I said to myself as my camera went click. "And cuisine from other regions as well!"

The shop was called Tasty Spices, and there masalas for over 50 different dishes, ranging from the widely popular chicken tikka, to regional specialties like yakhni pulao. I saw several masalas for mutton - dabba gosht, dal gosht, bhuna gosht, kheema masala, roghan josh and mutton chop fry. I counted at least 8 different masalas for cooking chicken, each one more tempting than the other. butter chicken, chicken 65, chicken malaiwala, golden fried chicken, chilli chicken, chicken white korma, chicken lollypop...the list went on.

As I read the neat labels, I thought of Mumbai's many tiny Mughlai restaurants, with their faded menus and their standard but popular offerings. Did they all buy masalas from places like this? "Hmm", I said to myself, "Maybe this is why Chicken 65 tastes similar, whether it is eaten in Bhayander or in Masjid!".

Alongside traditional Mughlai masalas, Tasty Spices also had coastal cuisine - Malvani masala, Goan fish curry masala, vindaloo masala, prawns masala fry and so on. A bottle of sambar masala was the sole vegetarian representative from South India, but to add a dash of international flavour to the offerings, there was a bottle of "Pizza Masala". Purists might scoff at the idea of pizza masala, but this is a hugely popular mix these days, thanks to Mumbai's vegetarian Gujaratis.

There are other shops in Crawford Market that sell masalas, but none of them have the neat packaging and display of Tasty Spices. I complimented the owner on his marketing savvy. "It's not just bottled masalas", he said to me. "If you buy the masala, we also give you the perfect recipe for how to make the dish at home. Try it - your home food will taste just as chatkeela as the restaurants!"

A tempting thought, indeed, for harried mothers of finicky children. Mumbai loves to eat out, so often it is restaurant food that defines the standards for what is tasty and what is not. A masala that promises to transform home cooking into something interesting and extraordinary is quite a draw.

If your family is addicted to restaurant food, go to Crawford Market and take a look at Tasty Spices on Lane 1. Maybe you'll re-create that strange restaurant magic at home, and have everyone asking for more!

Desi Pickle, Foreign Spice

Deepa Krishnan — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:41:40 EDT

Mum and I went to the market this weekend. The little green mangoes were there in all their splendour, tempting me.

"I want to make mangakari", I said to mum. Mangakari, pickled green mango cut into little bits, is a summer favourite of mine. Snazzes up a meal like nothing else and leaves everyone wishing for more. So we set off to find the perfect green mango.

The mangoes were in different sizes - tiny, not-so-tiny, medium and largish. I walked around with mum looking for a largish size that would still have the special taste of unripe green. We rejected several larger mangoes that looked as if they would be sweet inside.

Finally we found a vendor who had just the perfect shade of green! He handpicked them for me - they were a little smaller than I would have wanted, so we'd have more effort in cutting, but at least they would be delicious.

My maid cut and pickled the mangoes. Here's what went into the pickle: Fenugreek, sesame, red chili powder, salt, groundnut oil, and last but not least, asafoetida or hing.

Have you smelt asafoetida? Aza - resin, foetida - stinking! When you fry it in oil or ghee though, it has a tangy sort of smell, like onion and garlic. It is a great substitute for onions, so it is used widely by the Jains in Mumbai, and by South Indian Hindu Brahmins who don't eat onions.

Indians are the largest consumers of asafoetida in the world. But strangely, all of India's supply of asafoetida comes from Iran and Afghanistan. The damn plant doesn't grow here, I don't know why.

Laljee Godhoo & Company, the guys who make LG Hing, are a household name. They are an old trading company, established in 1894. In my fertile imagination, I have LG Senior doing a long arduous trek through cold mountain passes, to forge trade links with bearded strangers. In reality, it was possibly an adventurous Pathan who came to Mumbai, bringing with him a smelly yet precious cargo of hing. I've always wondered why there were Pathans roaming around all over India. Now I know one good reason at least!

When I was growing up, asafoetida used to come in little smelly pieces, that you soaked in water to soften and extract the essence. These days it comes in powdered form, in white plastic containers. A clever scientist at the Mysore Central Food Technology Research Institute figured out how to make hing powder. I'm sure millions of grateful Tamil maamis would give him daily thanks, if only they knew who he was.

Today LG imports the raw material and then compounds and powders it in their factory in Andheri, Mumbai. A profitable business, no doubt. Here's the mangakari we made with LG hing.

Mangakari doesn't have a long shelf life, it has no preservatives. It is the sort of jhat-pat pickle we make at South Indian weddings, where it is polished off with rice and curds the very same day.

My household is doing its best to finish our little batch of mangakari. Want some? It smells divine.

An Offering to the Goddess

Deepa Krishnan — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 09:35:03 EDT

In the little lane behind the Mumbadevi temple, doodh pedhas are still made the old fashioned way.

Milk is mixed with sugar, heated and stirred constantly, until it thickens and acquires the colour of a creamy latte.

It is then hand-rolled into little offerings for the Goddess Mumba. Not that she hangs on to them permanently - she merely blesses them, and the priest at the temple hands them right back to you as holy prasad.

Prasad or prasadam is a Sanskrit word which refers to any material substance that is first offered to the deity, and then consumed (usually fruits, sweets, flowers). The process of offering is called naivedya. Once accepted, when the prasad is returned to the devotee, it has the deity's blessing residing within it. So every temple visit usually has a two-way transaction in it...you offer something to the Gods, and you get it back enriched with blessings. What's more, when you go back home, you also get to share it with friends and family.

In the early Rig Vedic texts, though, prasad was something else altogether. It was originally a sort of inner mental state experienced by the Gods, or by wise sages, characterised by a spontaneous generosity and a bestowing of boons. The morphing of this mental state into a material substance appeared only in later texts. Perhaps devotees needed something concrete to take back from the daily ritual of prayer at the temple. Or perhaps this very pragmatic religion understood that religion should nourish not just the soul but also the body! Personally, I like to think that the ancients discovered guilt-free eating many years ago, and institutionalised it into edible prasad. At the Mumbadevi temple, you get to take prasad home and eat it happily, safe in the knowledge that you're acquiring merit with every calorie!

Coming back to the pedha - to me, the doodh pedha has always been a very comforting sort of sweet. Perhaps it is the simplicity of the whole thing - just milk and sugar, really, stirred patiently for hours. The texture is not too grainy, and not too soft. It is a perfectly balanced fudgy smoothness that melts when you bite into it.

Some pedhas have dry fruits and spices for flavouring. Cardamom is popular, so is saffron (kesar peda). But honestly, I like my pedhas simple. Milk and Sugar. That's all I need. Why mess with something that works so well?

If you go on the Mumbai Magic bazaar walk, make a pedha offering to the Goddess, and tell me if you like your prasad plain or flavoured!

I Learn An Old Cooking Technique

Deepa Krishnan — Sat, 8 Dec 2007 00:14:45 EST

The walls of Mushtaq Bhai's kitchens are caked with soot, from years of cooking. Every time I go there, I get new lessons in cuisine.

This time was no different. I watched in fascination, as the mutton was first cooked with fried onions and masala, with a little water.

Then the cook showed me the crucial next step - Death by Onion! First, a thick layer of sliced onions was spread over the meat. Next, finely chopped green chillies were added. Then the handi was covered and the meat left to simmer in its juice for 30 minutes.

This, of course, is the famous do-piyaza (literally, two-onion) technique, where onion is introduced into the dish at two stages.

The first stage is right at the beginning, when the meat is braised with onions, garlic, ginger and garam masala. Some yoghurt is added, to give the dish a little piquancy. When the meat is three-fourths cooked, then the second stage begins. The quantity of onion in the second stage is important - it is nearly twice as much as the meat. I like this idea. The essence of the chilli and onion seeps into the mutton.

The do-piyaza was a favourite in the Mughal courts - Akbar's scribe Abul Fazl records that it was served as part of the royal repast, although Akbar himself preferred a simple diet of khichri-kadi (rice and yoghurt).

Akbar's son Jahangir, in the Tuzuk-e-Jahangiri, writes about a do-piyaza that he ate on a hunt:

"One day on the hunt, I shot a female nilgai, and two fully formed young ones were found inside. As I had heard that the flesh of the nilgai fawns is delicate and delicious, I ordered the royal cooks to prepare a do-piyaza."

And how did the do-piyaza taste?

"It was not without flavour", was Jahangir's royal pronouncement.

Photo Essay: Perfume-Crazy

Deepa Krishnan — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 05:35:42 EDT

Anyone who has travelled to India will tell you that we're very fond of perfume. Flowery perfume, that is. We strew flowers on our marriage beds. Women wear flowers in their hair. We offer flowers to our gods. Roses are a great favourite - we sprinkle rose-water on guests at weddings.

Apart from roses, one of the most popular flower-based perfumes is kewra. I've often seen little bottles of kewra essence in the Muslim shops on Mohammed Ali Road. But until recently, I didn't know where the perfume came from.

Last month, I was walking through Bhuleshwar, when we spotted a flower-seller's basket.

"What are these?" I asked the flower-seller, pointing to the long spiny leaves.

"Kewda", she said. "Here, see how nice it smells."

Inside the closed pod, there was the white kewra flower; it is called ketaki in Sanskrit. The smell was sweet, but faint. Perhaps I'd have to open the pod to release the scent.

"Do you want to buy it?" she asked. "Ten rupees for one."

"What do I do with it?", I asked.

"Offer it to Ganesh-ji" she said. Apparently, the Elephant God likes this stuff. His father Shiva used to like the ketaki too, until one day, the flower earned his wrath by bearing false witness. Do you know the story of how the ketaki flower fell from grace?

I decided against buying. Whether the Gods like the ketaki or not, I don't. The smell is too flowery, too intense for me, although it is a scent associated with romance.

Here is a love-poem compiled in the 11th century by Vidyakara, a Buddhist monk. It's about a rainy night, and the flowering of the ketaki:

A cloth of darkness inlaid with fireflies;
flashes of lightning;
the thunder hints at a mighty cloudmass.
A trumpeting of elephants;
an east wind scented by opening buds of ketaki,
and falling rain:
I know not how a man can bear nights such as these,
when separated from his love.

Put like that, it does sound appealing, doesn't it?

Next time you want to try something romantic on a rainy night, go buy a kewra incense stick. Perhaps the magic of the ketaki will work for you.

P.S. If you're looking for the English name for this plant, it's screw pine. Pandanus something or the other. They use it in Malay and Thai and Indonesian cooking.

P.P.S. Hey Cristy, thanks for the photos!

Hospitality, Delhi-Style

Deepa Krishnan — Mon, 1 Oct 2007 02:42:35 EDT

All cultures have it - the giving of food or shelter to pilgrims and wayfarers as an act of kindness.

This is Old Delhi's way of doing it, by giving free water to anyone who asks for it. In a hot country, naturally, this is the quintessential act of hospitality.

A boy is employed, to sit there all day long, offering water to anyone who asks. The water is cold - they use big blocks of ice to cool it down. Someone rich sponsors the whole thing, and of course, earns much merit in the process.

Hinduism uses the word athithi-dharma to describe every man's obligations to visitors or guests. It is one of the many dharmas a Hindu has. Others include dharma to your parents, to children, to ancestors, to birds / animals / plants and so on. As part of athithi-dharma, a Hindu is expected to attend to a visitor's needs before attending to his own.

The dharma of hospitality is not peculiar to Hinduism. There are several stories in the Bible, about men who took strangers into their homes. The Middle Eastern ethic of offering hospitality (and protection) to strangers is well known - in fact, there are elaborate and binding rules both on the host and the visitor. The Greeks were big on hospitality too - the god of hospitality is Zeus himself, and he's called Xenios Zeus (xenos means stranger, in case you didn't already know).

Mankind's long traditions of hospitality are still alive and kicking - for a modern international rendering of athithi-dharma, you really don't have to look beyond the CouchSurfers.

Couchsurfing amazes me. What would make someone share their home with a complete stranger? I can understand this sort of thing if you live in a mansion with 20 rooms, with enough hired help to manage guests. But imagine living in a tiny apartment in New York! And waking up to find a guy snoring in your living room - or worse, messing up your one small bathroom. Gross.

Yes, there's the charm of meeting people from all over the world. There's the off chance that you'll meet someone warm and friendly (and clean), who'll tell you funny stories, help cook dinner, and - hey- maybe they'll even like the same authors that you do. But really, what are the odds?

Personally, I think you should never get into Couchsurfing with any expectations. The only way to do this is by thinking of it as athithi-dharma. Make that leap of faith. Be hospitable. And let events play themselves out.

How The Chilli Conquered India

Deepa Krishnan — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 13:14:27 EDT

Every Indian woman knows this simple truth: the chilli rules the kitchen. Ground into paste, or sprinkled as powder, red and green chillies are the secret weapons of every Indian cook.

But did you know that before the Portuguese brought it to India, no one in India ever used chillies?

Seems unbelievable - but apparently, before Vasco da Gama came along and changed everything, we used pippali, long pepper - and not chillies.

Long pepper is a strange looking thing (reminds me of a rattlesnake's tail, actually). It is native to Bengal, and in the sixteenth century, it grew wild on the Malabar coast. According to the French trader Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, long pepper used to be thrown into Muslim pulaos 'by the handful'. It was used not just in cooking, but also in ayurveda as a cure for impotency (I'm not surprised).

So how did long pepper lose the battle to the chilli? Chillies had several advantages - they tasted similar to long pepper, but were easier to grow, and they weren't subject to mould. What's more, they were really cheap. For the vast majority of peasants, that made the chilli a really attractive proposition. So it was a price war, and at the end of it, long pepper went the way of the dodo. Even ayurvedic physicians supplanted it with chillies in their concoctions.

Barely 30 years after Vasco da Gama set foot in India, locals were enthusiastically growing chillies on the Western coast (they were called Gowai mirchi, suggesting that they were originally grown in Goa). From there, chillies spread to South India, and then to the North. Long pepper is now, I suspect, only used in some arcane vegetable pickles. I've certainly never seen it in local markets.

The spice markets, instead, are full of different varieties of red chillies. Try walking into Delhi's Khari Baoli, or Mumbai's Mirchi Galli, and you'll see what I mean.

At the spicy end of the spectrum there's Birds Eye from the eastern parts of India, and the cleverly named Jwala (Flame) from Gujarat. There's the Kashmiri Mirchi, which is prized for the red colour it gives to food, and the small fat Gundu from Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. In general, the rule is, if the chilli is small and sharp and wicked looking, then it's probably hot as hell. Bigger, fatter chillies are less spicy, for example, the Tomato Chilly from Warangal.

The other pepper that was widely used in Indian cuisine - and which didn't lose the battle to Vasco da Gama's chilli - is black pepper, kali mirch.

Black pepper is still a traditional ingredient in several dishes. For breakfast today, I had South Indian rice pongal - rice flavoured with cumin and whole black pepper. If ever you go into a South Indian restaurant, ask for pongal. Remember that it's one of the few 'authentic' Indian dishes that you'll find!

Anyway – authentic or otherwise - Indian food is now booby-trapped with green and red chillies. So here’s a survival tip just in case you bite into one of them. What you've always suspected is right - water doesn't help. You're better off sipping cold milk, or eating an ice-cream, because they contain casein, a protein that breaks down the capsaicin in the chilli.

God save you though, if you grab a bite of this - Naga Jolokia, the hottest chilli in the world. All the ice cream in the world won't help you.

And Another Goddess is Born

Deepa Krishnan — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:00:28 EDT

Walking through Matunga, I glanced upwards and saw this colourful carving. I couldn't figure out who the lady was. So I asked around, read up a bit, and I found a thousand year-old story - the story of Goddess Kannika Parameswari.

In the 10th Century AD, in Penugonda in the West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, a daughter was born to the Vysya chieftain Kusuma Sreshti. She was named Vasavi - and she grew up to be beautiful and talented, an accomplished musician and artiste.

When the girl turned sixteen, the Hoysala Emperor Vishnu Vardhana visited Penugonda, and became enamoured of her. He was much older, already married, and from the Kshatriya warrior caste (the girl was from the trader caste). So the alliance was refused. Enraged (and perhaps besotted), Vishnu Vardhana declared war and defeated Kusuma Sreshti.

In the wake of defeat, faced with the plunder and looting of her city, the princess arranged a great immolation pyre on the banks of the Godavari and burnt herself to death. Along with her, 102 other families, who had supported Kusuma Streshti also immolated themselves, in a show of solidarity. The legend is that the princess appeared before them in her true form as an incarnation of the Goddess Parvati, so they followed her into the fires. (Methinks it was political expediency - they had backed the wrong horse, so to speak, and perhaps immolation was preferable to Vishnu Vardhan's tender mercies).

And what of the victorious Vishnu Vardhan? He advanced towards Penugonda to claim his bride - but died mysteriously on the outskirts of the city, vomiting blood. The city was saved from loot and plunder.

And so the princess became Kannika Parameswari, the Virgin Goddess, a saviour of her people. A temple to her was built in Penugonda, and continues to be the most important place of pilgrimage for the Andhra Vysyas.

As for me, I continue to be amazed by the stories and legends that are everywhere around me.

A Goddess for Men. And Non-Men.

Deepa Krishnan — Sat, 9 Jun 2007 00:43:44 EDT

If you come with me on a bazaar walk in Bhuleshwar, I'll take you to the Mumbadevi Temple.

Stand next to me and peer into the little sanctum of the Mumbadevi Temple. You'll see her clearly - the Goddess Mumba - in all her glory. She is orange in the glow of the shendur. Her mango-shaped nosering, so typical of this region, glistens in the lamplight. There are offerings of flowers and fruits, the air is fragrant with incense. Crowds throng the little temple, pressing for a glimpse of her. On festival days, you can barely set foot inside.

Clearly, the Goddess cult is alive and kicking in Bhuleshwar.

Mumba is of course, only one manifestation of the Goddess. There are many others; you can see them carved on panels in the Mumbadevi temple.

There's Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning, with her customary swan. There's Lakshmi - Goddess of Wealth, on a lotus. There's Durga, the warrior Goddess, riding her tiger. There's dark angry Kali, the fearsome Goddess of Destruction.

But alongside these familiar Goddesses, I saw something I had never seen before - a Goddess on a Rooster.

I pointed it out to my friend Sandhya. She didn't know this Goddess either, so she asked the priest. 'This is Bahuchar Maa', said the priest. Neither of us had heard of Bahuchar Maa, so I came back home and looked her up.

Bahuchar Maa, apparently, is a very popular goddess in Gujarat, with a large temple in Mehsana. Interestingly, the website of the temple says the Goddess "gives virility to men". In addition, I found that Bahuchar Maa is also the Goddess of the hijras, the eunuchs/transsexuals of India.

Obviously, this goddess has something to do with sexuality, so I hunted around for more information, and I found a couple of curious folk tales.

Here's one of them: There was, once upon a time, a man who tried to molest Bahuchar Maa (Go figure. Who would want to mess with a lady carrying a sword and a trident?). Anyway, this man was cursed with impotency. So he gave up his masculinity, dressed in women's clothes and worshipped her. He was finally forgiven and cured of his impotence.

So - Bahuchar Maa is a fertility goddess, and both men and women seek her blessings if they don't have children. Naturally, the hijras, who dress in women's clothing, are dear to her. In fact, in the temple in Mehsana, there is an annual garba dance by the Deviputras, the hijras. I wonder if the Hijras dance in prayer in Mumbai as well...do any of you know?

The other story around this Goddess is that she was once a princess who castrated her husband, because he dressed in women's clothes and refused the pleasures of her bridal bed. Ouch.

And here's a third interesting story - there's a guy from London called Steve Cooper, who now lives in the Bahuchar Maa temple, wears sarees, and offers blessings to anyone who wants it. I'm not surprised. This is India. There's a goddess for everything. And everyone.