The severity of summers in Sambalpur were enough to wilt the entire garden.Our entire family would devotedly water the plants in the morning and evening yet scorched leaves was a common enough sight.
Thunderstorms and hail storms were common too. The pure undiluted fun of collecting the sharp small uneven pieces of ice was beyond description. I still remember that I would have a steel glass firmly clasped in my hands and extend it to the further most reach while being seated on the edge of our inner verandah under the hawkish supervision of dear old Noni. Noni , our maid of several years would not let me venture in the rain despite several requests.`It`ll break your head `` quite firmly . Sometimes the firmness would exceed that of my mother`s and despite my young age I would try to break free of these diktats.Noni was voted to make the best Aloo dom ,Payesh and Parota by all ,in the family. What nobody knew was my votes went to her heavy spiced dried fish tomato curry with dried bamboo shoots which both of us relished with Pakhala . She would feed and bathe me and take care of my hair with a fondness which I miss still. I would generally wear embroidered muslin frocks with embroidered necklines and crocheted borders which joined the front and the back . The laces were hand made and beautiful always managed to attract attention from unknown people and appreciation from the known.
Noni would wash my clothes and dry them out in the sun in the way my mother had trained her, the crocheted part pinned on to a newspaper for retaining the shape. The embroidery would be mostly be of colorful animals including fat puppies and kittens birds and flowers. Always done in single strand and beautiful the perfect pieces of creation were precious to me. I would resent their absence when I grew up and once on my insistence my mother stitched a similar outfit but I realized that I looked weird in it. Often ladies who would visit our home would examine the embroideries and ask my mother that when did she get the time to embroider despite her busy schedule to which my mother would smile as an answer. Often her smile would signal a dismissal and fiercely secretive as she was the more frequent visitors would keep quiet with only the newer ones prodding . Only a few of us knew that she sat till late night after having a frugal dinner to embroider these frocks and sleep when it finally overcame her.
She was an early riser but always resented it. She would always tell that as a s student in Patna medical college she would sleep after college and wake up when the others would be sleeping and study through the night. She would wake up in the morning cook breakfast and lunch for us . A great cook who would love to innovate I was fond of most of her creations.One things which repelled me was having rot is soaked in milk and Horlicks. The very smell of these would be enough to churn my stomach and despite repeated trials under clever garbs these two remain in my eternal hate list. Hot milk or rather the consumption of it with layers of cream would also cause me to vomit. Even a tiny shred of cream in milk was enough to cause a revulsion and knowing this my mother would strain the milk through a strainer and ask me to finish it off before going to school.
I loved to eat Luchis with aloo bhaja. Often a Sunday breakfast affair or a must have when guests came over she taught me to pierce the crisp thin upper crust and enjoy the hot steam as it escaped the tight confines and then stuff the fried a loo pieces generally long and thin in the case roll it and then have it.Strictly never a part summer menus loochi would always remain to be favorite. My personal touch in eating it would be soaking the last two in a small glass bowl with milk with sugar or nolen gur in winter and then eat them. This extremely delicious bread continues to entice me and it requires Herculean efforts on my part to renounce it or exercise control to resist it . I never could make good lochs which added to my kitchen woes after I got married. My husband loved to eat them too and my failure to make the softer version of the loochi perhaps initiated me to be adventurous in cooking. Success only followed when Mrs .Kabu our beautiful Kashmiri neighbor and the wife of the DIG there put me under the tutelage of her cook .The trick I realized lay in every sphere. The stiff dough made pliable with kneading, the perfect rolling out ,and the right temperature of the oil made a difference.
The demarcating line between the loochi and poori lay in the main ingredients. The sinful white refined flour transformed the loochi into its delicious avatar in comparison to the healthier poori made with wheat flour.
I remember playing with dolls with others as a enjoyable past time. The grand daughters of Noni would be my favourite playmates. My dolls would be always clothed in clean outfits of which the credit would solely go to Noni. People often told that I would sit hours at a stretch with my treasure basket . A wicker basket packed with miniatures of everything starting from stoves to beds remained to be my favorite belonging.I would play with my dolls often extending real life situations to the imaginary.Cooking with grass which would mean greens and small pebbles a, s lentils with a crush of the red bricks as chili powder probably sowed the seeds of domesticity in me ,an art that would continue challenging me with full vigor even as I advance towards my fiftieth year.
Thunderstorms and hail storms were common too. The pure undiluted fun of collecting the sharp small uneven pieces of ice was beyond description. I still remember that I would have a steel glass firmly clasped in my hands and extend it to the further most reach while being seated on the edge of our inner verandah under the hawkish supervision of dear old Noni. Noni , our maid of several years would not let me venture in the rain despite several requests.`It`ll break your head `` quite firmly . Sometimes the firmness would exceed that of my mother`s and despite my young age I would try to break free of these diktats.Noni was voted to make the best Aloo dom ,Payesh and Parota by all ,in the family. What nobody knew was my votes went to her heavy spiced dried fish tomato curry with dried bamboo shoots which both of us relished with Pakhala . She would feed and bathe me and take care of my hair with a fondness which I miss still. I would generally wear embroidered muslin frocks with embroidered necklines and crocheted borders which joined the front and the back . The laces were hand made and beautiful always managed to attract attention from unknown people and appreciation from the known.
Noni would wash my clothes and dry them out in the sun in the way my mother had trained her, the crocheted part pinned on to a newspaper for retaining the shape. The embroidery would be mostly be of colorful animals including fat puppies and kittens birds and flowers. Always done in single strand and beautiful the perfect pieces of creation were precious to me. I would resent their absence when I grew up and once on my insistence my mother stitched a similar outfit but I realized that I looked weird in it. Often ladies who would visit our home would examine the embroideries and ask my mother that when did she get the time to embroider despite her busy schedule to which my mother would smile as an answer. Often her smile would signal a dismissal and fiercely secretive as she was the more frequent visitors would keep quiet with only the newer ones prodding . Only a few of us knew that she sat till late night after having a frugal dinner to embroider these frocks and sleep when it finally overcame her.
She was an early riser but always resented it. She would always tell that as a s student in Patna medical college she would sleep after college and wake up when the others would be sleeping and study through the night. She would wake up in the morning cook breakfast and lunch for us . A great cook who would love to innovate I was fond of most of her creations.One things which repelled me was having rot is soaked in milk and Horlicks. The very smell of these would be enough to churn my stomach and despite repeated trials under clever garbs these two remain in my eternal hate list. Hot milk or rather the consumption of it with layers of cream would also cause me to vomit. Even a tiny shred of cream in milk was enough to cause a revulsion and knowing this my mother would strain the milk through a strainer and ask me to finish it off before going to school.
I loved to eat Luchis with aloo bhaja. Often a Sunday breakfast affair or a must have when guests came over she taught me to pierce the crisp thin upper crust and enjoy the hot steam as it escaped the tight confines and then stuff the fried a loo pieces generally long and thin in the case roll it and then have it.Strictly never a part summer menus loochi would always remain to be favorite. My personal touch in eating it would be soaking the last two in a small glass bowl with milk with sugar or nolen gur in winter and then eat them. This extremely delicious bread continues to entice me and it requires Herculean efforts on my part to renounce it or exercise control to resist it . I never could make good lochs which added to my kitchen woes after I got married. My husband loved to eat them too and my failure to make the softer version of the loochi perhaps initiated me to be adventurous in cooking. Success only followed when Mrs .Kabu our beautiful Kashmiri neighbor and the wife of the DIG there put me under the tutelage of her cook .The trick I realized lay in every sphere. The stiff dough made pliable with kneading, the perfect rolling out ,and the right temperature of the oil made a difference.
The demarcating line between the loochi and poori lay in the main ingredients. The sinful white refined flour transformed the loochi into its delicious avatar in comparison to the healthier poori made with wheat flour.
I remember playing with dolls with others as a enjoyable past time. The grand daughters of Noni would be my favourite playmates. My dolls would be always clothed in clean outfits of which the credit would solely go to Noni. People often told that I would sit hours at a stretch with my treasure basket . A wicker basket packed with miniatures of everything starting from stoves to beds remained to be my favorite belonging.I would play with my dolls often extending real life situations to the imaginary.Cooking with grass which would mean greens and small pebbles a, s lentils with a crush of the red bricks as chili powder probably sowed the seeds of domesticity in me ,an art that would continue challenging me with full vigor even as I advance towards my fiftieth year.
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