Tomorrow is Karthikai Deepam festival or rather we have decided to celebrate the festival tomorrow. I say this because most Hindu festivals are not celebrated on a fixed date either by the Hindu calendar or the English calendar. They are observed on a particular star or a thithi according to lunar calendar. Some festivals like Karthikai and Thiruvathirai are celebrated on the day that a particular star coincides with a full moon. Usually in the month of Karthikai (the Tamil month) or Vrischikam (Nov - Dec) in Malayalam, the star Karthikai falls on a full moon day. That is when the Karthikai Deepam festival is celebrated. More often there is a variation in this pattern like the full moon day falls on a day after the star Karthikai and then there are deliberations as to when to observe the festival, on the Karthikai star or on full moon day. And most people settle for a day according to what their priest says. Similarly this year, the Karthikai star rises at 3 pm on 8th December and Poornima starts in the evening of 9th December. So there are deliberations as to when to celebrate the festival. The famous Annamalai Deepam in the temple town of Thiruvannamalai dedicated to Lord Shiva is being celebrated this year on 8th December. But my mother tells me the priest in our village has said Karthikai is to be celebrated on 9th December. Some people are celebraing the fesival on the 10th as well.
As such there is always a difference in the days on which Iyers and Iyengars celebrate the various festivals. One sect gives importance to the star and the other sect gives importance to the thithi. All said and done festivals are celebrated to pray for peace and happiness all around; so a festival celebrated on any day is for the well being of mankind and it doesn't matter when one celebrates as long as the spirit of harmony and well being is maintained.
In our house, Karthikai has special importance and is always celebrated in a grand style. Our elder son always makes it a point to come home during Karthikai festival. He likes to light lots of lamps around the house. Karthikai is also important because my youngest brother was born on Karthikai day and his birthday is celebrated on Karthikai day. My husband was born the day after Karthikai, though his birth star is Mrigaseersham, which again goes to say that particular year, Karthikai was celebrated on Rohini star. We, including our sons, can visualise the day so clearly though none of us were born then, as it has been told to us on each Karthikai day by my mother-in-law. Happy birthday hubby dear and happy birthday my dear brother!
Make neyvedyams of Pori, Appamand Adai and light lots of lamps to remove the darkness and bring in light of prosperity and love all around.
I am still not able to get over my hangover from the month long holiday and Diwali celebrations that we had. Yes, we had a great Diwali this year with both our handsome and charming sons, daughter in law and our ever so adorable and perfect grandson with us. We had lots and lots of fun and loads and loads of good food. We had paruppu pradhaman, kozhukkattai, elai adai, sevai, puran poli, vadai, neyyapam, morappam, malabar paratha, stuffed parathas of various types, varieties of pulav, pathrode, cakes, semiya payasam, pal adai pradhaman, jangiri (jahangir), badusha, boondi laddu, mullumurukku, omapodi, ribbon pakoda, mixture, and samosas, to name a few.
Our sons, daughter in law and grandson arrived in Bangalore by navarathri end. We had a grand saraswathi pooja and vijayadasami followed by happy times in the company of our little bundle of joy. We had a great time like never before. In between we managed a trip to Puthucode and Guruvayoor.
Diwali was grand with boondi laddu, badusha, ribbon pakora and mixture. We bought crackers for diwali, something we had not done for 25 years. Our grand son thoroughly enjoyed the sparklers and flower pots and the chakras. He even enjoyed the exploding crackers that the neighbors set off.
We also celebrated the little one's first birthday, actually twice. First, according to Hindu calendar on his star birthday with Ayushya homam. We also did the jathakaranam, namakaranam and annaprasanam and we also had the varadhanam.
We had a cake cutting celebration followed by a lunch with our friends and extended family on his date of birth. The little one thoroughly enjoyed all the attention he received. We also enjoyed every moment we spent with him. He is such a wonderful kid, always cheerful and full of energy.
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Our son, daughter-in-law and grandson have since returned to US and our elder son is spending the last few days of his leave with us. I am reminded of the times we used to leave our parental home enmasse after family get-togethers for various functions. Distinct is the memory of the day all us, including the newly married couple, left Puthucode after our youngest brother's marriage leaving only our parents behind at Puthucode. The party also included some family friends who had come to attend the wedding from Bangalore. One of them said, "Next time onwards please book your return tickets on different days so that your parents will not be left alone all of a sudden". I am also reminded of the proverb my dear mother in law used to repeat at various occasions,"alandalanda nazhi ozhinjozhinju varum" which when translated means, history repeats itself. One understands the implications of the various actions we undertake because of our various commitments only when one is at the receiving end. When one is busy with the family, one has no time to think of the effects of our routine actions.
This sweet and sour and mildly spicy curd based ripe mango gravy enriched with coconut paste is a unique Kerala dish, which is an all time favourite of all Keralites. Especially so in our family, where during the months of April, May and June this dish is prepared so very often and yet we never get tired of eating this mouth watering delicacy. In our family, we add a pinch of jaggery to almost all dishes. Thus a sweet dish is always savoured with great enthusiasm. (Our family is known as a Pulacode family, though we hail from Puthucode. Our grandfather's parents migrated to Puthucode from a village by name Pulacode, along with some cousins and hence the name. All Pulacodians like their everyday curries sweetened with little jaggery). Sometime ago our younger son visited a cousin of ours whose family had stayed back in Pulacode during the above said migration. When our son came back, my astute and blessed m-i-l, as was her practice, asked her grandson, "So what did Ammini Athai serve you for lunch?"
"Mambazha Pulissery", he answered and corrected, "no no, Mambazha Payasam"
Then the two had a hearty laugh.
Such is the affinity of Pulacodians towards sweet.
Not only Keralites, but everyone who has tasted my mambazha pulissery has admired the dish. Recently a young Kannadiga girl who tasted the dish said, "this is an all in one dish, it has all the flavours".
Coming to the recipe, this Pulisserry can be prepared with any type of mango, but the small sized mango, which is known as "Adakka manga"(Areca nut mangoes, so called because of their small size) is the right choice for this. During wedding feasts, hundreds of these ripe mangoes are boiled in huge urulis the previous night itself so that they would cool down by morning to be peeled and squeezed. I also pressure cook the mangoes the previous night last thing before going to bed, so that they would be easier to peel in the morning. Finishing part of the cooking the previous night is a system we adopted when I was working and we had to have the lunch and breakfast ready by 8 am in the morning. There were no breakfast cereals back then. Even today, I cook a full fledged breakfast, lunch and dinner every day.
Back to the recipe:
Ingredients:
Ripe mangoes(big): 4
or
Small mangoes : 10
Grated coconut : 1½ cups
Green chillies : 4 or 5
Mildly sour thick curds : 2 cups
Jaggery(optional) : 1 tbsp
Wash and cut the stem off the mangoes. Make a slit on either side of the mangoes, if you are using big mangoes. Pressure cook the mangoes in 2 cups of water. You can also microwave high for 7 minutes. Allow to cool. Peel the skin off. Squeeze the flesh off the mangoes. Keep the seeds. Use the water in which the mangoes were boiled to squeeze any flesh off the skin of the mangoes. Mix the mango pulp with a spoon to make a homogeneous mixture. Add the seeds to the mixture.
Beat the curds to a uniform consistency.
Grind the coconut with green chillies using a spoon of beaten curds to a thick consistency; not very smooth.
Boil the mango pulp for 5 minutes, stirring well. Add turmeric powder, salt and jaggery. Mix the ground coconut with the remaining beaten curds and add to the boiling mango pulp. Allow to boil once and remove from the stove. Garnish with curry leaves.
Heat the oil in pan. Add the mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds start spluttering, add the fenugreek seeds, broken red chillies and curry leaves.
When the red chillies start changing color, remove from the stove and pour over the prepared pulissery.
njoy!
Mambazha pulissery tastes great with rice, dosa, idli, kozhukkattai or chapati.
My handsome and charming son, who is the proud father of my adorable and perfect grandchild, who is just 4 months old, asks me, "Amma, how did you teach Anna to speak before he was 1 yr old?". While our elder son started speaking even before he was 1 year old and started speaking fluently by the time he was 18 months of age, our younger son started speaking only after he was 2 years of age (My parents have told me that I started speaking before I was 1 year old while my astute and blessed m-i-l has told me that my husband started speaking only after he was 3 years of age). Our elder son even started reciting stories when he was just 2 years old and he could read before he was 3 (How this put us into a big predicament, I shall get to at the end of this post).
I told my son, "we speak to children from the day they are born." But it beats logic that one child in the family starts speaking before 1 year of age and another sibling starts only after 2 years. Anyway, as I have often said, there were so many visitors at home on a day to day basis and when there was a small baby, they spent some time talking to the baby. And there were always people surrounding the baby. They found a meaning in what ever the baby did and responded with, "Oh, where are you looking?", "what is it that you want?", "why are you crying?", "are you looking for amma?", and on and on. And then as the baby grew up they made him wave his hands and sang to him,
Kai Veesamma, Kai veesu (wave your hands, baby wave) Kadaikku pokalam kaiveesu (we will go shopping, wave your hands) Mittai vangalam kai veesu (we will buy toffees, wave your hands)
(Chandu was the paste used to adorn the forehead of children. When we were young, there were no sticker bindis, we used home made bindi paste, known as chandu, only black. Later we started getting chandu in black and red colors in bottles (kuppis). The chandu pottu was applied on the forehead of the baby to ward off the evil eye)
Listening to continuous blabbering made them pick up words early, perhaps. It also was an exercise for the baby to move his hands and legs.
My Kalathappa (paternal grandfather) had his own gibberish vocabulary to play with his grandchildren and he enjoyed every minute he could get to spent with the babies. He would ask the baby to be put near him when he had breakfast or lunch. When he was relaxing in his easy chair, he would have the baby on his lap. One could hear his gibberish from half a kilometer away. He would come all the way from our farm, about 3 kilometers away in the hot sun so that he could spend some time with his grandchildren.
I spent all my time in my maternal home or my in-laws' until our older son was 1 year old. This meant he was always surrounded by a host of uncles and aunts and cousins all the time. In my husband's home, our child was the first son after my husband and my in-laws and other aunts (my small mothers-in-law, as one of my friends used to say) would not move away from the baby even for a second. They were always talking to him. Perhaps that was the reason why he started speaking before he was 1 year old. When our younger son was born, I came to Bangalore even when he was just 3 months old and he was not lucky to have so many people pampering him all the time.
As I said earlier in the post, our elder son started reading even before he was 3 years of age. So, when he was 3 years old we put him in a kindergarten school. They taught the kids to write the English alphabet and numbers 1-10 in the first 6 months. They had also issued a Hindi book with the alphabet. So when he came home, I started teaching him the Hindi alphabet and numbers 1 - 100 and some simple addition. At the end of 6 months, his teacher said she could not keep him in the class as he had learnt everything that was to be taught for the next 6 months also, and he was promoted to what then was known as Upper KG. Having finished his lower and upper KG in one year, there was no class he could go to the next year. As he was only 4, they would not give him admission in 1st standard. We had to run around many schools, before we could get him admitted to a pre- primary class, the next year. So, my advice,"take it easy!"
How this ever popular sweet got its name has been a mystery for me always and to this day I have no clue about the origins of the name. Mysorepak has been a very popular sweet for the Kalyana cheeru (sweets given during marriage) for more than 6 or 7 decades among Kerala Iyers. When my chithappas were married, each mysorepak that came with cheeru was almost 4"x2"x2" in size. So huge; of course the laddus and appams were also the size of coconuts then. Appam dough was not poured into the mould using a ladle but using big glasses.
The original mysorepaks have this brownish color in the centre and a cream color at either end and they are porous and crisp and melt in the mouth. These days, the soft mysorepaks are more popular. I prefer the crispy, porous ones though.
The trouble with mysorepak, for many, is always that it tends to either become brick-like or just crumble to pieces. Getting the mysorepak just right is not very difficult though.The important ingredient, the bengalgram dal powder (besan) is usually the culprit. The store bought besan is sometimes adulterated and you may not get the best results with it. I usually buy the bengalgram and get it powdered taking care to see that no other powder gets mixed with it. I know it is a tall order in most places now; perhaps you can buy the branded ones from reputed stores. I am trying to give step by step instructions with the help of photographs at various stages of preparation; sorry, no videos this time. Now on with the job.
Sieve the besan so that there are no lumps. In a large thick bottomed pan, put the sugar and just enough water to dissolve it. When the sugar dissolves, lower the heat and add the lemon juice. The impurities in the sugar will form a layer on top. Carefully remove this layer. Increase the heat. Meanwhile heat the ghee on another stove. Lower the heat before the ghee reaches smoking point. Keep the ghee heated; it is this hot ghee poured into the mysore pak at various stages of its preparation that gives it the brown colour in between and the porous texture.
Keep a tray greased.
The sugar syrup should attain one string consistency (remove a little syrup between your fingers and stretch. A fine thread will form between the fingers).
Now add the besan to the sugar syrup a little by little while stirring constantly.
First timers could have some one else do this for them, when they are doing the stirring part. When all the besan has been added, add a ladle of hot ghee and continue to stir. The whole mass should be boiling with some white bubbles at the sides.
Keep adding the hot ghee ladle by ladle, with constant stirring, until all the ghee has been used. Continue to stir, until the whole mass starts frothing from all sides and leaves the sides of the pan while stirring.
Immediately remove from the stove and pour into the greased tray. Sprinkle 1 tbsp of sugar on top. Allow to cool and cut into desired size after half an hour.
Tasty, porous, mysore pak is ready.
Njoy!
Having some one add the besan reminds me of the distress overseas phone call my handsome and charming younger son made years ago, while, then a novice in cooking, he was trying to prepare Upma. He asked me how one was to add the rava to the boiling water while stirring. I asked him how he did it in India, while learning how to make upma. "Then", he replied, "as I was stirring, patti (ammupatti) would add the rava, or if I added the rava, patti would stir. How can I do both together?" Now that he is a very good cook, things are very different altogether.
On his routine phone call, our younger son (handsome and charming) mentioned the fast approaching Halloween festival and how the whole neighborhood was getting ready for the festival. This brought back memories of our US visit during Halloween years ago. The whole place was filled with varieties of pumpkins and pumpkin festivals were being held all over the place. We had been to a few such festivals to see the pumpkin carvings.
This also brought to my mind that it was around this time that I started this blog in October 2005. I cannot just believe that this blog has been going on for the past 5 years. What started as just a pastime has become a demanding obsession now. Our son casually told me one day,"Why don't you start a blog, Ma?". I actually was not very conversant with the term blog, then. Although I had been using the Internet since the later 90s when our son went to the US for his higher studies to send him emails, chat with him and later to browse topics of my interest (read knitting, embroidery, hobby ideas etc), I had not been browsing any blogs till then. Our son explained to me what a blog was and I was still not sure what I would write there time and again. He said,"write whatever you want to write." After much deliberations and prompting by hubby dear, I said that I would try to write about all things happening around us today and how different they are from what they were when I was growing up. Or to put it in other words, how my astute and blessed mother-in-law would have commented on current affairs had she been around. That's how we decided on the name of the blog "Ammupatti's thoughts."
Ammu was the name of my beloved, alas late, mother-in-law in whose honor I have named my blog. Originally I intended to write my observation of everything around through her eyes (what she would have said were she to be around) for she was a keen observer and a lateral thinker. I learnt a lot about people's body language and the actual meaning of their words from her. She had this wonderful ability to make friends with everyone, and engage in long conversations with them, be they little kids, teenagers, older people, college goers, anybody. She did not think any one was unreachable. And she had this "never say die" attitude, which I am still learning. There was never a dull moment when she was around. She could go on talking to people of all ages and cultures. She would even talk to my friend Veena, who spoke no other language other than Kannada and my mother-in-law did not speak any Kannada. "What are you saying to Veena, Amma?" I would ask her, "She doesnt know our language." "She can perfectly follow what I say," she would reply.
And what started as just thoughts, soon metamorphosed into a food blog, owing to the continuous requests from my readers. I never knew today's youngsters would be so interested in learning cooking the traditional style. So I keep writing, though not as much as I would like to, due to my various other preoccupations.
Initially, not many people knew about my blog except close family members. Soon, other relatives around the world started noticing someone named Ammupatti writing about Puthucode and also observed some family photographs. They could not recognise who the author was, as there was no Ammupatti in my family. One asked the other and the chain continued until it reached one of my siblings who explained who the author was. Other Puthucodians also started noticing this blog about Puthucode. Soon enough I had many readers from all over the globe, some of whom have become very close friends and even visited me at my home in Bangalore and it is a nice feeling.
My brother told me this interesting incident that happened during this past Navarathri, which as I have said many times, is a very big festival in Puthucode. One lady who was visiting Puthucode along with some friends asked my mother (taking her to be just another Puthucodian), which village she belonged to. My mother said she belonged to South village. (We have four main streets in our village which run due south, east, north and west). This lady then asked my mother, if she knew one Ammupatti from South village. My mother said that there was no Ammupatti in south village. The lady insisted that there was one. Then my mother asked her what her connection with Ammupatti was and the lady said that she just wanted to meet this grand old lady from South village who keeps a blog by the name of Ammupatti's thoughts. My mother had a hearty laugh and said, "Oh that is my daughter." My brother insists this lady was pretty disappointed. "She was expecting to meet an octogenarian," he says.
This journey would not have been possible at all without the continuous support from my hubby dear and our beloved, handsome and charming sons, who patiently read all my drafts and gave me suggestions to improve and also helped me with the photographs. And of course, all of you readers, without whose inspiring comments, I would not have continued writing. Thanks to all of you.
I miss my dear mother-in-law and beloved appa, who would have been very happy to see that I was maintaining a blog with such good readership. These two were the people who were most proud of whatever I did. I actually may have inherited this writing bug from my appa, whose letters and diaries were always very interesting to read. My mother-in-law also used to write exhaustive letters, which give us a lot of merry moments even today.
Vazhathandu or banana stem is extensively used in cooking in Kerala and Tamil nadu. It has many medicinal properties. It contains potassium, minerals and other vitamins. It is a good diuretic and a good antihypertensive. Since it contains a lot of fibre it also constitutes a bulk food with low calorie content. Consuming banana stem atleast once a week will ensure a clean stomach. We prepare Molagoottal, pachadi, poduthuval and thoran with the stem. However, be warned preparing the stem for cooking is time consuming and hard.
We have never prepared vazhathandu karuvadam at home. The only times I have seen this being made is when Kanakam mami made them at my friend's house. It is called killu karuvadam, as the dough has to be pinched into small bits and dried. My astute and blessed mother-in-law used to say, "It is a time consuming process ... only Parukutty manni has the patience to do that," referring to her neighbour. I had also never thought of making vazhathandu karuvadam all these days because we had to buy vazhathandu from the market. This year though, I have a good garden with plenty of banana trees which have started giving fruit. Banana plants only last until they fruit once, so after it has given of its fruit, the plant has to be cut and the stem may now be used for cooking. Since I had so much vazhathandu (our neighbours do not know how to prepare vazhathandu), I decided to prepare vazhathandu karuvadam this year. And it was a good decision. The karuvadams are so cruncy and yummy that I ended up making quite a few lots.
Since I did not know the process, I called my athanga (cousin) and asked her how to prepare Vazhathandu karuvadam and followed her recipe. Here we go.
Ingredients:
Vazhathandu(banana stem): 1' long Raw rice: 2 cups hing: pea size green chillies : 4 salt to taste.
Method:
Wash and soak the rice with hing for 3 hours. Grind with salt and green chillies to a smooth paste. Let the batter sit overnight.
The next day: Cut the vazhathandu into thin discs. As you cut it you will get fibres which need to be wound around the fingers and then removed. The small discs then have to be cut lenghtwise and across to make them into tiny pieces. This is the method to cut vazhathandu for any preparation. This process will blacken the fingers and hence it is advised to smear the hands with a little cooking oil or butter milk or salt.
Boil 10 cups of water in a wide mouthed pan and add the cut vazhathandu pieces and salt. Allow to boil for 10 minutes. Add the ground batter and keep stirring until the batter is cooked well and it forms a nice soft dough. Allow to cool. When cool, pinch small pieces of dough and drop in a sheet and allow to dry in the sun for 2 days. Your vazhathandu karuvadam is ready to fry. njoy! Tip: instead of pinching the dough, I dropped spoonfuls of dough in the sheet and then pinched off bits from these drop. I thought it was much easier. Follow whichever you find easier.
I have been planning to write this piece for the past four days, ever since my periamma (wife of my father’s elder brother), whom we affectionately called manni, passed away. She was one of the women I admire most. She was a big presence in our family and it will take many days and many many words to write everything that has been rushing through my mind ever since I heard about her sad demise. Manni was how all of us, including her own children addressed her. Manni means wife of elder brother (Bhabhi) in Tambram lingua. She was the eldest daughter in law of my grandparents; eldest manni for their the younger five children. She also fit the role the best. Being married into a large family as the eldest daughter in law at the age of ten or twelve, life could not have been very easy, especially some 70 years ago. She had to shoulder many responsibilities: many of her husband’s younger siblings were her own age and, as custom demanded then, she had to take on the role of their mother. Manni had a strong opinion on everything. She was passionate about everything around her, whether it was expressing affection towards her children or expressing her disapproval of the events around her. Everything about her was BIG; we also lovingly referred to her as BM (big manni or big mother). She was very frank and forthright in her opinions. She did not mince words in expressing her approval or disapproval to anyone. Not even to her in-laws. All said and done everyone looked up to her for guidance in all matters. She commanded great respect. In those days when expressing affection towards one’s own children was not the accepted norm, she always explicitly showered affection on her children. She herself had only received a primary school education but when it came to her daughters she sent them to an English medium convent and was very proud of her daughters chattering in English. She lived in a city that had a large teaching hospital, which meant that anybody in the state who had to undergo a major procedure would come there. Of course, she would visit them all and take good care of them as much as she could. But on these many occasions, she would never stop admiring the young doctors with a white coat and stethoscope around their necks on their rounds. It was her dream to have one of her children sent to medical school. Unfortunately for her, although they all became prominent experts in different fields, none of them went to medical school. As a result, she was very proud of my handsome and charming son when he became the first one from the extended family to become a doctor. I remember the first time she met my son after he had achieved the oh-so-desirable-title. We had gone to Delhi to attend the wedding of my niece. At the time, Manni was staying in Delhi with one of her sons. As instructed by my astute and blessed mother in law, my husband and I went to invite Manni personally and she, of course, right away asked me about my sons. I told her they were yet to arrive in Delhi and that I would send them over to her as soon as they arrived. They went to meet her upon arrival and promptly hit it off very well. My sons came back and said, “Wow, your periamma is very cool.” She came for the marriage reception next day and was sitting with my mother in law. My son was serving snacks to my mother in law who could not walk up to the dining hall. Manni called me and said, in my son’s presence, “Your mother in law must have done great punya to have been blessed with such doting grandsons.” To which my son promptly replied, “It is we who are blessed, to have a patti like this. What sacrifices she has done to take care of us when we were young. Nothing will compensate her sacrifice.” Manni was still happier to see such young boys admiring their grandmother. She would repeat this incident to me every time I met her since. “You are really lucky to have such wonderful sons,” she told me. She couldn’t stop at that. “And yet I like your elder boy more,” she told me, “You know why? Because he is a doctor.” Her dream of seeing a child of hers as a doctor was fulfilled in seeing a grandchild of the family becoming one. Manni loved and lived life to its fullest. She loved good food, good jewellery, expensive sarees, loved to attend social functions and would have her presence felt in any event she attended. She had a very commanding presence. She liked all her children (when I say children, it included all the children in the extended family especially us as we all grew up in the same house) to dress up in good clothes and good jewellery. It was her constant complaint against me that I would not dress up in the latest trends. She could never understand why I wouldn’t buy expensive silk sarees or diamonds or dye my hair as per the latest trends. She never tired of asking me, “Why are you not dyeing your hair? All your sisters in law are dyeing theirs”. “Why don’t you buy some diamonds? See, your sister in law has bought a diamond necklace”. The last time I met her she even asked my husband, “Mapile (son-in-law), why don’t you buy her a diamond set?” To which my husband replied, “I have never said no to her. She is free to buy whatever she wants.” Such was her passion for good things in life and also affection towards her children. In the last two years of her life she became immobile due to a fracture from which she never fully recovered. We had gone to meet her at this time when she was staying with her eldest son. We were all discussing how she must put in more effort and try to do the exercises prescribed by the physiotherapist and start walking. She said that try as she might, she was unable to even stand. She asked my son, the doctor, when he would be getting married to which he replied, “As soon as you start walking, I shall get married.” After about six months, when my mother and brother went to meet her, she had my brother call me on his mobile and said, “Adiye (hey girl), tell your son that I have started walking. Now he must keep his word and get married. If you perform the marriage in Madras, I will attend the marriage even if I have to walk with the help of a walking stick. Tell him.” Such was her affection even towards her brother-in-law’s grandson. She had strong will power and great presence of mind. When my Periappa (her husband) had a stroke at the age of 80 she was all alone, her children being at different cities and a couple of them outside the country also. His brother and family living in the same city had also gone out of town to attend a family function. My periappa died within two days, by which time one of her sons had reached home. My brother and I went from Bangalore for the funeral and stayed back until the other family members like my parents and uncle arrived so that she would have company. Her other children arrived in the following days. I asked her then, how she managed the situation when periappa had a stroke and she was all alone. She said, “I called your periappa’s cousin, and told her, ‘Vijayam, your athan (cousin) is very unwell and needs hospitalisation. I am all alone. Come and help me take him to the hospital.’ She immediately came with her husband and helped me take him to the hospital and also informed my son who had already left and was sitting in the train. The message was flashed to him to get out of the train and fly. He got here in the evening. We were all getting ready to leave the hospital the next day, when your periappa had another attack from which he did not recover. I always tell myself in my prayers, ‘it is not because our children don’t want to be with us to take care of us in our old age; it is for their livelihood that they are in different places. Please give them a good life.’” I just couldn’t imagine how she could act so wisely and with such clear presence of mind in her situation. Immediately after the funeral she got herself busy preparing the house for the other rituals to be performed, keeping aside her grief and loss. It was fitting that she passed away on International Women’s day. She never waited for anyone to grant her empowerment; she took it for herself as a matter of right. If she were to be born a few decades later, she would definitely have become somebody of much greater acclaim.
Over the weekend, as I was reading Unexpected guests? Just chill... in the newspaper, I was reminded of similar situations in which we were put. Since our Iyer meal is different from north Indian meals, having some extra rotis and preparing a quick subzi with potato is never an option. Extending a meal prepared for 2 to 4 is also a difficult proposition. Yet at various times, we have been faced with the difficult task and have managed to end with satisfied guests.
The best lunch we provided at short notice was to my cousin and her family, who had dropped in unannounced (those were the days when we did not have a telephone at home). They were in Bangalore on a holiday and had decided to visit all their relatives at that time. They reached home around 10.30 am and were being entertained by my in-laws. Hubby, the handsome and charming sons and I were at the construction site where we were constructing our dream home. Having left home after preparing lunch we were in no hurry to return until lunch time. So we all trooped in one by one (we all were independently mobile those days). First to reach as always, yours truly (let amma go first and give lunch to thatha and patti and keep everything ready for us, was the motto).
I was greeted with the unexpected, “Hello Akka” from my younger cousin, and I was pleasantly surprised and simultaneously started planning the next steps for giving them a lunch. We grew up in the same house but had not met for a long time. Though her husband and she had a 3 year old son, I had not met them since her wedding and the occasion demanded a special lunch (Virundu). After a few pleasantries with the new cousin-in-law and entrusting the entertaining to hubby dear who had arrived by then, I rushed to the kitchen to see what I could prepare. We did not have a fridge then so it saved me the trouble of searching the fridge for any leftovers.
Presto! within an hour, we had a lunch of Sambar, Muthirapuzhukku (these two were already done for our lunch), kootu, papad and Semiya Payasam.
After lunch, my sons took them to my brother’s house. When I narrated this incident to my sister she was surprised that I could prepare such a lunch at such short notice. But how did you manage the payasam, she asked.
Well, we always stocked a good quantity of milk at home. So it was never a problem to make milk based sweet at short notice.
Then there was another occasion when we were least prepared and hubby’s cousins (three of them) landed precisely at lunch hour, ready to eat anything as they were famished after a weeklong pilgrimage to various places in the south. That was the time when both of us were working full time. As usual I had prepared the lunch and carried my lunch and kept the lunch for hubby and my astute and blessed m-i-l in the hot case. At 1.30pm, hubby calls from his office and asks, “what have youu prepared for lunch?” “Vatta kozhambu and keerai masiyal,” I reply. I cannot but burst out laughing, even today after so many years, when I recall what he said next. “Ennadithu,” he said. (what a stupid thing to do was what he intended). I said, what happened? Why did you not make “keerai molakootal” , he asked? I was puzzled. I asked him what happened. He said my cousins have landed up and we have to cook up a lunch now. I thought there would be keerai molakoottal and I could ask amma to prepare some rice. Now you have gone and prepared keerai masiyal instead, he said. “Can you come home now,” he asked. I said, “relax, I will talk to amma.”
I talked to my m-i-l and told her to prepare some rice. By now, we had a fridge and we always stocked cooked dal and some vegetables for such occasions. She asked her nephews to prepare rice and fry some papads . She made a simple stir fry curry with vegetables and they all had a nice lunch with pickles and dal and vatta kozhambu and keerai masiyal and curds.
After we got the fridge and since I was also working and did not like surprises, we always stocked cooked dal, cooked vegetables, grated coconut, curds and milk for one extra meal. If no guests came, we used them for our next meal.
In these days of easy and fast communication, it is unpardonable for anyone to drop in at lunch hour unannounced. I always make it a point not to drop in unannounced at mealtime at any place. When people tell me their plan of visiting us around lunch time, I on my own tell them in advance to please have lunch/dinner/breakfast with us, thus preempting my dilemma of whether to cook for the guests or not. If they are staying back, they would say “yes” or they have to tell me in advance they have other plans. Have I not got into problems even after this? Yes, especially with my friend, Sunitha. She called me one evening around 8.30pm and said, “We are planning to visit you tomorrow.” The now wiser me asked immediately, “who are all coming and when.” “Only my father and I. We will reach around 11 am,” she said. “Stay back for lunch,” I said. “With pleasure,” she said. It was Onam season, and I had a good stock of vegetables and I had already made pulinji. I decided to have our usual menu plus a Puliyodarai. So by 10.30 am I finished my cooking and was ready to spend some quality time with Sunitha and her father, whose company I enjoy. On the dot, came my friend, accompanied by her father, mother, sister, daughter and nephew. I had to rush to the kitchen to extend the meal for 4 more people. “Don’t worry, we will manage with what you have cooked,” said Sunitha’s mother. I spent all my time until lunch in the kitchen. Ofcourse, Sunitha helped me in preparing those extra dishes.
All said and done, it would be nice to inform our hosts in advance if we intend to stay back for lunch or dinner, so that the hosts need not spend all the time in the kitchen during our visit and a nice time can be had by all.
When I wrote the recipe for sweet kozhukkattais, I had promised that the recipe for other kozhukkattais would follow and somehow I have not been able to post all of them yet, though I did post ammini kozhukkattai sometime back. Among the varieties of kozhukkattias, Upma kozhukkattais are the ones made quite frequently as a breakfast item or an evening snack or as a substitute for dinner on the days when rice was not eaten. The snack gets its name Upma kozhukkattai as the kozhukkattais are made from an upma made of rice rava. When we were children, there was no concept of a breakfast in many Iyer households, instead there was a brunch, followed by a tiffin in the afternoon. The midday, around 2.30 – 3.00pm, was the busiest time of the day, when the afternoon tiffin had to be prepared, followed by night dinner, children came back from school and the cows returned home. There are many stories describing the busy scene of this time. There are also many stories with Kozhukkattais as the theme. I have also written a story which depicts both the busy evening and the kozhukkattias.
During those days, Kozhukkattai was not a regular tiffin item at our house. We usually had idli, dosa or adai. My chithappa (paternal uncle) used to refer to kozhukkattai as Emden (M10) referring to the bomb used in the World War I. My mother used to say that once when kozhukkattai was made, it turned out very hard and hence my chithappa named it as Emden. Those days, kozhukkattais were prepared by using ground boiled rice, which were very sticky and turned hard if it was not cooked in right quantity of water. These days, we use rava made of raw rice or the commercially available idli rava.
However, kozhukkattai was a favoured tiffin item in my husband’s house. My astute and blessed mother-in-law used to make the softest kozhukkattai and I have learnt the art from her. However I restrict myself in the quantity of tempering oil used. The secret of petal soft kozhukkattais lies in the quantity of oil and coconut used, my mother-in-law used to say. Her kozhukkattais and upma were very famous among my side of the family even. "Patti makes the best Upma," my brother used to say, referring to my mom-in-law.
The rava required for the recipe can be prepared at home or one can use the idli rava available commercially. To prepare the rava at home: Wash and drain raw rice and dry it by spreading on a clean cloth. Dry grind the rice coarsely in a mixer, to rava (sooji, semolina consistency). If one spoon of toor dal is added to every cup of raw rice while grinding, it adds to the taste. If you are making the kozhukkattai immediately, the rice need be spread on a towel only until the rice is just dry. However, if you plan to store the rava, dry it in sun, until the rice completely dry and crisp.
Here is the recipe:
Ingredients: Rice rava: 1 cup Water: 2½ cups Grated coconut: 2 tbsp. Curry leaves: a few Oil:1 tbsp. Mustard:2 tsp Urad dal: 2 tsp. Chana dal: 2 tsp. Red chillies: 2. Hing powder: ½ tsp. Coriander leaves: 1 tbsp (finely cut) Salt to taste
The above are the usual ingredients for Upma kozhukkattai. For variety I always add either grated carrot or finely cut spinach while preparing the upma.
Method:
Use a thick bottomed pan. Heat the oil in the pan. When the oil is hot, add the hing powder, mustard, urad dal and chana dal. When the dals turn pink in color, add the broken red chillies and curry leaves and add the water and salt. When the water starts boiling add the grated coconut and finely cut coriander leaves (If you are using carrot or spinach, add these now). Add the rice rava and cook until all the water is absorbed. Remove from stove and keep closed for 10 minutes.
When the Upma is cool, mix it well and make small oblong kozhukkattais and steam them for 15-20 minutes. Absolutely delicious kozhukkattais are ready. Enjoy!
Kozhukkattais can be served with sambar, chutney or Podi. My favourite though, is kozhukkattai with rasam. My friend Lalitha says, kozhukkattais taste wonderful with Vattalkozhambu. Pick your choice and Enjoy.
With all the rains and people not able to get out of their houses, Karkitakam (or Aadi) ends up being a month full of many religious activities. As I said earlier, there are regular Ramayanam recitals and also Pujas for the Bhagavathi . Apart from this, most Kerala Iyer families perform Bhagavati Seva during Karkitakam, which is believed to be the highest form of worshipping Devi. The other festivals during Karkitakam are Aadi Amavasya (new moon day of the month of Karkitakam), Aadi Krithikai and Aadi Pooram, and Pathinettam Perukku.
Although pithru tharpanam is performed for our deceased ancestors on all new moon days, Aadi Amavasya is specially observed as the day for paying obeisance to the ancestors and taking their blessings. In Kerala especially, Vavu Bali or Vavubali Tharpanam is an important ritual in the month of Karkitakam. Though in the Kerala Iyer community only men perform the tharpanam, among the native Kerala Hindus both men and women participate in offering bali or tharpanam to the ancestors. Usually, it is performed at river banks or beaches or wherever there is a water body. Many people make a special visit to the important religious places like Thirunelli, Thirunavaya, Aluva, etc., to offer bali on Karkitaka Amavasya.
In Karnataka, Aashada Amavasya is observed as Bhimana Amavasya. On this day, married women worship for the well being of their husbands. I am told they even do Padapuja to their husbands. Aadi Krithikai is an important festival in the Lord Subramanya temples, which is celebrated on the day of the Krithika star in the month of Karkitakam. Aadi Pooram is celebrated in all the Devi temples and is believed to be the birthday of Devi. Pathinettam Perukku is the 18th day in the month of Aadi or Karkitakam and is a big festival day in Tamil Nadu, especially in the Cauvery Delta region. By the 18th of the month, there would have been heavy rains and the rivers would be overflowing the banks. People go out on picnic to the river banks and offer Pooja to Cauvery and enjoy the day with friends and relatives. In Kerala though, Iyers never took a picnic out, but had an elaborate lunch at home. As children, we used to write the Malayalam Aksharamala (alphabet) and sailed it in the overflowing water on this day. I don’t remember the significance of this. However, this is not celebrated in Karnataka, where the Cauvery originates.
Aadi Velli or the Fridays in the month of Karkitakam are especially dedicated to propitiate Devi Bhagavati. Special poojas are performed at home by the women folk. We used to have a Maa Vilakku or Pachai pooja on the Friday of the Karkitakam. Different families conducted this pooja on different Fridays. As it was not performed by my mother-in-law, I am not very sure of the rituals. I only remember that we used to decorate the pooja room with rangoli and neem leaves and red hibiscus flowers. Rice was pounded to fine powder and again pounded with jaggery to make sticky dough. Little lamps were made out of this dough into which ghee was added, the wick inserted and the lamps were lit. My echiyamma said some special prayers and offered the maavu (sweet dough) to Devi. Later this maavu was distributed among all the other ladies of the neighbor hood. This dough was very tasty, especially the portion in which the wick was lit (to us children who were unspoilt by candy, icecream and other junk food)
I remember an interesting anecdote about this Maa vilakku Pooja. This happened when I was perhaps 7 or 8 years of age. There was this Maa vilakku pooja in one of the neighbouring houses and they had sent the maavu home. My aunt was distributing the maavu to all children. My younger brother, who was 4 and my cousin who was 3 were not happy with the portion they got. They asked for more. My aunt said that it was all over. When these two kids insisted for having more, my aunt said, “You have to go to Sethuppa’s house, if you want more.” That was the house which was performing that pooja on that day. After sometime when we could not see the kids around, we started looking for them in the neighbourhood. Where should they be, but at Sethuppa’s house. Both were coming out with beaming faces and full of maavu in their hands. Sethumma (Sethuppa’s wife) said, “When I came out, I saw these two kids standing on our front steps. I asked them to come inside and enquired what they wanted. They said, ‘We wanted more maavu and amma said if we wanted more maavu we have to go to Sethuppa’s house. That’s why we are here.’” Sethumma was so overcome with joy that two kids should come to their house asking for maavu, she filled their hands with maavu and sent them home. Seeing the kids’ happy faces we all burst out laughing.
To celebrate the onset of Aani and Aadi, I have posted a story that my mother in law used to tell my children on the stories website, Kathai Kathaiyam Karanamam.
My handsome and charming son has also added a section on the sidebar to the right that keeps up to date with the latest posts on our other blogs. Justlanded in particular seems to see a lot of activity.
Once again a long period of inactivity (only in blogging). I was fully occupied otherwise, which was the cause of my not spending enough time on this blog. Among the very important assignments, one of which was searching for a perfect match for my younger son of course, we were also busy with creating 2 other blogs.
Kathai Kathayam Karanamam is a blog that has been in gestation for a very long time. This is an attempt to share the stories we had heard as children and also what I had read to my children when they were little. The first story is already up, Matha Pitha Guru Deivam. We will be adding many more, please visit often and give me suggestions as always.
Our younger son who returned to India after spending more than a decade in the US has started blogging his experiences in India of today, from an outsider’s point of view. He is writing Just Landed.
Now that we have 3 blogs going, we are now officially a media empire. We are all part of the ever-expanding Blandings Media Empire.
The Poonool lunch was also a grand affair; only we were so overstuffed with good things, we just couldn’t do justice to the lunch. Post lunch, most of the invitees outside the immediate family circle left. The rest of us were in a relaxed mood and spent some time catching up with the others.
We couldn’t fully relax yet as there was another function, Sumangali Prarthana, slated for the next day. This is a ritual seeking the blessings of women of the family who are no more; something akin to the nandi sradham, only there are no vedic rituals or mantras in this ritual. It is purely a ladies’ function. In most families this function is performed during important events like marriage, upanayanam etc, while in some families it is performed every year. It is believed that performing this puja will satisfy the unfulfilled yearnings of all the girls and ladies who have passed away at young age and they would in turn bless the family. It is common practice to conduct the Sumangali Prarthana before the marriage if the daughter is getting married and after the new daughter-in-law comes home if the son is getting married. This function is not performed on Tuesdays or Saturdays.
Usually, 7 ladies and 2 young girls (preferably below the age of 10) are invited to participate in the function, partake the feast and receive thamboolam. There is no objection for near relatives of the hostess to participate. Now a days many people do with 7 (6+1) or (5+2) ladies as it has become difficult to get together the 9 ladies to sit for the function. Usually only sumangalis are only invited for the purpose though I have heard that there are exceptions to this rule. Different families follow different customs. The ladies who sit for the puja represent all the women of the family who are no more alive. Since there is no explicit avahanam through manthrams of any pithrus, ladies generally accept the invitation. This function is very akin to the nandisradham performed prior to the upanayanam in many respects. While nandisradham is presided over and conducted by the purohitha of the family and the kartha is a gent; this function is presided over by the elderly lady members of the family. Usually the kartha is a sumangali from the family. The gifts to the ladies vary among families and also depend on the financial status of the kartha, very similar to the nandi sradham. The menu for the feast is also very similar. Though no vedic rituals are performed, Sumangali Prarthana is considered to be a very important and sacred function and all the preparations are done with a great deal of Shradha and Bhakthi. This is one function where the gents of the family are excluded from the rituals. They are asked to enter the hall only after initial puja is offered to do namaskarams and seek the blessings. Otherwise, they can stick around to offer any help around or in the kitchen and then await call for lunch, when the ladies have been fed and seen off.
The consent and convenience of all the prospective participants would have been obtained in advance and there would always be a few standbys for any unexpected dropouts. In the olden days, the preparations for the function had to start the previous evening. Armed with a bucket of oil and packets of turmeric powder, kumkum, flowers, betel leaves and nuts, and shikakai powder, we would go to all the invitees’ houses and invite them giving a measure of oil and the other things we carried. The items were for the lady’s bath and adornment the next day. I am not sure if the custom is being followed anywhere today. Perhaps, these days one would have to carry, shampoo sachets, moisturizing cream, lipstick and the like. We did not have that invitation round this time at our home as most of the participants were from the family and immediate family.
All the participants are supposed to take an oil bath in the morning and come dressed in 9 yards saree only. There is no match to the beauty of the ladies all dressed in nine yards sarees and with no make up other than turmeric powder in their face and flowers in their hair, fresh from an oilbath.
In memory of those souls who are no more with us, a new 9 yards saree and pavadai as offering (these two would be used by some members of the family after the puja) are kept in wooden trays, along with oil, betel leaves, flowers, turmeric, kumkum and neem leaves early in the morning and the blessings are sought. This has to be done by a member of the family before taking bath! In all our rituals, I have not some across another ritual which is done before taking bath. As I was staying at a neighboring house (not enough space for all invitees at home), my mother sent word for me at 5.30am. I sent back the messenger as I was yet to bathe. My mother sent the messenger back saying, “I want her to come here before taking bath”. It has been a long time since I myself conducted this ritual. When my astute and blessed mother-in-law was alive, she used to take care of these little things and I used to be busy in the kitchen.
My mother made me offer the saree and pavadai with oil and other items to the elders (who are in heaven) and asked me to pray for their blessings for the family. This done, the saree had to be washed and dried before the actual function. In some families new dresses for all the girls and ladies of the family are bought and kept at the puja and later on used by the family members. Anyway, not all the dresses are washed prior to the function.
Though the cooking for this function is usually done by the women in the family, the hired cook prepared the feast as all of us were quite tired after the poonool. An elaborate lunch (again samaradhanai vattam) was prepared including
The menu also included three types of fruits, mango, jackfruit and banana. Vadai and Neiyappam were also prepared. It is a practice at home to make polis which was discontinued this time as no one was in a mood to have more sweets. When all the invited ladies arrive, they are received with kumkum, haldi, flowers and pachai (rouge!). This pachai is a paste made of kumkum and water and is applied on both sides of the cheek outside the earlobes. They are then taken to the function hall where a place has been marked for each one with two places for the deceased seniors at the head of the hall. The saree and pavadai meant for the deceased seniors are kept in the palakai along with some gold chain and flowers and betel leaves, neemleaves, turmeric and kumkum. Banana leaves are laid out for serving food at the place where the saree and pavadai are kept (this place is called pudavai kalam – meaning where pudavai or saree is kept) meant for the departed souls and also for all the invited participants, after having invoked the departed seniors. After all the items are served on the leaves, puja is done offering flowers, turmeric powder, kumkum betel leaves, neem leaves and water to the departed souls and all the invitees, by the eldest lady of the family .The other members of the family including male members offer puja and namaskarms at the pudavai kalam site only. Doopam and Deepam are offered at the place where elders are invoked, i.e., at the pudavai kalam and also to all the participating ladies by the eldest lady of the family.
This is one of the functions where ladies are served first. After lunch, the ladies are given a special mixture called Chukkumanam (mixture of dried ginger and jaggery) as a digestive aid after the heavy meal. They are also given paanakam to drink. They are offered thamboolam, dakshina and mehendi. These days, people give more expensive gifts like sarees, bangles, and the like to the invited ladies. After the invited ladies are seen off, the other members of the family have their lunch. The food served at pudavai kalam ( the two places earmarked for the departed ) is partaken of by two ladies of the family.
After lunch the saree and pavadai are given to some family members who have to wear them and replace them at the same place. In the night a pot of water is also kept near the pudavai kalam to quench the thirst of the heavenly visitors. In the olden days (during the time of my grandmother), the saree kept at the pudavai kalam was kept inside a trunk after the function and worn only after the next Sumangali Prarthana. The saree inside the box, kept after the previous Sumangali Prarthana was taken out on this occasion and worn by a member of the family. It so happened that sometimes the interval between two Sumangali Prarthanas was too long and by the time the saree was taken out it would have started wearing out. Hence after my grandmother passed away, the elders in the family decided to discontinue this practice of keeping the saree inside a box.
Thus ended the grand finale to our big get together. All the guests started taking leave one by one from that evening with loads and loads of happy memories of the past few days.
For sometime now, we had been planning to move to a smaller city/smaller place, just to get out of this maddening crowd in Bangalore. The roads have become very crowded, the vehicular traffic has increased to such an extent that walking on the roads is next to impossible. The haphazard parking of cars and motor cycles makes it difficult to get out of the houses or even enter people’s houses when you go visiting. The problem worsens if it rains.
We had always wanted to go back to a quiet and leisurely village in Kerala surrounded by greeneries and flowing water. Running water has been a weakness for me for so long. I would give anything to be able to take a swim in clear and unpolluted water. It has remained an unfulfilled dream so far. Somehow, moving to Kerala was not happening due to various factors. So when my brother suggested about an apartment a little away from the crowd, our handsome and charming son decided to buy it so that we could move in there and have a quieter life. The added incentive was that all my brothers were also buying an apartment each there, although none of them had plans to move in there at the moment.
The apartment house was ready for occupation from the builder’s point and people had already occupied. We wanted to make some minor modifications/additions here and there and also get the interiors done. We were promised everything would be done in 2 weeks time and we could occupy it by 1st week of March. We gave a month’s extra time and decided to conduct the grihapravesham after Vishu, so that our son could also get some vacation.We made trips to the new apartment almost everyday and though the interiors were ready by end of March, the additional masonry work had not even started. With lots of coaxing and cajoling we got some of the work done and decided to conduct the grihapravesham on the 23rd of April.
In the meantime, we started packing our things and also preparing for the grihapravesham. We had arranged to conduct a Ganapathi Homam, Vasthu Homam and Navagraha Homam and host lunch for a few of the near and dear.
We had to buy a whole lot of things and transport them to the new place, 6 kms away. The weather was scorching and humid..To reach this new place either we had to take an autorikshaw who would oblige at his will and ask for that extra 10 bucks or we had to walk upto 1½ kms if we decided to travel by bus. At times we walked almost 1 km to get a rikshaw. My memories went back 19 years when we had moved to our present house and did the grihapravesham in a much more elaborate manner. Things weren’t so difficult then, I remembered. We both were working full time and children were in school. When I said this to our handsome and charming younger son over phone, he said, “Patti was there amma.” True. My astute and blessed mother-in-law was around and she was a great manager and co-ordidnator. She was not at an age where she could get out and manage things but I could give her a list of things to be done by the various people and leave home in the morning for work and reach back late in the evening after visiting the construction site and every thing would be ready at home. Most importantly, all the four of us were mobile (on our own). We could finish many chores on our way up and down and didn’t have to depend on each other. Things were different now. Patti is no more with us and nor is any one mobile.
Couple of days to go for the function, my husband borrowed his friend’s car so that we could commute much more comfortably. Our son brought the car from the friend’s place. We all went to the apartment and stayed back longer to get the pending electrical work finished without any worry about reaching back home as we had a car. We came down at 7.30pm and found the car with a flat tyre. With great difficulty we got a mechanic to repair the flat tyre and we left the place around 8.30 pm. Hardly had we moved a kilometer and suddenly the car jerked and was going towards the electric post by the side of the road. We did not know what was happening and only our son’s presence of mind saved us from a major accident. He could somehow bring the car to the side of the narrow road and that was it. The car wouldn’t move, the steering wheel was not controlling the wheels as it had had come loose from its couplings. We were in the midst of a very busy road, hardly enough room for single lane traffic. We just couldn’t move the car. My husband phoned his friend, who just gave his mechanic’s phone number and said we could get in touch with the mechanic. It was futile even to imagine that the mechanic would be available at the garage at 9.30pm. My husband tried his luck with one of the workmen we had engaged to get some grill work done and it clicked. The nice man came with two of his boys and still we couldn’t move the care. Cars and buses were honking on all the four sides and I was sitting inside a hot and humid car. With nothing else to do, I just sat there and started reciting my Lalitha Sahasranamam per my daily schedule. Just then two boys came as if from nowhere and asked us what the problem was. They were car mechanics, they said and with great difficulty with the combined effort of all of us, we could push the car away from the road. The boys said, they would get their tools and see if something could be done. Meanwhile, our son insisted that we go home. With difficulty, we hired an auto and reached home at 10.00 pm. Later our son also reached home after having deposited the car under the care of the grill maker.
So the next day getting the car repaired was also on our shoulders. With luck, we could get the job done by evening after spending a handsome amount.
Ever since I started writing about “Kerala Iyer Wedding”, many people have been asking me why I have not yet written about Sambandhi Sandai. So, here we go. Sambandhi Sandai is an event dreaded by the bride’s party and some fine entertainment that other visitors eagerly anticipate.
When I think of sambandhi sandai, my memories travel back some half a century in time to the fifties and sixties, to a society that considered demands for dowry, seeru, the way that the various rituals were conducted, etc as just and were dictated very strictly by the prospective in-laws of the bride. Such demands for dowry, seeru, etc were an integral part of any marriage and treated as important as the rituals. Many marriage proposals broke down on the issue of dowry. Also there were instances where the in-laws to be would get a goldsmith to test the quality and/or the weight of the gold or demand bills from reputed shops before the wedding functions started. Besides, there were always one or two close relatives of the groom who would have been disappointed in not having succeeded in getting their daughter or niece wedded to the groom, now seeking their revenge by having a go at the bride’s party. The interests of the latter people were only to create some mischief in the proceedings. It should also be borne in mind that those were the days when the present day event managers were absent and for the conduct of the function the bride’s parents depended heavily on the men and women folk, young and old, in the village with the attended shortcomings as well as lack of etiquette and experience. All these contributed to some friction here and there, unfortunately some were blown out of proportion resulting in verbal exchanges fanned by some unscrupulous relatives, often with their own agenda.
Sambandhi Sandai literally means a fight between the new relatives. In the Kerala Iyer weddings (actually in almost all Indian weddings), the bride’s parents are supposed to be responsible for the smooth conduct of the wedding, starting from the marriage pandal, nadaswaram, catering, entertaining the guests to bidding farewell to all the guests. The onus for the successful conduct of the wedding rested solely on the bride’s party. The bridegroom’s party are the honored guests, who need to be received at the entrance hall, made confortable, invited for each ritual of the marriage and for meals (with coconuts, plantain fruits, parippu thengai kutty as the occasion demands, accompanied by nadaswaram each time), in short, all their needs however small or big are to be met to their satisfaction. It was the bride’s party’s responsibility to see that they had no wants and were happily entertained.
In a big function like a marriage, when there are so many rituals to be completed and so many meals to be served and so many other arrangements to be made, involving so many people, young and old, it can always happen that there are one or two slip ups in any of the above. There are always people who could find fault with something or the other just to make an issue and blow it out of proportion and to humiliate the bride’s parents, as they are the event managers.
In the olden days, as the marriages were usually conducted in the bride’s residence, the guests were accomodated in a nearby house. So usually, the “sambandhi sandai” started with complaints of the inadequacies of the accomodation and other inconveneinces in the quarters allotted to them. More often than not, this came from the son-in-law of the bridegroom’s parents, as he is the most important guest of their family. Some inconvenience to their mappilai (son-in-law) was something nobody could ignore.
This continues even today, though in another form. These days, most of the weddings are arranged in wedding halls with equal number of rooms for both the bride’s and bridegroom’s parties. It often happens that the bridegroom’s party demands more rooms for their guests, leaving the bride’s party with very little room to accommodate their guests. I remember during my cousin’s daughter’s wedding, the bridegroom’s athai and athimbar (parternal aunt and uncle, who are the daughter and son-in-law of that family) demanded a separate room for them at 11.30 pm and my cousin had to actually vacate the room where his sister and family were put up and send them to a hotel about 5kms away.
Then, there were always the sandai for milk for the baby and again the VIP guests. In the olden days, the only source of milk was the neighbour who owned cows or from the nearby towns, during big occasions. There were no refrigerators to preserve the milk and hence after the guests have been served with coffee and the payasam made, the milk would be used for setting curds for the next day. Around 10 pm would come the demand for the milk and naturally there would be no milk available. A loud unleashing would follow and this was one demand that could never be fulfilled because there was no hope for procuring milk at that late hour in small places. My mother-in-law used to remember this story relating to the time of her marriage. Some guests demanded milk for a big group at 11 pm and one of her uncles decided to play a trick on the guests. He filled a big pot with water and added one glass of milk in it and gave it to the guests saying that was the only milk availbale at that hour. What followed, my astute and blessed mother-in-law could never remember. (She had many such stories up her sleeves. I only wish I had started on this blogging endeavour during her time.) It is very different today even in remote villages, where pasterurised milk is available and almost all households have refrigerators.
Other important issues during the olden days for sambandhi sandai was dowry (which has almost died out today), seer, the items for breakfast, lunch and dinner,etc. In general, issues as insignificant as who received the bridegroom’s mother at the entrance, to the size of ladoo could start a war of words. Usually, the bride’s parents would bend over backwards to pacify the “warmongers” and would even be prepared to fall at their feet and beg pardon for any unforeseen shortcomings, but the sandai reaches its full crescendo, when one of the guests from the bride’s side starts raising their voice against the shouting brigade. Usually, there is somebody on the bride’s side who do not want to give in for all their demands and the sandai becomes a real do or die and sometimes ends in a walkout by the groom’s party. There have been instances when people have walked out halfway through their dinner or halfway through the marriage functions. One can only imagine the agony of the parents of the bride, after all the care taken by them.
While I was writing this, one of my friends happened to read a preview of my post and asked me to elaborate on the scene, as she had never witnessed a sambandhi sandai.
The one sambandhi sandai I remember clearly was during a wedding in our village when I was a little girl of 9 or 10 years old.
The scene : The bridegroom’s party sitting for their evening tiffin. Bondas were being served as part of the tiffin. The boy who was serving the tiffin had reached the place where the mother of the groom was having her meal. Having come near the lady, the boy asked, “ Bonda, mami?” (i.e., “Would you like another bonda, aunty?”). The lady suddenly got up from her seat complaining in a loud voice and almost breaking down, “Look at the impropriety of the boy. Shouldn’t he know whom he is addressing. How dare he address me as ‘bonda mami’. Am I a bonda mami? Is this the way I should be insulted on my son’s wedding day? I cannot tolerate this. I am not going to have anything to do with any of the proceedings from this minute.” She went on and on and the boy who was serving bonda and all others were completely shocked at the turn of the events. It was a very common practice while serving to announce the dish he or she is serving like “bonda, mami” or “payasam, mama” and with no offence meant. Soon all the relatives of the groom surrounded the lady and some started blaming the boy and yet others started consoling the lady and in general a great commotion was created. The bride’s party was taken aback and did not know what to do. There were more rituals to be completed. The groom’s brother (who was just a boy of 20+) emerged and ordered the bride’s father, who was old enough to be his own father, to go and apologise to his mother, if he wanted his daughter’s wedding rituals to be completed. I can never forget this incident and the pain, agony and shame on the bride’s father’s face.
It is not for nothing that they say in Tamil, Veettai katti par, Kalyanam Panni Par meaning, construct a house or conduct marriage to know how difficult these tasks are.
We are back after our visit to Chennai. We had a very hectic but very enjoyable trip. The weather especially was very pleasant. Though we had an A/C room, we had to switch off the A/C at times.
The main purpose of the visit was attending the marriage of R, the daughter of a very close friend, K. As usual with all south Indian marriages, the marriage was a grand affair. We met many old friends and acquaintances after a very long time, some after about 35 years. But not many had difficulty in recognising us. We had met many people during the wedding of the parents of the bride. This made the function more special as this was the first in the series of marriages of the second generation, whose parents’ marriage also we had attended. We had a lot to catch up with people starting from the parents’ marriage.
This took me back to the trip we took to attend K’s wedding at Palani, the hill temple town in Tamil Nadu. We had to travel by bus as there was no direct train from Bangalore in that route those days(over 30 years ago). We had travelled with our one year old child and the bus tire burst twice on the way, leaving us stranded on the road for hours together on both occasions. With no hotels or coffee shops in sight, we had to walk some 2 kms to get some coffee and milk for our child. Finally, we reached Palani at 6.30 pm instead of 6.30am.
During this wedding, I also met P, the beautiful cousin of R, who was a 2 year old naughty child during K’s wedding. She is the mother of 2 little kids now and doesn’t look a day older than 20. I reminded her of the interesting incident that took place during K’s wedding. As I said earlier, our elder son was one year old then and somebody commented to this 2 year old, how smart the little boy was. It was too much of a blow to the ego of the 2 year old and she came running as if to hug the boy, but to our utter consternation bit his ear. I had a tough time consoling him.
At that time our younger child was already on his way and this made my astute and blessed mother-in-law to take vow that she would get the first mundan of the child to be born at Palani (What if he had turned out to be a she? – Ed). For various reasons, we couldn’t manage a trip to Palani for the next four years. Our younger son had long curly hair when he went to nursery school. Though most people trim the hair of the boys before the first mundan which has to be performed after the age of 2, strictly speaking no scissors should touch the hair before the vedic ritual of choulam (mundan). Hence we had not trimmed his hair at all until the ceremony. Once his teacher sent him home with a note, “Please cut your daughter’s hair”.
As usual, I have digressed from R’s wedding to her parents’ wedding. More about R’s wedding later.
During our Chennai trip, we also visited our 92 years old chithappa, my brother, my mother, my cousins, did some shopping at the famous Ranganathan street and Usman Road and visited our (handsome and charming) son’s India Office.
Kozhukkattais are steamed rice balls with sweet coconut stuffing. No South Indian needs introduction to kozhukkattai or an translation for it. The translation is for the unfortunate ones who have not tasted this yummy, delicious and melt in the mouth delicacy, one with very little oil in it to boot.
Kozhukkattai is a most favoured sweet in our family, my late astute and blessed mother in-law simply loved it. Though usually it is prepared only during Ganesh Chaturthi or as naivedyam for performing Ganapathi Homam, she would invent some excuse to make me prepare this as often as possible. When the children were in college, she got a good excuse to prepare kozhukkattai every time they visited home. She would say "children were not here during Ganesh Chaturthi, so when are you going to prepare kozhukkattai for them?" Or she would say, there are so many black ants around, when are you going to offer kozhukkattais for Ganapathi? (there is a belief that black ants will disappear if one appeased Lord Ganesha). Our younger (handsome and charming) son’s sweet tooth was also a blessing for her.
Having said so much about sweet kozhukkattai, I would not be doing justice to other equally yummy savory kozhukkattais, of which there are many varieties, if I did not mention them. Ulundu kozhukkattai (made of refined black gram and coconut filling), vegetable kozhukkattai (my invention), ammini kozhukkattai (both sweet and savory), Uppuma kozhukkattai, are some of the more popular ones.
Now for our King of Kozhukkattais:
Ingredients (yields 20 – 25 kozhukkattais)
For the stuffing:
fresh grated coconut: 1 cup grated jaggery: ¾ cup cardamom powder: a pinch
For the outer shell:
Rice flour: 1½ cups Coconut oil or any other cooking oil: 2tsp. Salt: a pinch
Preparation:
The stuffing:
Melt the jaggery and strain to remove any impurities. Reheat and make a slightly thick syrup. To test, just remove the spoon with a little syrup from the boiling syrup and drop into a cup of cold water. If the syrup forms a smooth ball, soft to touch, it is ready. Add the coconut gratings to the molten jaggery. Keep stirring until all the water is absorbed and the contents leave the side of the pan. Remove from fire and add cardamom powder.
This stuffing can be prepared in advance and refrigerated up to 1 month. This keeps good in room temperature for up to 1 week.
The rice flour coating:
Heat a pan and add 2 tsp of oil. Add 1½ cups of water and pinch of salt and boil. Meanwhile mix the rice flour in1½cups of water into a smooth batter without lumps. When the water starts boiling add this batter and keep stirring until the rice flour becomes a smooth shiny ball. Remove from fire and cool.
To prepare kozhukkattais:
Knead the rice flour dough well. Take a lime sized portion and form into a cup. Smear little oil on your finger tips to make it easier to handle the dough. Put a smaller size ball of the coconut stuffing inside and close from all sides and pinch the ends together. Repeat till all the dough and stuffing is used up. Steam the kozhukkattais in a steamer or a idli steamer for 15 minutes.
ENJOY!
Tips: If banana leaves are available place the kozhukkattais on the banana leaf and steam.The kozhukkattais will not stick to the plate.
If any of the rice dough is left over, make marble sized balls of the dough and steam. Heat a tsp. of oil, add 1 tsp of mustard and 1 tsp of urad dal, bits of red chilli, add the steamed rice balls. This in itself will make a nice snack.
If the stuffing is left over, enjoy it as thengai thirattu pal.
Elai Adai (sweet parcels) is the most delicious dessert exclusive to Kerala. It is made out of jaggery, jackfruit and coconut (what dish out of Kerala doesn't have coconut in it? My handsome and charming son often says: Any recipe you have, adding coconut to it can only make it better). Another delicious treat made of the same ingredients is chaka pradhaman (more about this later). The elai adai can be prepared during the jackfruit season as well as off season and in remote places away from Kerala. The NRK's prepare elai adai by preserving the jackfruits as jam which in itself is quite the delicacy (side dish for adai for instance). As a child, jackfruit jam was the only jam available to us (none of your strawberry-raspberry mixes for us). The taste of elai adai is augmented by the delicious flavour of the plaintain leaf in which it is wrapped and steamed. My h. and c. son reminded me that this resembles the tamales available in Mexican restaurants. Similarly the Saraswat brahmins of Udipi and Mangalore make kadubu which is cooked by wrapping in turmeric leaf. Banana leaves are available in Indian stores, and frozen leaves are available in Chinese stores. The last time I visited the U.S. one of my nieces asked me if I could prepare elai adai for her. I told her that if she could arrange for the banana leaves, I could make them for her and she promptly got the frozen ones from the Chinese store, they were just what the doctor ordered for this purpose. Since my h. & c. son is not so industrious, we made it at his place by borrowing banana leaves from one of his neighbours. Thanks anonymous neighbours! Just goes to show that even in America, you just have to ask and you will receive.
A quick note on the jackfruit (Artocarpus integrifolia). This fruit is particular to India, especially Kerala. It is a huge egg-shaped fruit with a hard and prickly outer green shell, and it weighs some 10-20kgs. The sweet aroma of a ripe jackfruit can be smelt as far away as 50-100 feet (and 1 kilometer in the case of my astute and blessed mother in law). Cutting a jackfruit open is quite the process. You have to keep cutting it into halves to get it to a manageable size. First oil your hands and the heavy duty knife that you intend using. Without the oil, your hands and knife will get all sticky because as you cut it, the fruit secretes a white sticky resin. This resin has to cleaned off the fruit with a rolled up piece of paper of cloth. Because the resin hardens easily, it was used as a sealing agent to fix broken pots, buckets etc. There is a thick white stalk that runs along the center of the fruit. The edible part of the fruit comprises many yellow (yellow when ripe, white when raw) fruitlets that are firmly attached to this stalk. Each of these fruitlets in turn is "protected" by little white sepals. These sepals also have to be carefully peeled off the fruitlet. Ultimately you get a yellow fruitlet that encloses within itself a hard egg-shaped seed. The fruitlet is the most delicious fruit that you'll ever have the fortune of eating. It is full of fiber, vitamins and other nutrients. This fiber is of course a double edged sword. Eat too much jackfruit at one sitting, and you'll pay the price the next day. Now don't throw away the seeds: like many other things we've figured out many tasty dishes that can be cooked with the seeds. But more of that later.
When I was growing up in Kerala, during the summers we used to get huge jackfruits from our family farm or backyard. Each of them used to weigh some 15-20 kilos. We all used to sit in our concreted backyard in a big circle (during summer, our house was full of visiting cousins and uncles, on any day there would be about 50 people at home). At 9 in the morning when the maid had finished her cleaning and dish washing, our Echiyamma (my grandmother) would order the maid to bring the jackfruit and call all the children to come and remove the ripe fruitlets from the fruit. We would all sit in a big circle, the maid would bring a jackfruit and an axe. She would then cut the jackfruit into bits and remove the stem. We children would sit and remove all the fruitlets and de-seed them. While we did that, we would pop a few into our mouths. Echiyamma and my periappa would cut them into small bits to be made into jackfruit jam or adai or some kootan. during the summers many kilos of jackfruit jam used to be made in our house, for immediate use and to be sent home with all our visitors.
The day on which elai adai was to be made, again my echiyamma used to summon all kids for the preparation. A minimum of 100-150 had to be made so that everybody would be fed, as well as plenty left over for sharing with the neighbours.
Finally, now onto the actual preparation of the elai adai. We'll assume the existence of the jackfruit jam. At a later date, I'll post how this jam is to be prepared.
Ingredients: Jackfruit jam: 250g Jaggery: ¾ cup grated fresh coconut: 2 cups raw rice: ¾ cup boiled rice: ¾ cup gingelly oil: 1 tbsp banana leaves: 1 per elai adai, size of 8"x8" salt: a pinch
Procedure: Soak the rice for 5 hours and grind to a thick smooth paste. Add the salt while grinding. It should be of spreading consistency. Add the gingelly oil to this paste and mix well.
To make the filling, melt the jaggery with 1 cup of water, strain to remove dirt and other impurities, boil it, add the jackfruit jam and loosen it. When the jackfruit jam is loose and of spreading consistency, add the grated coconut, mix well and remove from the stove. This should now be of a jam like consistency. This filling can be refrigerated for up to 1 month.
The banana leaves need to be mildly seasoned by steaming for a few seconds or (very) briefly held over a low flame. The point of this is to make the leaf pliable, otherwise the leaf tears when you fold it. Otherwise, just sun the leaf for 10-30 minutes (but watch it carefully, too long and the leaves will wither away). I've never tried microwaving the leaves, maybe that will work also.
Now take each leaf, spread a ladle full of rice flour as a thin layer. Now, spread 2 tbsp of prepared filling on top of this layer, but covering only about ¾th of the layer. Fold the banana leaf into half, fold the edges once again to seal the edges and place it in a steamer. Repeat for all the leaves, and steam for 25-30 minutes. When it is done, the elai adai should not stick to the leaf when opened.
