Celebrity Column: Remembering Grandma Rosemary, writes Maria Goretti

My maternal grandmother Rosemary only spoke Marathi. That’s what we East-Indians speak. We are inhabitants of Maharashtra, after all! The only problem was, that as kids, we only spoke English, because we lived in Bombay and because my dad’s family spoke English.

And so, a lot that my grandma said to us was lost in translation, and yet, it was the most normal way to be. She would talk to us in Marathi, we would reply in English and that’s how it was. And in time, we started getting a hang of her language, thanks to school and the amount of time we spent at my grandparents’ place in Vasai. 

Did I tell you that they were farmers — really hard-working folk — and that their home in Vasai had a very high, tiled ceiling, bare-brick walls, a dung floor, a big swing in the verandah, facing our fields till the eye could see, with a path that went through them strewn with coconut trees, that swayed in the still calm of the afternoon breeze?

I loved Grandma Rosemary’s place. My grandpa used to pull out tender guava leaves to brush our teeth and we used to sit around a little bonfire that he set up because the mornings were so cold.

So that’s how it was — very basic, very simple and yet, there was nothing that was lacking, least of all love.

Every morning, my grandma took a basketful of vegetables and went to the local market. We all knew she would come back with packets of freshly-roasted channa, that she would keep throwing to all of us as she passed through the fields and walked home, calling out to all of us. There would also be a big packet of jalebi, devoured somewhere in the middle of the field, picked up with fingers that were not washed.

She would walk back home on that small path between the fields, and from her basket, a fish tail swayed with every step. While we sat back on those huge coconut palm leaves, or “jhaulies” as I remember they were called, and held on to its leaflets and were taken on a dragging ride and our bottoms were being bruised on the bumpy, muddy road, inside my grandma’s kitchen, lunch was being prepared by her six daughters and her.

We knew the time she came home — which was in tandem with the Angelus bell ringing — and it would be about half-an-hour away to us eating the tastiest fish curry I had eaten. I’d wait for the holidays to start just for a taste of that curry.

The food in my grandma’s home was cooked on a wooden fire, in earthen pots, she had a big rectangular wooden platter in which she would knead rice flour to make flat bread. The kitchen had a sunken grinding stone in the floor, and it was here that the magic happened.

My mum always said that no matter what she tried, her food was not half as good as grandma’s and she always said, ‘It’s the water’.

All of us kids would go and wash ourselves at the boring well, and sit down in the verandah, pour water into the glasses and wipe the plates. My grandma would then call out to us and we would all run into the kitchen, plates in hand. My aunts would serve us rice or rice hand-breads and my grandma would serve us fish curry, straight off the fire into our plates.

And even when I think of her now, I can taste the flavour of her fish curry and my mouth just waters. She would sit with us, forcing us to eat more. We did, and she would then smile, her brown eyes twinkling. The many wrinkles around her eyes bore witness to the fact that she smiled a lot and laughed a lot in spite of the hard life she led.

And her food was always just the tastiest, the fish was always perfectly done, the colour of the gravy an inviting red, fresh green chilies adding to its inviting holiday appearance.

We used to go for it, fingers dunking into our plate of steaming hot food — no better way to enjoy it — then squealing with delight, we’d lick our fingers, much to the displeasure of my mom.

Food does not have to be gourmet, it just needs more than the recommended amount of love.