Celebration of the five senses with a pinch of wisdom

My nose twitched in anticipation. I inhaled deeply. The dishes served on the gleaming banana leaf before me simply took my breath away! This was the most appetizing display I had seen in a long time, not wholly unfamiliar, but each with a twist in taste: vada soaked in an unknown gravy, chutneys with a new tang, vangi bath with its own texture. The cooks had been brought to Chennai from some small town in south Karnataka, to give a new experience to the Tamil guests at a family function.

My host explained that he delighted in offering out-of- the-way culinary experiences to his guests. “Don’t you think that the discovery of a new dish means much more to humanity than the discovery of a new star?” he asked.

Even as I laughed with him, I began to wonder. How strange that our knowledge of the mind-boggling varieties of Indian cuisine is so limited! After all, what restaurants list as “north Indian” or “south Indian”, is confined to some generic local version of Punjabi khana and idli-dosa. And how many metro dwellers, familiar with Milanese pesto and Manchurian noodles, can distinguish Mangalore sambar from Madurai sambar? Kadubu idli from Konjeevaram idli? Awadhi pulao from Hyderabadi pulao? Patra from patrode?

True, popular TV shows with masterchefs judging an array of gourmet dishes, do make us aware of the bewildering diversities in Indian cuisine. However, all these dishes are prepared in a sterile kitchen, in a sanitized setting. And so, we see the process of cooking as entertainment, not as an intrinsic part of living cultures. Sometimes women contestants try to assert their regional identity with costumes — nauvari or ghagra. What they actually achieve is a paradoxical cultural dissociation.

The blogs do better. They describe the setting — mostly mom’s or grandma’s kitchen.   Along with gustatory celebrations, they record visual memories of dew-speckled spinach from the back garden; auditory moments of hissing oil and spluttering mustard; olfactory recall of woodsmoke in the gravy, or home-roasted coffee seeds, powdered by a hand-turned knob; and tactile textures — grainy chutneys ground on a flat stone, or yam baked on live coals.

I too have synaesthetic memories of grandma churning buttermilk — the rope going srk-srk round the pole, twirling the wooden churner thrust into a clay pot filled with curd.
As the cream rose in a solid mass, and grandma rolled it into a rich round ball, I knew just why the Krishna myths are all about stealing butter, and lissome gopis dancing with pots of cream on their heads. 

 “Churn well, but know when to stop,” she would say, as she added sprigs of coriander, crushed curry leaves, grated ginger, salt, sugar, lime juice, and strips of lime rind.

Grandpa declared, “If Mahavishnu drank this nectar, he would abandon his ocean of milk and jump into an ocean of buttermilk.”  

Since Indian thought melds the sensuous with the spiritual, an everyday kitchen task becomes a metaphor for gnana, karma and bhakti, the paths of wisdom, action and devotion. Doesn’t butter symbolise sapience extracted from churning labours, as also the reward of loving devotion! Surely folk songs in every Indian language, swinging to the churner’s rhythm, make this clear as they image the butter thief as the teacher of wisdom, and the embodiment of bliss.

In regional cultures, gastronomical journeys can end in gnana. Cracking a coconut can signify breaking out of ignorance to find latent truth. For cooking is not titillation, but an offering to the spirit within. And eating is a joyous act of contemplation, and bonding with all living beings.

The author is a playwright, theatre director, musician and journalist, writing on the performing arts, cinema and literature.