Shahida Chachi is from Lucknow, the city of nawabs, famous for its elaborate and sumptuous feasts, finesse in speech and manner, and the epitome of refined tastes in food and lifestyles. And Shahida Chachi is true to her provenance. She cooks fabulous meals and is eager to share her culinary creations with us. She is extremely well-spoken, tall, statuesque and elegant, dressed in understated silk saris in muted colours, preferring plain cotton ones with perhaps a contrasting darker shaded border in the summer.
She often hosts a daawat (feast) at her house, with tasteful crockery and lavish-sounding dishes, many of which are unfamiliar to us. She regales all with tales of nawabs attempting to outdo one another in refinement, asking their cooks to peel individual peas and stuff the chhilka, or covering, of each tiny pea with qeema as a re-imagined qeema matar or nargisi koftey made with quail eggs and the finest venison. Our young minds try in vain to comprehend the elaborate preparation of such indulgent and fanciful foods. We wonder at the time and effort it must have taken the poor cooks and kitchen staff to perform such intricate and complex culinary feats on a daily basis.
Shahida Chachi’s children are roughly our age, and we are friends with them. She is married to Abba’s younger brother, Professor Aulad Ahmad, who teaches Economics at the University and is extremely learned and intellectual. Even though she is our mother’s chachi, they are roughly the same age and are great friends. So her children, though cousins of our mother, have a sort of friendly sibling-like bond with us. It feels like we are cousins, and duly refer to one another by our first names. Apart from long sessions of Scrabble, Ludo, Snakes and Ladders and cards, we share a love of food and have long, animated discussions on various mithais, cakes, kebabs, pastries and other delectable treats. The feast served at a family wedding, a new eatery or the fare served at the Numaish (an annual Aligarh fair) are all topics of great interest to us.
We have been invited to a rasawal party by Shahida Chachi, and we all duly arrive at her immaculately neat house. She has a beautiful and exquisite collection of crockery, and we all sit together at and around the dining table. Rasawal is more of a rural preparation, made with fresh sugar cane juice known as ganne ka ras, hence the name. It is a seasonal delicacy regularly prepared in urban homes too, when sugar cane is in season. We also love to eat fresh, peeled sugar cane, sold on wooden carts, or thelas, cut into roughly lemon-sized chunks, piled on slabs of ice to keep them cool, and strewn with rose petals. We chew the cylindrical, luscious pieces, known as ganderi, till we have extracted all the juice and a dry, fibrous pulp remains that we spit out in a bin. Sometimes, we drink glasses full of freshly squeezed juice and watch excitedly as bunches of long, bamboolike sugar cane are passed in between two large steel wheels, rotating simultaneously, one atop the other. A frothy, pale green, intensely sweet and refreshing juice comes out from a spout at the side, collected in jugs and poured into glasses. These are the only two ways that we’ve had ganna until now.
Assembling the extended family for a special, traditional and, more importantly, seasonal food item is not an uncommon thing. One who takes pride in and ownership of this particular dish would invite several people from the extended family who lived nearby, and it would generally be an informal, casual event. No fancy table settings but, rather a large dastarkhwan, or thick cloth used as a serving mat for people to sit around, cross-legged on a durrie or carpet-clad floor or a large chowki. This could be special and authentic meat dishes like khichda or haleem, shabdegh, paaye, or simply seasonal delicacies like boot pulao (a pulao made with rice and tender green chickpeas, known as boot), kali gajar ka halwa, amras (a dish made with unripe mangoes and semolina, said to protect one against the killer Loo winds or a sunstroke) or simply masses of mangoes that came from one’s own orchard. Sometimes there would be picnics in scenic spots where everyone cooked and brought along something they made well, like a potluck.
These could be alu puri, roghani tikiyan, shami kebab, halwa or shakar parey. One of the elders in the family, whom my mother refers to as Chhoti Dadi, did an annual daawat for the extended family with a one-pot menu. This was the hannda (a large pot) that was set upon a choolha (makeshift stove) in the courtyard and had several kilos of meat cooked with all kinds of leafy green vegetables or saag she could get hold of, seasonal, of course. It simmered on a low heat all night, and the next morning, she laid out her favourite dastarkhwan, a large yellow fabric sheet with various shers hand-embroidered on it. Everyone sat around it on the massive chowki and ate this special and wholesome saalan with fresh tandoori roti bought from a local tandoor. No other dishes were served, and it was an annual ritual that everyone looked forward to. There was no dessert as such, perhaps seasonal fruit for people to help themselves to, but usually she made a platter of lauzaat, or sweet treat. She used to collect the seeds of melons for several months in anticipation of this daawat. She painstakingly washed, dried and peeled these, cooked them with sugar and made barfi-shaped tidbits as a post-meal lauzaat.
More stories about delectable treats from the olden days sold by hawkers or at halwai shops are told. My grandmother reminisces about lauki ke taar, which sounds very exotic and is not something we would associate with the bland and bulbous elongated bottle gourds we turn up our noses at! Delicately grated, long juliennes of lauki, or bottle gourd, fragranced with kewra (pandanus) are spun in sugar, magically transforming them into the noodle-like treats that she enjoyed as a girl. Another unusual and elaborate childhood treat for her was malai ki gilauri. Layers of the cream from milk, or malai, were constructed to form a triangular shape resembling a paan, shaped and ready to be eaten, and stuffed with khoya, nuts and dried fruit. Like so many things, these forgotten foods have vanished, either due to a lack of demand, evolving tastes and palates or the complexities of production.
Amma tells stories of the celebration of Saawan, or the month of rains, called Saawani, which she and her own cousins were invited to in their youth. Usually, an older woman in the family, a khala, chachi, tai or phupi would take the initiative of organising and preparing the food and other special things required. These were the jhooley (swings) on the trees in the orchards, usually the branches of sturdy mango trees; gifts of pastel green glass bangles, known as kareliyan and hand-crinkled mulmul dupattas in pastel colours for all the young girls of the family. The foods that were made on these occasions have such quaint and evocative names: andarse (sweet, fried and crisp sesame-encrusted treats); arbi ke patte ke pakode (arbi or colocasia leaves, washed and spread with a spicy chickpea flour mixture, rolled up, steamed, cut into discs and fried); dal bhari pooriyan, also called berahi; dal bhari kachori; rasbhariyan (deep-fried dough balls dipped in a thick syrup); lauki ke taar (grated bottle gourd dipped in a thick syrup), dahi ki phulkiyan; and angoor ke patton ki phulki (made with young, fresh leaves from the grapevine, served with fiery red chilli and garlic chutney).
The rains were such a magical time for those who lived and eked a living tilling the land in the dusty, parched and arid areas of the plains of Uttar Pradesh. A harsh, prolonged and merciless summer season finally came to an end, and with it went the terror of the killer Loo winds, dried-up lakes and rivers, and dying cattle. The rains not only brought a promise of revival, vibrancy and sustenance but also of joy and aesthetic pleasure. The sondhi (fragrant) smell of the thirsty soil when it gets its first drink of pure rainwater, the petrichor, is a joy to experience! A lot of traditional folk songs celebrated this and painted a picture of renewed life, of peacocks dancing unfettered, of koel birds calling out from lush grasslands and of blooming perfumed flowers. Saawan was the month of the arrival of rain, a gift from the sky, baarish for some, megha for others. A gentle phuhaar here, a dramatic show of lightening called bijli or bijuria there, dark menacing clouds somewhere else, kaley baadal or karey badariya, accompanied by a loud garaj (bellow) in all its glorious forms. The month signalled the arrival of plentiful and torrential rains, a welcome respite to the parched, bone-dry earth and a magic wand that turned an arid wasteland into a glistening, vibrant haven for all.
Excerpted with permission from Fabulous Feasts, Fables and Family: A Culinary Memoir, Tabinda Jalil Burney, Penguin India.
