Aliya Naseer Farooq
You order a meal in your favourite restaurant with a few friends and after selecting your regular picks, you add, ‘Please make it quick!’
‘Quick’, ‘Fast’, ‘Instant’… These words are a part of our daily repertoire. Food, in my childhood, was the pivotal part of most households. What’s to be cooked on the weekend was discussed for most part of the week. Endless discussions that revolved around recipes – little nuances of ‘ bhooning’ and ‘dumming’ along with fillings and seasonings. The horror of adding water to the ‘sabzi .’ ‘ Pani kaun dalta hai? Dumm per paknay do … beshak bhook se dumm nikal jaey!’ The process of cooking was considered a sacred part of the household and the kitchen no less than a sanctuary.
Payaas and Nihari that cooked overnight. Shabb deg, Roghan josh, Kunna were specialties of so and so chachi or maami that were requested for special occasions and large family gatherings. Masalas were bought fresh from the kiriana shop and grounded on mortar and pestle. The aroma of Sarson ka Saag and Makki ki roti filled the air and food was shared with neighbours.
A wedding in the family meant months of gatherings in the courtyard or on the rooftop to put ‘gotta kinari’ on lehngas and dopattas while the younger girls sat with the dholak and sang traditional wedding songs under the loving, at times critical, gaze of the khalas, phuphos and tai chachis. All this was before the advent of caterers, designers and DJs.
Simple festivities that were remembered for the little anecdotes and faux pas that were bound to happen in a household where all and sundry had gathered for the wedding and staying under one roof.
Different temperaments sharpened by the relations they shared with the bride and groom’s family. Past grievances and present neglects, all made for seriously hilarious episodes.
‘ The tea was cold!’
‘ I did not get the omelette…’
‘ My child didn’t get any milk…’
‘ I need an extra razaai…’
‘ Your house is so cold…’
‘ Your house is too warm…’
When specifics failed, abstractions were used as a last resort.
‘ Your daughter didn’t say salaam in the morning!’
Upon investigating, the daughter in question declared that she had said salaam and there were witnesses in the house full of guests. Then the aggrieved party would close the chapter with a disdainful comment, ‘ Dil se nahi kya salaam !’ Hence, putting a stamp of disapproval and maligning the family’s sincere efforts to accommodate and appease every one on the family front while straining to please the in laws. Arranging jorras for one and all in the baraat. Most of the time, these were not deemed upto the mark…again the mark being some abstract measure meant never to be achieved. Some female would not like the colour or the fabric. Ensuing endless remarks, ‘Teri maan ne acha jorra nahi dia’. Now, simply translated it means that your mother didn’t give a good dress; yet the connotations and insinuations of such a sentence would ring in the new bride’s ears for weeks, especially, when she was spending time away from her mother for the first time in all her twenty years.
Yes, all was not rosy. Much has improved and much more is on its way to further refinement. Progress is slow but it is there. The fast food, the pret industry, the internet have all made our lives simpler and more comfortable but they have also taken away the personal touch, the warmth and camaraderie of joint family gatherings. The anticipation of ‘Nano’s’ pulao and ‘Dado’s’ Kashmiri chai, the joy of seeing one’s cousins and the heartaches of rooftop romances!
In an age before the cell phones, the height of attraction was the colour of your flame’s dopatta as she hangs it on the clothes line – the ‘ pink ‘ would cover the sky and his world for a fleeting few weeks before he heard the dholak and the dreaded news that the ‘ pink ‘ dopatta was getting married to her phupho’s son. The poor guy had hardly found out her name after weeks and suddenly he finds himself helping her brothers to put up the shamianas and set up the chairs for ‘ Pink’s ‘ shadi !
There is so much to be said in favour of modern times, the ease and the facility of fast, instant, one window operations. We are thankful for life’s amenities but a corner of the heart yearns for the heady aroma of freshly grounded garam masala and star anise in the perfect pink of Kashmiri chai.The robust flavour of fresh kulchaas and the purity of fresh cream skimmed off the large degcha of milk, boiled for an hour the night before and stored in the ‘doli’ (a small kitchen cabinet with gauzed doors) used in lieu of the fridge. My mind wanders to the little dining table in my nani’s kitchen and the ‘peerhis’ in my dadi’s, where piping hot aloo gosht and kadoo daal was served directly into our plates while fresh chapatis were cooked on the stove. The steam from the curry and the cool mint raita with fluffed up phulkas are the best part of my memories ; no amount of fries and burgers can ever replace those bygone tastes and the love that was served along with these.
