Hot Pot Magazine

By Bharti Bansal

My childhood has been a series of good polaroids captured in bad light, which is to say that as faded as memories might be, I still remember the taste of happiness on my tongue. One such memory is that of “khatta.”

I have always been a fan of everything sour. Be it achaar, aamchur, my mother’s special chutney that goes with cucumber, spicy with ounce of everything in perfect amount that the thought of it makes me happier. Food has been a way of loving in my family. My grandmother would get up at 4 in the morning to prepare paranthas for all her grandchildren, sometimes aaloo ki curry and sometimes the daal that I like only if she makes it. She has been the best cook. Perhaps grandmothers do have a way of taking us back in time when things weren’t as complicated as today. She tells us stories of her own childhood, her quest for unripe mangoes and the fights she had with her father just so she could spend some more time climbing the trees.

I have a big family of seven maasi’s and a mamu. To say that it was a celebration when all of us met would be an understatement. My grandmother was a government employee, so she had a quarter exactly how government quarters were then. Old, dilapidated, with vines growing around buildings, and two rooms big enough to house two large beds, and a sofa which was specifically reserved for the guests. The kitchen had an old chullah where naani would make makki ki roti everytime we came. The only thing that reminds me of how space is majorly just management rather than big wide halls and beds is how everytime all of us visited her, some of us would sleep on beds and the really lucky ones would get a place on the mattress on the floor. There was never a feeling of having not enough rooms or a big enough house. We were happy in that little cozy home where most of my childhood was spent.

We had a parrot named mithoo, an injured parrot which my grandmother rescued and adopted when he fell from the tree. He loved to dance like all of us did and nothing made him happier than his own piece of chillies. We weren’t just a family under a roof, we were stories bounded by the characters which didn’t only speak for themselves but each other too. If only time could stay the same. Sometimes I wish my aunts wouldn’t get married. Is this a selfish thought that I wanted to be their favourite child now when they have their own little kids?

The most prominent celebration was the process that went into making khatta. All of us would sit on the really large terrace which had two water tanks and lot of plants planted by my grandmother. On a really sunny winter day, we would gather our pillows, quilts and mattresses, each child taking one thing at a time and sit together while naani made the special mixture of masaala having coriander leaves with some crushed garlic, chilly powder, salt, sugar, jeera. All the children waited eagerly, all the aunts talking, laughing while speaking in their pahaadi language. I never knew laughter was a language too. We were too fluent in it then. All the elder aunts would cut khatta into little pieces, and all the children salivating would plead for them to give a little bite. Talk about smuggling khatta on a terrace.

To say mithoo didn’t enjoy eating khatta would be a lie. He loved it, closing his little eyes while holding a piece of it with his little claws. Nothing was tenser than dividing it equally among all the hungry kids, with wide eyes waiting for their turn. We all had our little bowls, some taking the bigger ones in the hope that it would fetch them more. Our naani knew exactly how to do that without offending anyone. The sun shone at perfect angles, striking our eyes and reflecting off what I now recall as mirror smiles. Our terrace was big enough to hold all our hearts without breaking any. This terrace witnessed all of us grow up, find shooting stars, fly kites with the hope that it would one day touch the Govind Sagar lake which was visible from there. Our lives had been planted there just like the chilly plants, and our maasis made sure to water them. As this feast which would stretch time and space around us would finally end in all of us snuggling up with our favourite maasis (especially the younger ones) and sleeping with our head on their arms, and our little hands clutching them as if we already had an idea about how all of it would be so feeble one day. The sun would graciously set slowly, and the cold winds would become natural alarms waking our older aunts, who would then wake all of us, asking us to again take one thing at a time and move back to the house below.

Lunches were never something to be fretted about. We were never hungry in our naani ka ghar. This little celebration would then progress into a slow mellow evening where all of us would drink chai and have packets of rusk to eat with it. If we could capture memories in a bottle, I would keep it in my favorite cupboard and take it out whenever I felt that life was just a lonely hustle of waking up and sleeping with a sense of emptiness seeping deep into my bones. I was never warned about impermanence of all these moments. But that’s the thing about childhood, it doesn’t come with warnings. It makes us believe in unicorns. There is nothing we can’t do when we are kids. You want to be an astronaut? Simply draw the curtains, switch off the lights, close the door and there you are in your own little universe. You want to swim? Just wiggle like a fish on the carpet and believe you are in water. If you are a good swimmer, might as well add some strokes to it. You want to travel in airplane? Might as well sit on the edges of sofa and think you are just about to take off. Money was just a matter of bus tickets collected over time. Food was just grass crushed and kept in plastic bowls of our own kitchen sets.

My naani never forgot to bring us shakkarpaare. My massi still sends us a box full of mango chutney, ghee, mangoes which I call (khatta meetha aam) because of its tangy sweet taste. Our families have changed over time. All of us grown up, cousin sister who I would bathe together with hasn’t talked to me in years. Our youngest maasi had her daughter who will turn one this year. But what was different then was how all of us were so young yet this clarity that we would always be a family was so simply there. I have turned twenty five, mamu is married and those curious demands from him to fly the kite so high that it reached heaven will now simply be deemed foolish. Naani retired years ago and shifted back to her village in Namhol. Naanu who had died young was never absent from our lives. His stories still lives through these little anecdotes of naani. She loved him would be unfair. She lived because of him even after his death.

Food which is still a way to bind us all together has never worn out over the years. Maa still sends apples to them, Naani never forgets to pack us few khatta whenever we visit her. Yellow daal she makes still tastes the same. It is only because of her that my mother and I adopted this weird habit of having rice and tea. What still makes me believe that I had a happy childhood, unlike these six years on antidepressants is that naani ka ghar will always be the thread that binds my life to the tapestry of beautiful memories.

They say a person has a film like rewind of his life minutes before he dies. I think when I die, I will see my naani ka ghar, that old government quarters in Changar (Bilaspur, Himachal Pradesh), the huge trees which would reflect orange tinted street lights at night, always ready to scare us, our mithoo who died a little too early, the big windows where mithoo’s parrot friends would come visit him. I will see that beautifully burnt chullah where my aunts learnt to make makki ki roti, the guest room with white sheets and crocheted sofa covers which nobody would use often but only when the guests visited. I will remember my naani getting old but still as sarcastic as ever, my maamu giving us challenges to eat mango bite toffees and boomer chewing gums, all of us sitting on terrace at night, watching if the initials of our names were carved there somehow. Our mithoo was buried in the small garden in front of that old quarter, and to bid him farewell, naani invited people to have food and remembered him. The only language which was similar in grief and celebration was preparing food. It was a soft touch wiping away the tears of sadness and laughing too much. I think I have imbibed this language over the years too. I don’t know how to cook, but I can make chappatis for the person I love, round enough to tell how my love has flourished over the years. I still can’t stop myself from asking every person I genuinely love and care for if they are eating properly.

The only way loud enough to proclaim my love is,” come to my house, I know how to make omelet.”

The only sentence that can ever calm my anxiously depressed heart is when someone asks, “did you have lunch?” rather than if I took my antidepressants.

My nani taught me all this and I never realized it until I started asking people, “please eat food. And if you don’t feel like eating, give me a chance to love you. Let me give you a bite of methi ki sabji from my own hands and then you can cry peacefully as I lend you shoulder.”

A happy meal is a way of life. Good food means memories served on a brass plate. Perhaps you can visit me one day and we talk about your favourite dishes? Wouldn’t it be great if the world didn’t plan for wars but food battles, our grandmothers the strongest warriors, our enemies, just people who never had a different style of “khoye ki barfi" made for them. Things would have been easier that way, wars fought on gas stoves than battlefields. My mother makes khatta as we sit in our balcony overlooking yet another artificially made lake. The sun still shines the same, brightly and softly. But now there are only two bowls, one for me and other for my mother as my father and sister hate it. Yet there is a silence that makes its way into our hearts and settle there as nostalgia. There are no hungry kids now, no terrace big enough to actually sleep there. Some days the weather gets really hot, winter losing its touch already. Khatta doesn’t taste the same anymore. Food indeed is love. One feels full when he shares a bite from his own bowl and puts it into ours and smiles. The dots of my past are all scattered but it is only when I see ahead, I realize it wasn’t that bad actually, to be hungry and tell it, to be sad and demand for a chocolate, to be so empty that only kulfi could fill our little stomachs. We were vulnerable through food, we got over it because of food. But now there is gulabjamun mix, preserved mango chutney, extra salty acchar. It costs too much, to ask someone for a trip back in time. Nobody prepares food as a means of communication. Perhaps there is a loneliness too deep that our hearts fail to put into words. Silence was never golden, it was simply loss of words when ripe lemons were put in raajmah and savored. We knew it then, we know it now too.

Bharti is a resident of Himachal Pradesh, India. She loves cats and owns a dog named Jugnu that was rescued. She currently has an ambition to own cat farm.