Dear Locavore, 

 

On days when the seats on the local train from Churchgate to Borivali are swiped up by tired, hungry hands much faster than mine, I sit on the floor of the dabba. By the door where the Mumbai breeze is sticky but still offers relief during the nearly hour-long journey. Sometimes I sit alone while others stand and lean, frustrated by all the space my knees are taking up. On other days, I sit in the silent company of mothers with napping children, tired office-goers, and women with empty baskets, perhaps full of fish just a few hours ago.

 

On a Monday sometime in early May, I sat opposite a woman who was returning from visiting her daughter on her day off from working at a construction site. She was accompanied by a friend on the train. The three of us spoke about where we were coming from, where we would get off, and some things in between.

When I don’t know what to talk about, I talk about food. So, I asked them what they will eat for dinner, and what they otherwise like to eat. “I like to eat mutton, but my children don’t, so then I don’t make it. It’s no fun to eat it alone,” the woman shared. And that her staple favourite is jowar bhakri, cooked over an open flame, and eaten with a spicy chutney. Her friend lamented that it is so hard to make any kind of bhakris out of jowar. "I know, they're so hard to make," I replied, to feel a part of the club. I can't make wheat rotis—considered much easier—either. 

 

In bits and pieces, she tells us about her husband who likes to drink, all the hurt he has caused, how her bare labouring hands burn under the tormenting sun everyday. I am unable to say much. But by asking her why she doesn’t use garlic in her chutney, and insisting that she eat mutton, that her muscles need it, I hope to tell her that I am listening. 

 

When words feel inadequate in the face of pain, conversations about food fill their absence. Filmmaker Mandakini Menon observed this after the passing of her father. In her recent essay on grief and food, she wrote, “People find it easier to say ‘eat something’ than ‘I’m so sorry.’”

In Mandakini’s recollections of how her father rarely seemed moved by food or the act of eating—with the exceptions of ice cream, sweet potato chaat, perfectly balanced sambhar, fruit—we are reminded that grief and care do not always appear in declarations and eulogies. Sometimes, they appear in remembering the details through the fog of grief. Sometimes, love sits in the warm syrup inside a hot jalebi. 

 

Priti Saxena expressed a similar feeling when I congratulated her on her piece on gular, or cluster fig, she wrote for The Locavore. After nearly nine months of working together on it, it was finally published. In the piece, Priti explores the mythical nature of the gular and why it disappeared from our diets. In her text message thanking the team, Priti shared that she wished her father, who had first introduced gular to her “not as a food but as a tease”, was still around to read this labour of love. He would have enjoyed hearing us discuss this food that he loved so much and thought was so valuable, she said.

You can try this recipe for gular ki sabzi by Priti, from her mother’s kitchen. 

 

This month, we also published a recipe for a chutney made with amra, or hog plums, by Sienna Cafe in Kolkata. The chutney, often made with the tart fruit available that season, is fundamental to a Bengali meal, meant to be eaten right before the mishti. 

 

It made me think of the last time I ate this chutney. It was at my grandfather’s shraddho bari—or funeral home—in Kolkata earlier this year. The chutney was made with tomatoes, which, I suppose, is the tart fruit available in winter. 

 

On an adjacent table sat my grandmother, enveloped with grief. Next to her was her older brother, deboning pieces of rui maach for her, placing the white flesh on her plate. My grandmother could eat very little; meat and fish in particular felt hard to swallow, given that widows are traditionally prohibited from eating non-vegetarian food. In offering her fish and putting his fingers to work, her brother asks her to take care of herself. Although they usually have little to say to each other, my didun and her brother know that in moments of pain, food—and the people who feed you—can offer deep care.

The further I find myself in writing this newsletter and thinking about grief earnestly, without flinching, it seems clear to me for the first time: while it is hard for language to capture pain (and we are trying), an opposing love can as effectively be felt outside of words. In forgotten figs, in tomato chutneys—or even chutneys without garlic—and perfectly piquant sambhar.

May Reads

• Discovering Gular, the Lesser-Known Fig, and Other Lessons About Lost Foods by Priti Saxena

• Gular ki Sabzi by Priti Saxena

• Aamra Chutney by Sienna Cafe