Ghee not guns

I spent some time last week writing a piece about the Strategic Defence Review. About a 1000 words in, I realised what I wanted to say was ‘the shadow of nuclear war seems longer than ever.’ There, I’ve said it. If you’re interested in the longer piece (which includes my Dad stockpiling tinned potatoes) do let me know in the comments and I will publish it. Instead, here’s some personal whimsy.

Most conversations with my Mum begin “Aapre aje shoo khasoo?” What shall we eat today? Actually that’s not strictly accurate. If we’re chatting on the phone and aren’t going to see each other, it will probably feature, ‘Khailidhoo?’ ‘Have you eaten?” Or ‘Shoo Khavana cho?” ‘What are you going to eat”.  If you haven’t got a robust answer, the disapproval wings its way through the ether to strike an arrow into your soul. By a robust answer, I mean one which describes a meal which involves careful preparation and several courses. Our traditional meal, of ‘shaak, rotli, dal bhat’ is a solid B+ sort of answer. That’s a vegetable curry, chappatis, rice and dal. Unmentioned but implicit in this menu are sides of green salad, lassi which is a drink made from plain yoghurt, popadoms and the odd pickle or chutney. All of these items, including the yoghurt and popadoms should be homemade, although as my mum’s got older, she has grudgingly accepted the need to eat ready made popadoms. If I’m really focused and prepared, I can make the whole shebang in a couple of hours. But if I start thinking about defence policy or take a phone call, it may take longer. And in case you’re wondering, a straight A answer would involve a second curry and some kind of savoury and a sweet.

Never ever say you are going to eat a takeaway; that will be followed by the crushing silence of disappointment. You will be flattened by it and need some time to return to your previous fully formed self. ‘We’re eating out’, needs some justification: our friends live too far away to come over, I’ll be working late, something like that. But be under no illusion, food in a restaurant can’t possibly be as good or as nutritious as something prepared, from scratch, at home, according to my mother. And saying ‘Oh just some pasta’ will elicit a little sigh of sadness for you because this is not proper food. Just don’t tell the Italians.

It isn’t possible to overstate the importance of cooking and eating for my Mother. Choosing the best produce, carefully storing it and then lovingly preparing it into some outrageously complicated but delicious meal, that is for her, the meaning of life. My late mother in law was similarly fastidious, possibly even more so, which meant I was well into my thirties before I realised that many of the time consuming steps they both insisted on as essential were either bonkers (taking the tiny stems off cumin seeds anyone?) or there was a cheap, ready made alternative (why was I grinding fresh ginger and freezing it when you can buy ready frozen cubes?). Believe me, when I say I know what ‘cooking from scratch’ really means.

I grew up in suburban London, listening to pop music and pretending to do homework. My mother lived in the same place but inhabited a different, food centric universe. As strict vegetarians, the meat and two veg of 1970s school dinners was not for us. That meant a packed lunch and inevitably, my Mum baked fresh bread for the sandwiches. Our garage was stuffed with large plastic bins filled with lentils and pulses. It was also home to an electric mill, the size of a washing machine, in which my Mum would grind fresh flour. In the summer, she would anxiously watch the weather forecast until the thermometer edged beyond 25 degrees Celsius. And on the hottest, sunniest day of the year, she would gather together a troop of women and roll out hundreds of perfectly round popadoms and lay them out to dry in the sun. I was recruited to do the laying out to dry part, which involved going in and out of the garden and crouching down to carefully place each almost translucent round, onto an old saree, stretched across the patio. It was hot and exhausting.

Everything from crisps and biscuits, to Bombay mix and lemon pickle, was made at home. Some of this was only feasible because my Mum didn’t work in a formal sense but my father ran his business from home, there were always visitors and usually someone ended up staying for dinner. It was a chaotic and busy life but we ate well, very well.

I am trying to make sense of why our food culture was so insistent, so demanding. I have three broad theories - firstly,  food is pretty central to all South Asian culture and on one level, my family is far from unique. But I do think we were even more fastidious than many others from similar backgrounds. I have two theories about that - which are connected; we are double migrants, moving from India to Kenya before coming to the UK. Members of my community moved to Kenya because life in India was tough and they saw the potential for a better life in another part of the British Empire. Food was an important identity marker in a strange place, so families clung on to traditional/old fashioned ways of cooking and living. And that would have applied in London too, added to which, our religious background is Jainism, of which the key tenet is non violence, hence the vegetarianism. Paranoia about what we might eat ‘by mistake’ in a rich, developed country of plenty, probably meant that sense of ‘made at home is best’ became even more pronounced.

As an adult, I worked shifts in news, brought up a family and tried to live up to my Mother’s exacting food standards. I succeeded up to a point, my children grew up eating traditional Gujarati, Indian food and appreciate it as adults. On the other hand, I have never learned to make sweets or pickles and I refuse to make fried food. But I have also harboured resentment at my inherited kitchen obsession. It felt imposed, something I couldn’t escape from and yet I couldn’t live without. I brooded on the books I hadn’t read, the political analysis I had failed to absorb, the musical instrument I didn’t practice because I was sucked into this never ending world of food prep. The delicious food had a hint of bitterness.  More recently though, I have come to realise that I have been bequeathed an extraordinary gift. I can cook for thirty and then switch to thinking about defence policy. And live broadcasting is a skill but who doesn’t love a home made chapatti? Practically, it may have meant I’m not as good as I should be at anything - I haven’t specialised.  But in truth, I don’t want to spend all my time thinking about advances in drone technology anymore than the best way to cook dal. I am pulled, willingly, in many directions.   So, tell me, what did you eat today?