Clinton St. Quarterly—Summer, 1988 sh o r ta g e o f h igh -p r iced fuel, a cook in g fire must la s t th e tim e requ ired to co o k th r e e d ishes. A s ing le s t ick o f wood cou ld k e ep a flame burn ing fo r a lon g tim e i f su rrounded w ith cow p a tt ie s . There was no particular day that I learned to make curry. In the winter, women left their dark kitchens to grind their spices and cook their meals in the sun outdoors; in the train stations pilgrims set up makeshift kitchens on the platforms; in the bazaar food sellers chopped, mixed and cooked every dish in plain view. Men cook in the markets; women prepare meals at home. Cooking was such a visible activity, before I even looked up a recipe, I became familiar with the sound of onions sizzling in a wok, the pungent aroma of ginger browning in sharp mustard oil, and the magic of puri breads puffing up like balloons, floating buoy-like in a cauldron of hot oil. Watching the cooks in the bazaars, I soon developed an appreciation of their handiwork. Without electric beaters, dough-mixers, slicers and blenders, not only are all basic cooking preparations mastered by hand, but all types of mixing, too. In India cooks knead bread dough by hand. . . but they also thresh wheat and mill flour by hand. No rolling pins are necessary; once flour is transformed into dough, a chunk is pinched off and hand-rolled into a ball which is shaped into a tortilla-like chapati by a series of rounding and flattening hand movements. Intricate samosas, small stuffed turnovers, and Tibetan mo-mos, variations of meat turnovers, are fashioned by additional twists. Afte r my Freshman year at Berkeley, at the height of the free -speech movement, I needed a break. I set off by myself on an adventure. In Europe for a year, I met travelers returning from India who spoke of an exotic world. Overland travel to India was cheaper than air, so I opted for the trip through Turkey, Iran and Pakistan, hitching rides from crowded buses or packing into infrequent and unreliable trains. Often there was no time to track down a restaurant and eat a meal. Trains would only stay in a station a matter of minutes. Long delays always occurred miles from any city. Nuts, fried snacks and the ubiquitous chai—spiced tea—soon replaced my cooking-class sense of diet and nutrition. In India the vegetarian cuisine of the Hindus seemed inadequate at first. I wasn’t used to just eating vegetables. At home, if a day went by without eating meat, I would have felt physically deprived and weak. Mother always served meat entrees; macaroni was a poor man’s meal, the inedible product of a school cafeteria or second choice at church potluck. In smaller Indian villages, food was scarce. Vegetables were either unavailable or too expensive to cook. Dal and bhat— lentil soup and rice—was a mainstay, providing the basic subsistence level of survival, without chutneys, bread, fruits or vegetables. I was always hungry after I ate. Desserts compensated somehow for the lack of protein, and I developed an incredible sweet tooth. The more I traveled on the backroads, especially in the Himalayas, the fewer restaurants there were. I had to cook or I wouldn’t eat. But the recipes in my head—those directions to bake at 350 degrees for th ir ty m inutes—c learly wouldn’t work. lakh wallahs—wood gatherers—walked by my bungalow three miles outside of town, and if I could bargain for a few kilos, I didn’t have to hire a rickshaw to deliver irewood from the bazaar. If wood was too expensive or unavailable, uneven raw charcoal lumps, totally unlike the symmetrical, self-lighting barbecue cubes sold in grocery stores back home, were sold by the pound. When shopping for charcoal, I’d hire a coolie who’d carry back a large burlap sack. The charcoal merchant liked to tinker with the scales, and if I didn’t watch closely, he’d slip in blackened rocks or charcoal dust that smoked horribly and didn’t keep a flame that was worthy of cooking. • Cooking with kerosene, on the other hand, was a luxury. Funnel fuel into the primus stove, pump vigorously and just light a match. Or, wait for the stove wicks to catch. But kerosene was hard to get. On trips to the bazaar, I always refilled the same large tin. When kerosene was rationed, I still needed charcoal or wood and dung to cook with. Women, sitting cross-legged on straw mats spread over earthen floors, can rock and suckle infants in their laps, as their hands tend a fire, shape dough and cook bread—all at the same time. Their hands are so skilled, so agile and practiced, they move effortlessly from one task to the next, all the while juggling three or four simultaneous activities. Days are consumed with the intricate labors of hands. One simple meal takes hours of hand preparations. Kneading is not limited to dough. Hands plunge intotbaskets of cow dung mixed with straw and forcefully press and squish the mixture into a consistency that will adhere when flung against a mud wall. Once sun-dried, cow chips are plied off, stacked for the fire. There’s an art to eating without utensils, with only the hands. It takes practice to know just how much lentil dal a mound of rice can absorb, and still be lifted with bite-sized finger clumps into the mouth. The food is manipulated to perform the function of utensils. Flat chapati bread, for example, can be rolled into a cone, to scoop soup from bowls or yoghurt from a plate made from a large, flat banana leaf. Once a neighbor accidentally spilled a small brass container— lota—filled with milk onto the cement floor. In the nonWestern world, spilled milk is not cried over if one is able to retrieve it. Without a moment’s hesitation she pressed a palm into the center of the puddle and began to mop up the milk. The polished cement floor was not overly porous, and her method of palming the puddle and capturing a thin coating of milk which she then dripped back into the lota worked. Drop by slow drop she salvaged the precious liquid. I would never have imagined the hand capable of so many things. To cook in India, even before beginning to peel and chop, I needed to master the element of fire. Small from a constant shortage of high-priced fuel, a cooking fire must last the time required to cook three dishes. Since each pot was set consecutively upon the flame, cooking time alone took hours. After the rice was done, then the dal was cooked, followed by a vegetable curry. So many short-cuts to learn: a single stick of wood could keep a flame burning for a long time if surrounded with cow patties; the dried dung chips needed to be fanned in a certain way to keep from smoldering. In Almora, in the Himalayas, n eeded to m as ter th e e lem en t o f fire. Sma ll from a con s tan t My first kitchen was a corner of the room I rented from the Burmese monk in Sarnath. I cooked on a kerosene stove with stinky wicks. Staples like flour and rice were stored in tins to keep rodents and insects out. All fresh vegetables and milk products were purchased daily in the b a zaa r s in ce th e re was no refrigeration. In the market, in my best Hindi, I asked for masala. What I got was a handful of bark, moss, and seeds neatly wrapped in folded, recycled Hindustan Times. Moss? Bark? What kind of spices are these? "Kiya hai?" I asked the merchant. My simplified phrase “What’s this?” never failed to elicit an extensive answer which I usually didn’t understand. But asking
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