“Grandma’s Love Language” by Monisha Raman

Life in the Nilgiri Mountains was arduous for much of grandma’s life. She was born in an indigenous community in a hilly district under colonial rule, where luxury was as alien as humid, sweltering summers. Unlike the precarious highland winds, the people in the mountains were affable, and as if to complement that calmness, their palates were gentle, delicate and knew no extravaganza.

My earliest memory of grandma is of her being cloistered in the kitchen by the mud oven with a long, heavy wooden spatula, battling a large mass of finger millet goo. With her elbows positioned as if she were bearing a flag to lead a group of marchers, she would mix the muddle in swift motions with her dainty hands. The cooked finger millet would then be scooped up in small batches, and grandma’s skilful hands moved gracefully as she patted them into neat, glossy balls. Ragi or finger millet muddle is called erugihittu in Baduga. It is often served with beans and potato curry flavoured with the unique local masala called maasuhudi. This is the staple food of the Baduga community, an indigenous community in the Nilgiri mountain district of South India, and was an everyday meal for a long time.

Grandma and grandpa were a pretty odd combo, much like ragi muddle—a native crop—and beans gravy—an English import—yet, to me, like the dishes, they were perfect together. Granddad was a literature-loving teacher, among those swept by the colonial winds. He dressed like an Englishman and spoke like one. A true Gandhian and a pious believer in our community deity, he respected enlightenment but also passionately read atheist existentialists. He followed his ancestors when it came to rituals and practices and till the end fulfilled his duty toward the community goddess that was conferred upon his family. He was the sophisticated pottihittu, the local version of a pancake, an interesting mix of ingredients like wheat, ghee and sugar, common in the mountains, but on assemblage becomes something that fascinates the taste buds with its prevalent modesty and imparts a subtle sweetness that always lingers on the tongue.

Grandma was like the humble finger millet that she carefully tended to on her farmland. An independent woman who could survive anything the mountain winds threw her way, she was amiable and the epitome of grace and calmness. A firm believer in community traditions, she was the only channel connecting me to the glory of my past and the mountains—through her stories.

I spent many summers and other short vacations with this fascinating couple, sometimes with other cousins, but most times, alone.

There was one thing that set my grandparents apart from other people their age. My otherwise gentle grandma’s inner Mr. Hyde surfaced at the sight of my granddad. In my memory, all their interactions are just arguments, not the fiery, relentless ones, but the mellowed-down and sometimes borderline genial ones. Grandma always had something to grumble about or criticize, and my hearing-impaired grandpa pretended to exist within soundproof walls. But grandma had a word even for this stoic state of his mind. And so grandma’s vehement chatter was a constant when her spouse was home. Like the dried beans and peas that crackled abruptly when she roasted them in clay pots for gravy or a snack, her blather came out when least expected.

Grandma—The Storyteller

Grandma belonged to a generation that consumed just two heavy meals a day. Dinner was the slightly more elaborate affair. The preparations began around 6:00 p.m., after an evening chat with her friends from the village. (Grandma’s peers assembled in her kitchen every day and chatted over coffee and a snack. Their favourites were roasted barley, called ganje locally, steamed corn or peanuts. At times, this barley was powdered and mixed with coffee. The nutty aroma filled the house along with their animated laughter. This was granddad’s reading time, and the door to his room was always shut, which was constantly met by a passing sarcastic comment from grandma.)

Once the women left, grandma prepped multiple items at once to get the dinner ready. She often started with spinach, several varieties of which grew in abundance in her backyard. Grandma cooked a different type each day depending on its flavours. Methi and nightshade were cooked with mashed potato to absorb the bitterness. The other varieties were garnished with shredded coconut or carrots. Amaranth was just sautéed with shallots and garlic and seasoned with red chillies with the elementary taste of green juices still intact. As she cleaned the leaves she would tell stories of bygone times, her childhood and the early years of her marriage, as I gorged on queen cake, a local variant of muffins and jam rolls. The stories were as interesting an amalgam as the dinner.

From personal to mystic to plain horror, her stories spoke of spirits that animated the hills and streams all around us, and the guardian gods of those ecosystems who killed the people they perceived as intruders. As she made balls out of soft-cooked rice or a sweet rice dish called Bella koo with jaggery, coconut and generous amounts of poppy seeds, Grandma told me stories about granddad’s professional years as the headmaster in a government school a good forty miles away from their village. With limited facial expressions, she would narrate how granddad returned home during his short breaks at the end of the week with more than a handful of students who had no place to go or had houses too far away for a visit. They stayed with my grandparents for the duration of their holiday. This was in the late sixties and early seventies, when grandma’s kitchen was not equipped with mixers and grinders.

Grandma sought help from one villager. Together they would soak close to two kilograms of pulses like rajma, black-eyed beans or cowpea in hot water one night, and they’d make a curry along with potatoes, shallots and maasuhuddi early the next morning. It was served with little millet balls. For the midafternoon snack, grandma cooked something simple for the boys. She either made ennaihittu, a deep-fried sweet made from wheat flour and sugar, or kalakihittu, wheat crepes paired with sweetened coconut milk, both of which were granddad’s favourites.

When the boys left home along with my grandfather on Monday mornings, grandma packed rice or millet balls and sandagai, a thick chutney made with spices and roasted tamarillo, when the fruit was available. For this, she would get working at 3:00 a.m. Grandma often recounted with fondness how the boys gifted her capped gooseberries or rose myrtle fruits from their strolls around the village. She was no stranger to these fruits, as she passed by them every day, but their tender act of love warmed her.

My Grandparents as Children

As a child herself, there was no dearth of food in grandma’s family home—in fact, quite often, there was an elaborate feast. Her father was employed as a writer by a British tea company, and he accompanied his employers at least once a week on their hunting expeditions. This paved the way for grandma and her four sisters to taste all kinds of meat.

Whenever grandma recounted her childhood, food was the protagonist of those tales. She narrated with vivid excitement how porcupine was cleaned on the days her father shot them at his hunt. To her, this meat, with the texture of scraped coconut, tasted best when stir-fried with basic spices, onion and garlic.

Though my great-granddad often brought wild hens and rabbits from his hunt, a deer is what set the excitement in their household. Venison required elaborate cleaning, curing and marinating before being dried, roasted and stored. Grandma recounted how her mother added a few pieces of roasted venison into all curries, including dal and beans. It was her favourite memory of food, the one she recounted most often.

In stark contrast, grandpa grew up as a typical mountain community boy. In his family, food practices were traditional and minimal. They ate finger, little and foxtail millets and the wheat and barley their fields blessed them with; they snacked on fruits and berries that grew wildly in the vicinity.

Granddad’s father, like him, was a teacher. During the seasons of drought or failure in harvest, my great-grandpa’s earnings fed the entire village. When there was a shortage, grains and pulses were stored in abundance at granddad’s home and they were supplied on a need basis to others in the hamlet.

Because of how they were brought up, my grandparents found the utmost comfort in their daily grind. Even the slumping winter temperature did not alter their routine. After his retirement, grandpa took up responsibility as the president of the local pensioners association. This ensured he had a space to go at the stroke of nine each day after his morning breakfast of finger millet muddle or soft-cooked rice balls and curry. Grandma left the house shortly after on most days—either to the fields or the plantations for supervision, or to fulfil the numerous obligations that come with being an integral part of a close-knit community.

Granddad returned home in the evenings to his favourite snacks. On most occasions, he was served ennaihittu or kadiimitu, a version of ladoo made from wheat sooji, fried gram and jaggery. On a rare day, his favourite hachikai awaited him. Hachikai is coarse little millet processed differently, soaked in sweet milk and garnished with coconut shavings. Part porridge, part dessert, it was a delicacy in the mountains. On some days he relished tiny balls made of Amaranthus seeds and honey. Whatever the snack, it was generously sprinkled with grandma’s chiding.

Like an intermission to this routine came festivals and religious gatherings unique to the mountains. The biggest festival, Hethey Habba, for the community deity, was observed in the winter. My grandparents’ village was among the two villages in the mountain district that had a temple for this goddess, and the festivities were marked with much fervour for a week. On the concluding Monday, every person who visited their home was served a meal, including strangers. Each house in the village received many hundred visitors. But my maternal home received guests in thousands, thanks to my grandparents’ wide social circle.

Grandma and other family members stayed awake the entire night on Sunday to prep for Monday. The huge cauldrons were taken from their storage in the attic. The meal served all through the day on Monday was simple: rice, the staple beans curry and tomato rasam, accompanied by pappad. The first guests began streaming in as early as 9:00 a.m. and were served then. At around 11.00 a.m., the steady flow of people multiplied into a crowd. Furniture was cleared from all rooms of the house to spread mats on the floor, where guests sat and ate. The meals were sometimes served until 5:00 p.m. In the evening, a locally renowned baked snack called varukkey (introduced by the British) was offered with tea. The last of the guests left the house around 7:00 p.m.

The next day grandma cooked something simple like the local puttu, roasted rice grains and fried gram powdered and blended with sugar, a few spoons of milk and garnished with shredded coconut. She took stock of the previous day’s mayhem and almost always, she discovered that more than 2,000 banana leaves were used to serve meals along with many kilograms of tea powder and sugar. Many festivals fell at the advent of a new season, but none matched Hethey Habba in its grandiosity and the drudgery involved. Yet not once had I seen grandma cringe at the intensity of the labour.

When Flavours Went Bland

After having seen more than ninety odd festivals, granddad’s health gradually declined when an injury to his pelvic bone rendered him immobile. He spent close to three years bedridden, and every day turned out to be perhaps a festival in its own right, with numerous people coming to pay him a visit.

Grandma became granddad’s primary caretaker during his final years. His progressive Alzheimer’s only added to their woes. Granddad’s diet transformed in these years, resorting to semisolid foods. He still preferred native food, so finger millet porridge was his source of comfort. He took a liking to Amaranthus seed powder (keeraihittu in Baduga) and powdered ganje mixed with coffee. Grandpa could not remember the names of people, places or things. But there was one name he called out every passing minute—that of the woman who so lovingly added new flavours to his palate and his life since the day their lives together began. Though grandma’s chiding drastically reduced in those final years, she did continue to reprimand granddad until the end, even when we least expected it.

Granddad passed away one summer during the early hours of the morning. His last meal was everything he asked for—finger millet muddle and beans curry with potatoes, along with grandma’s famed sautéed amaranth. In a strange coincidence, this was also the last meal grandma cooked. For the next eight years, until her last day, she assisted many a meal only by chopping. But the hands that could deftly cook for fifty people at once and feed thousands who walked through her door lost their impulse to cook one simple meal after her steadfast companion of six decades passed away.

Author’s Note

Some dishes mentioned here are a rarity now. Crop patterns have changed and have, in turn, altered the consumption practice of the locals. Grandma’s fields—which were once rife with ripe beans, millets and corn—are now barren. A few wild gaurs occasionally visit to feast on the grass there. Like those wild animals that stray into the fields and villages, the future of the mountains and its native people are directionless.

Global warming, along with policy mismanagement of the state, a populace which embraced the monoculture of tea plantations, and a fall in the global price of tea leaves—which has forced many farmers to sell their land to survive—has erased the cultural and gastronomic legacies of our past. But the stories—they are much like the food and flavours my grandmother curated; they are ours to preserve, savour and pass on.

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