181. The Silver Hairpin

In 1977 my father travelled to India for his first return visit since emigrating to the United States, after a gap of eight years. (He has only returned  twice more in the 36 years that have elapsed since, once in 1984 and the last time, in 1996.) Nowadays, with so much more back-and-forthing between India and the States, particularly among our children’s generation—not to mention the constant phone-calling, email, Facebook, and videochat contact—it is hard to imagine the fevered anticipation with which we awaited his return.

My parents’ generation didn’t use the phone easily, especially not for long-distance calls. Incoming calls were dreaded, as they usually brought bad news, and there was the additional anxiety brought on by the knowledge of how much one’s loved ones were spending to make the call. Outgoing calls were equally rare because of the cost, and because placing a “trunk call” from India in those days was quite a hoohah, going out to an STD booth, waiting to place the call, waiting again for it to go through and then, as often as not, having to conduct the conversation shouting through the static. It is only very recently that my dad has stopped shouting into the phone at full volume, loud enough for them to hear him in India.

But I digress. The point is, we had not heard from Dad ever since he had left for India, so when the time finally came to meet him at Logan Airport, our excitement knew no bounds. How we waited until we got back to the house I don’t know, but we still have the photographs to show how he opened the full-to-bursting suitcases and laid everything out on my parents’ big queen-sized bed, everything from cotton and silk clothing to stainless-steel thalis and tumblers to silver jewelry to messages conveyed from this or that cousin to a Marathi cookbook to my grandmother’s famous laddus, carefully wrapped to stay fresh for as long as possible. Then came hours of questions and stories and trying things on and more photos of one or another of us modeling the new outfits to send back to the aunts and uncles who had gifted them to us.

Of all those gifts brought back by my father so many years ago, the one I have used the most, practically on a daily basis, is a simple silver hairpin. It was originally one of a pair, and its partner is long gone, but for years, among the plastic Magic Grip hairpins I used to buy at the West Concord 5 & 10 (brilliant in their own right, to be sure), this one gleamed regally out of  the top of my bun.  It still does.

I have always preferred the elegance, the moonlit-evanescence of silver to the buttery opulence of gold. Last time I went to India I asked everywhere I went for another silver hairpin, but in vain. As the middle classes were growing richer even gold, traditionally the most highly prized material for women’s jewelry, was abandoned in favor of diamonds, for which I have even less appreciation, since they look like cut glass to me and put me in mind of men slaving and dying in the mines.

Finally Mandatya, my father’s youngest sister, took me into a little jewelry store in Vile Parle and spoke on my behalf to the proprietor, who rummaged under the counter for a while, eventually re-emerging, not with hairpins, but with an old box of assorted silver jewelry. Its tangled chains, black with tarnish, had obviously been lying neglected for many years. He called a young assistant to clean the one I selected and soon presented it to me shining like new and at a marvellously low price.

Although I love the silver necklace, I just keep it in a box and admire it from time to time. But the old silver hairpin is in everyday use. Just looking at it calls up India faster than a satellite phone.

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115. An Immigrant’s Reflections on Independence Day

Since I immigrated to the United States with my family back in 1970, forty Fourths of July have come and gone, and the forty-first is almost upon us, with its attendant parades, barbecues, watermelons, and fireworks. We are making the usual preparations for a family get-together, and as I think back on other Fourths I wonder if I will ever be able to muster up the requisite emotions. Now that I am finally a U.S. citizen—and it was 39 years before I took the leap—perhaps feelings of patriotism will arise spontaneously, but I will have to keep you posted on that.

As someone who was already almost an adult by the time I arrived in this country, I had already celebrated national independence many times—Indian Independence. India finally won its freedom from British colonial rule on August 15^th, 1947, and so the anniversary had been marked only six times by the time I was born. To be honest, I don’t remember much about Independence Day celebrations in India in the 1950’s and 1960’s, but I do remember feeling pride in our country and genuine respect for the achievements of our freedom fighters. August 15th was a national holiday, of course, and we must have marked it with the hoisting of the flag and the singing of the national anthem. There was probably a program at IIT, perhaps at one of the student hostels, with lots of garland-giving and speeches before the meal and entertainment started. As the umpteenth speaker took the podium to lavish sycophantic praise on the guest of honor, invariably prefacing his remarks with platitudes such as, “Far be it from me to waste your time with long introductions” or “The Honorable so-and-so needs no introduction,” Dad would mutter loudly that in that case he should shut up and sit down. The entertainment was also predictable, consisting of a classical vocalist, a folk dance or bharatanatyam performance, a comedy sketch (if we were lucky), and, since we were in West Bengal, the mandatory intonement of numerous Rabindra sangeet (during which it was my mother’s turn to express her impatience). For me the high point was always the feast, which consisted of the most delicious chicken curry (at a time when chicken was still an expensive delicacy in India), followed by super-sweet, spongy rosogullas.

from tribuneindia.com

At school I remember practicing for a march past, when we would march in formation round the playing field and halt in front of the invited VIP, swiveling our heads toward him and saluting in unison. Being left-handed, or perhaps just clumsy, as our PE teacher drilled us for the big day (with his sergeant-major barks of “Forward, March! A-Lech, a-Right, a-Lecha-Right-a-Lecha; About Turn! A-Lech, a-Right, a-Lecha-Right-a-Lecha,” and so on, ad nauseum), I always managed to fall out of step.

photo by Ganesh Davuluri (bostoneventphotographer.blogspot.com)

After arriving in the U.S., it used to gall me that August 15^th would come and go without mention in the news. I must have felt strongly about this because I remember being out camping in Canada with Andrew on one August 15^th, and plastering the side of our milk truck with a Happy Independence Day sign decorated in the colors of the Indian flag.  That must have bemused the Canadians. Back in Boston, I attended Independence Day functions organized by the Indian Association of Greater Boston (IAGB) at MIT’s Kresge Auditorium, with their programs almost identical to those back in India, long-winded introductions and all. Despite sharing the impatience and boredom that my parents had felt back at these functions back in India, I still made a point of attending them year after year, as boredom gave way to a certain nostalgia, and, perhaps, the pleasure of simply being around a large group of Indians, with the mothers all dressed up in their best silk saris, the babies crying throughout the performances, and the older children looking uncomfortable in their Indian outfits, stiff from lack of use and creased from long months mothballed in a drawer or trunk.

from city-data.com

For the 50^th anniversary of Independence in 1997 we went down to New York City to attend the annual India Day Parade, and cheered for the Indian film stars, U.S. politicians, and exuberant youth marching in it, as well as for members of the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association (SALGA), who were denied the right to participate for many years and held placards on the sidelines.

But back to July 4^th: I remember standing on the sidelines of the Fourth of July parade in Winchendon, Massachusetts when Nikhil was about five and covering his ears as deafening bombers performed a low flyover. As the drum-and-bugle corps and baton twirlers marched past, I felt myself automatically tearing up as I invariably do when I hear martial music at patriotic events or at weddings, no matter what my intellectual response is. But little Hannah, who must have been no more than four years old, stepped out to the very edge of the sidewalk all on her own and in her small, clear voice resisted the military drumbeat with the Shaker hymn, ’Tis the Gift to be Simple.

from wwyerkes.net

We have always celebrated July 4^th because it is my parents’ wedding anniversary. Marrying in London, they knew nothing of  its significance as America’s Independence Day. During our earliest years in the U.S., my sister Sally and I would cook a meal for Mum and Dad and watch television as the Boston Pops performed their Independence Day concert at the Hatch Shell, with Arthur Fiedler conducting. We’d sing along to their patriotic medley (I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy, It’s a Grand Old Flag, America the Beautiful) before their performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, culminating in the Boston fireworks display.  As Sally grew older, she and her friends would take the T down to the banks of the Charles River and brave the crowds in person. Then she had the bright idea of marrying the two celebrations with an annual cookout where she would make a large American flag cake decorated with white icing, blueberries for the stars and strawberries for the stripes. With cake and gulab jamuns, hamburgers and pakodas, conversation with our closest family friends and (American) football on the beach, we fashioned a July 4^th that holds meaning and memories for our family. My parents celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary in this country, and on that golden anniversary friends and family, including their daughters, sons-in-law, grandsons, and several Indian American family members, gathered in Amherst to salute them, with email greetings read aloud to the cheering throng from family members in England and India who couldn’t be there in person.

Amherst, MA Fourth of July parade (pedalpeople.com)

As yet another Fourth of July approaches, everybody seems to have plans. People are wrapping up their shopping and I feel the hush as they busy themselves at home, preparing to host or travel to a family gathering. The paper has no events listed for this weekend except for the annual Fourth celebrations and, sitting alone and quiet out on the front porch last night, I heard the usual stray firecrackers going off early, as excited teenagers couldn’t contain their anticipation. I don’t expect I’ll ever feel an unalloyed patriotism on this day, but it does hold meaning for me, meaning imparted to it by my intertwined national, personal, and family histories.

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92. Cookbooks, Immigrants, and Improvisation

When we were new immigrants back in the 1970s, every time someone commented on my besan (chickpea flour) laddus, my father got a kick out of saying, with a mischievous grin, “the recipe is from the Hare Krsna Cookbook!” He knew that he was disappointing their expectation that it was a time-honored family recipe passed down through the generations,  suggesting instead that we Indians in America could actually learn something about Indian cookery from those bald-headed, saffron-robed, anemic, and thoroughly inauthentic-looking youths who danced ecstatically in Harvard Square. But after all, anyone can learn a national cuisine, just as anyone can lay claim to a religious tradition: it’s not restricted to people who inherited it genetically. Rather than regarding the devotees with bewilderment and derision as many Indians did at the time, Dad would look at them with indulgence and even delight.

It would seem that the Hare-Krsna-ites made up for their self-denial in other areas of life with sugar: all their recipes contained what seemed to us excessive quantities of it. I regularly halved both the amount of sugar and of butter they called for, and the final product didn’t seem to suffer in the least.

There wasn’t the plethora of  Indian grocery stores, restaurants, and cookbooks that abounds today. I remember my delight when, at a book fair, I found Dharamjit Singh’s Indian Cookery, in the Penguin booth and bore it home like a trophy. It immediately became a family standby (Dad dubbing it “the Sardar-ji cookbook”), and I will forever be grateful to Mr. Singh for his chickpea curry (chhole) recipe, which has become my signature dish, and which I make in large quantities for every party, along with a huge pot of pullao rice.

In the early Seventies Andrew became a vegetarian and, inspired by his example, I did too. At first he simply got thinner and thinner, not having grown up in a vegetarian household and not yet knowing how to cook balanced vegetarian meals. I was no help because I hadn’t yet learned to cook at all, and when, as a college student, I started turning my back on non-veg (as they call it in India), the only options left to me in the dorm cafeteria were salad and cottage cheese. It was then that Anna Thomas came out with The Vegetarian Epicure. My parents presented it to Andrew for Christmas in 1974, and we seized upon it with zeal. The Veg-Ep, as we soon began calling it, was the first of that new era of cookbooks which were far more than just bare-bones recipes—they were also warm, engaging stories, vehicles for culture and family lore. We in turn made her recipes our own and over the years they have been woven into our family stories.

Or at least, versions of them have been. The Veg-Ep came out in the days before concerns about cholesterol and  heart disease, and its recipes are loaded with butter and eggs, which we have cut down drastically. I see that Thomas has now come out with The New Vegetarian Epicure, and I expect that she has brought it up to date in that department. But we are deeply attached to the old one, and treasure every one of its tattered, butter-soaked pages, many of which have fallen out and some of which lean permanently against the wall on our kitchen counter.

In 1981 the multi-talented Madhur Jaffrey produced World of the East Vegetarian Cooking, a narrative-style cookbook modeled on the Veg-Ep down to its square format, and one that met our twin needs for both Indian and vegetarian recipes. Better still, it did not even try to be authentic, but rather celebrated hybridity long before fusion was a culinary buzzword. I have nothing to support the claim, but it may have been the first Pan-Asian cookbook. It soon became another family favorite, and I can honestly say that not a single recipe I have tried from it has been a dud. Following the recipe to the letter, I was finally successful in making dosas, the only takeout food that we ever ate back in India.

Although we were comfortably middle-class and certainly never went hungry, food was rationed in India in the 1960s and many ingredients were simply unavailable; our mother always had to improvise. Wherever we moved she carried with her as her guides an old Penguin handbook, English Cookery, along with a British rationing cookbook published during the War that offered valuable advice on how to use substitutes in times of scarcity. With these books, the Siemens electric oven we had managed to carry back with us from Greece, our meagre ration of maida (white flour), and a lot of ingenuity, Mum produced billowing Yorkshire puddings, fluffy sponges, and currant-filled fairy cakes along with the daily staples of rice, dal, and mutton curry.

Having lived either abroad or on the other side of India for most of his adult life, Dad had never had the chance to learn his home cooking, until he returned to Maharashtra in 1976 for the first time since he had left India in the late Sixties.  While there, he made it a point to pick up a Marathi cookbook, and when he came home he made a systematic study of it, ordering everybody out of the kitchen while he worked (and, Mum complained, using up every pot and utensil in it as well), and producing all the characteristic tastes of home. Not to be outdone, I found an English Delights from Maharashtra (Aroona Reejsinghani, Jaico Books) at India Tea and Spices in Cushing Square, Belmont (one of the first Indian grocery stores in the Boston area), and set about making poha, pithale, and other regional specialties. I managed to whip up a fair approximation of the real thing, though Dad’s chapattis were always perfectly round while mine were invariably misshapen.

Both my parents, especially Mum, had grown up with scarcity and habits of thrift, and they maintained those habits when they came to America. Coming to hang out at our house after school my friends, accustomed to raiding the kitchen for snack foods, were astonished to find the refrigerator and the cupboards bare (as they saw them)—no bags of potato chips, no packages of Hostess cupcakes, no jars of chocolate-chip cookies. At the time, we were apologetic, but from my parents’ perspective, we were well stocked, with the refrigerator full of fresh vegetables and half-gallon cartons of unadulterated milk and orange juice and the kitchen shelves loaded with five-pound bags of no-longer-rationed flour and sugar, glass jars filled with rice, lentils, and chick-pea flour from India Tea and Spices. It’s just that they had not yet learned the American habit of eating processed foods: they made everything from scratch. And though I may have been embarrassed at the time, I learned from them and, in our turn, Andrew and I grew our own food, joined food cooperatives to buy organic foods in bulk, and abhorred waste.

My parents may have been thrifty, but they certainly weren’t stingy. From them, I learned to throw parties where, in very unAmerican fashion, the tables groaned with generous quantities of home-cooked food that could have fed an army. No raw broccoli and sour-cream dip at my parents’ Christmas parties, but tray after steaming tray of Dad’s delectable samosas, crisp, spicy pakoras, huge pots of chicken curry served with fluffy white Basmati rice, coconut barfi (courtesy of The Hare Krsna Cookbook), and topped off with Mum’s annual pièce de résistance—two massive English trifles in deep glass dishes, layered with whipped cream, jam, custard, raspberries, and the lightest of light sponge cake, all steeped in sherry and the juices from the berries.

A typically immigrant anxiety about not having enough to go round always made both Mum and Dad take off two days from work before these parties and make twice the amount needed, so that Mum was inevitably exhausted before the party began and our guests counted on going home with large quantities of their favorite leftovers. For his part, Dad played the perfect host the whole time, pressing more food and drink on everyone without eating a crumb himself. When the last guest had left he would finally relax, make himself a large plate of food, and say, “Well, that went off well, didn’t it?” Forty years later, I would venture to say the same of our family’s move to the United States, with the help of a handful of cookbooks, a circle of friends, and a lot of improvisation.

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