It’s almost midnight when the first rumble comes; the sky gurgling and growling just before it opens up. True, there’d been dark, heavy clouds churning the entire day, but no one really anticipated rain. In Delhi, we’ve made our uneasy peace with the weather, and no one really expect favours anymore. So the first few drops are especially delightful. Just before I fall asleep, I wonder if monsoon is really here.
Back in school, the season spelled raincoats and rainy day holidays. It meant hot-oil massages for drenched heads and delicate little paper boats lost at sea. And most of all, it meant the warm, dry comfort of home, served with some steaming tea and pakodas.
All these years, the responsibility of whipping up the batch of those batter-fried vegetables always seemed to fall on my mother or grandmother, and sometimes, if we had one then, the cook. It would always begin with a single demand that turned into a chorus, and was almost always met with gratifying results. I wonder now about the work that went into it; was making them as wonderful as eating them?
This year, I want to find out. After all, I’m certain that pakoda-preparation is an important life-skill, and who knows when a monsoon will need me to step up and take charge.
Thankfully, it continues to rain, on and off, through the day, and because I’m looking forward to the evening and what it holds. But even this damp day can’t dampen my enthusiasm, and I keep running into reminders anyway. Just outside the Nehru Place metro station, there’s a little group of men standing in a circle around an old man pouring steaming tea into little glasses. I’m sure these men will collect their tea and move to the stall just next to them, where another vendor and his ram laddus (those deep fried balls of moong daal served with shredded radish and green chutney) wait patiently. Of the firm belief that all my cups of tea need an accompanying friend, I definitely would.
Later on, at work, a promotional email announces Café Delhi Heights’s “When Chai Met Pakoda” festival promising everything from kadak Cutting Chai to onion and aloo palak and paneer pakodas. I’m almost tempted to ditch my great culinary aspirations and take this way out, but maybe I’ll wait till I discover just how big of a disaster I am in the kitchen.
The festival, though, reminds me of how deeply rooted this tradition really is. I don’t know about the romance between chai and pakoda, but it certainly is a romance between them and us. There’s something about a gloomy, wet day that perfectly complements deep fried onions and potatoes and cabbages and okra and chilli and…well, all the vegetables we can fry, we’ve fried. It’s the taste, of course, but it’s also the very act of it that somehow lifts the spirits just beginning to get heavy with water weight; a bright yellow to fight the grey outside, the warmth to fight a seeping, damp chill, the spice to balance the flatness of a dripping day, and perhaps more than anything, the idea that we are continuing something important — a tradition that both invites and welcomes a season. Needless to say, I’m hungry when I get home. Almost immediately, I make a beeline for the kitchen, and then realise that I have no idea what I’m doing. Luckily, my mother is at hand, and so is her years’ worth of experience. Together, we pull out the ingredients. My list comprises of some potatoes and onions, chickpea flour or besan, baking powder, turmeric or haldi, red chili powder, ajwain seeds and salt. My mother instructs, while I measure and weigh with a painstaking slowness that frustrates her. For her, a lot of cooking involves instinct, and measuring cups and spoons just get in the way. I wash and peel the potatoes and cut the onions, and then mix the other ingredients in a shallow bowl, adding water till the consistency is that of a thick paste. The oil, meanwhile, is heating in a deep frying pan, and I’m already a little proud of the whole thing. “We don’t have it at home, but you can usually add some rice flour to the mixture, it makes the batter crunchy,” my mother says. My potato and onion pakodas are frying, as I step gingerly away from the crackling, splitting oil.
I can’t believe that my pakodas are ready, but I’ve conveniently forgotten the tea. I rush about, hurrying so that the fried goodness will stay warm by the time the tea is made.
Of course, once it’s all ready, it looks a picture, and so I must take a picture. After all, these are my first pakodas! Obviously, once I’m done fiddling with cameras and filters, the tea is just about warm and the pakodas are almost cold. I should have just learned to do things the old fashioned way, all the way through.
