It’s quite critical that the flame be turned off precisely at the point that orange frothy things appear on the surface. If turned off before that point, the rasam will taste of uncooked rasam powder. If turned off even a bit after, the rasam will taste like dishwater. The timing, as it always is with fine cooking, is the taste. The potato, after being cut into small pieces, must be soaked in water and squeezed with the hand to remove the surface starch. This will ensure that when it’s fried, it will not stick to the pan. These were bits of kitchen wisdom handed down to me by my mother a little before I was to go for a long-term assignment in the U.S. (some 10 years ago). Like every boy before me, I had fancifully grand notions of cooking at home every day. I noted these tips down in a diary and also asked my grandmother what the ingredients were for what I consider to be the greatest form of dosa ever invented, the venerable adai . Her reply: “Lentils, oil, and a lot of patience”.
Today though, I could do a Youtube search for “Srirangam Radhu” and watch several hundred highly detailed videos of vegetarian cooking wisdom recorded by a very web-savvy lady and her camera-wielding husband who keeps asking her questions that most beginners might have. Of course, even 10 years ago, I could have searched for recipes online and simply followed instructions, but I wanted a little bit more. I wanted to capture tacit knowledge, the kind that recipes rarely tend to have. Recipes will tell you what to do, but only grandmothers will tell you what not to do. But even if Srirangam Radhu didn’t quite tell me how long the lentils must not be soaked or exactly how coarsely they should not be ground for that perfect paruppu usili , I could still do a Skype session with experts back at home and get my tacit knowledge of paruppu usili .
There is, however, a fear that a lot of “grandmother wisdom” will soon be lost with the last non-digital native generation. My grandmother, for example, is not a Srirangam Radhu (even if she is from that neck of the woods). I couldn’t get her to appear in a video unless I hid the camera and secretly recorded her cooking. She is still from a generation of women who retire to the inner rooms when male guests arrive at home. But even my example is not quite representative of the problem I am speaking of.
Several years ago, I took some relatives to the Elliots beach in Besant Nagar, Chennai. My motivations though were not entirely honourable. Back then, there were still crabs running around on the beach and quite often, they would scamper over one’s feet and if you are the “OMG-cockroach-screech” type girl, this beach wasn’t the place for you. After I amused myself by watching my victims hop around trying to avoid a creature several thousand times smaller than a human being, we encountered a few kids from the nearby fisher-folk colony. They were looking around for specific spots and, with some deft digging, collecting crabs. When I asked them what for, they told me (and much to the horror of my still-hopping relatives) that their mothers would fry them with ginger and chilli powder to make an excellent snack.
That’s the sort of tacit knowledge I am worried will never become a Youtube video. As Indians, we are quite atrociously anti-archival. Our ancient oral tradition has meant that we rarely contribute to Wikipedia (we however do use it quite extensively), and unlike countries in the west, there is no concerted attempt to archive cultural knowledge. There is also a gaping digital divide between the middle class and the millions below that. I could of course take my mobile phone and go find these kids now and record them, but then, there are no crabs left on Elliots beach.
