By Mayank Austen Soofi

Observations on growing up in a Hindu kitchen and its consequent limitations.

The aroma of Rajma Chawal – kidney beans softened in tomato-onion gravy and served with plain boiled rice – always reminds me of the warm, rough hands of my mother. The fatigued air of her home dances in mild excitement every time she prepares Kela ka Kofta – salted dumplings made from grated raw bananas, deep-fried with chickpea batter, and cooked in a tamarind-flavored broth.

Her winter dish of Pulao is simple. It consists of long grains of aromatic Basmati rice tossed in vegetable oil sizzling with freshly grounded turmeric rhizome, clove seeds, and cardamom powder - and is vulnerable to eye-catching ostentation. My Maa is always tempted to add bite-sized flowerets of cauliflower, whole roots of juicy carrots, sweet pods of green peas, and thin round-shaped slices of potatoes into the boiling cauldron. Her famed Makhana ki Kheer – lotus seeds simmered in thickened milk – is a dessert that she condescends to make only if someone in the family is despondent.

The Holy Cow and other Inedible Considerations

But my mother does not cook cows. We Hindus consider the sweet-looking bovine creatures as mothers incarnate. Just as we suckled our mother's breasts for nourishment in infancy, we depend on these cows for milk in our later years. Therefore many of us recoil with horror when fellow human beings slaughter their “mothers” to later feast on the beef steaks.

Besides cow meat, Maa's kitchen does not admit chickens, goats, crabs, fish, or even an egg. A stern vegetarian, she carries her prejudices to an unreasonable extent, which makes it difficult for her to dine in restaurants offering animals on their menu.

Maa is unable to be lenient even with her own creation of Baingan ka Chokha. This dish, legendary among our relatives, demands a night-long vigil. Eggplants are laid out on a bed of glowing coals and turned regularly till the smooth blue skin is charred to reddish-brown flakes while the inner flesh has grown mushy and smells of ash. Ironically, the creator has never tasted her greatest delicacy. The eggplant somehow reminds Maa of the back of a live chicken in mid-jump!

The Disappointments of a Vegetarian Kitchen

When I am reading old copies of Saveur magazine and come across evocative descriptions of an oyster meal on Greek islands, or encounter a fine recipe for making the perfect ham, there is a fleeting pang of helplessness. As long as I live with Maa, these printed words would never translate into interesting culinary experiences of trial and error.

Haunted by the urge to suck on the juicy leg of a curried lamb or a tandoori chicken, I have to take recourse in restaurants or, more humiliatingly, get myself invited into dining rooms overseen by more tolerant kitchen goddesses.

There are occasions when I am weighed down by repressed desires, as if being denied the everyday pleasures of life. To add to the frustration, one of Maa’s abiding legacies has been an involuntary impulse in my subconscious to associate eating non-vegetarian food with immorality. On every opportunity of temporarily satisfying my lust for spiced flesh, I am tugged by guilt as if Maa has been betrayed.

Sometimes I crave freedom from the tyranny of her kitchen.

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