Biri Daali

Biri Daali,  as it is called in Oriya is only one type of many dahls which are sold locally. It is a pulse of some sorts, and is called Urad Dalh in Hindi.  It is used to make igli, which folks here eat for breakfast. It is sometimes called Black gram in English, don't worry if it look like some of the "white"  grains are black ones covered in a whitish powder. This seems to be normal. It has a distinctive taste and when mixed with rice and ground, it does make a lovely pancake like mix. 

Preparation

It takes a bit of advance preparation, but other than that it is so, so easy. My advice is begin the process early one day and everything is ready to cook any time on day 2.  The secret has been to find the right mix.  The proportions I settled on are 1 part biri to 3 parts rice.

Method

First, soak both biri and rice till soft (this is why you start early). Grind both - don't be a perfectionist - the finer the grind the smoother the batter: myself, I prefer a slight bite and so grind less and get a bit of texture in the final result. Add a little water, salt and pepper to taste and mix to make a thickish batter.  Cover and set aside for 8 hours (ie overnight).  The result is a slightly frothy batter, smelling a little like it is fermenting. That's normal.  1 cup of rice to 1/3 cup of  biri makes 2 pancakes, depending on how thick you like the result and how big your pan is. I make mine about 1/4 inch think - thicker than a French crepe, more like the thickness of a Scotch Pancake. Moisten the pan with a little oil, ghee or butter, Place about a cup full of the batter in the middle and swirl round until it forms a wider circle. Turn over when underside is brown and top bubbly. Takes a couple of minutes.

A  welcome alternative to rice! Serve with  just about anything I think - any curry, or as shown here with my favourite lunch of tomatoes, cucumber,apples, raisins, and cashews in a lemon & back pepper olive oil dressing.

Taste verdict

A slightly nutty taste. 

Jhumpa Lahiri

Continuing the series of readings of Indian literature, I have just finished listening to an audio recording of  The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri.

Lahiri  was born in the UK to Bengali parents but grew up in USA and just like the boy of the Bengali American family at the centre of this story, her name Jhumpa is a pet name not her proper or as Indian say, good, name / pura nam. Everyone here in India has nicknames and good names. For example, my landlady's name is Sushila , her nickname is Susy, her daughter is Debestray, but goes by the name of Rinky, When I grew up lots of kids had nicknames, given by other kids, not always flattering or ones you'd want to keep using for the rest of your  life, and usually used  only outside of the home whereas here it is the other way round, with the nicknames being used at home and the good names being used at school. 
The boy at the centre of her novel has the name Gogol, after he of The Overcoat, his father's favourite author,  as we continually hear throughout the book. After grandmother's letter suggesting the baby's name goes a missing, the family are forced to enter some name on the birth certificate in order to take the child home from hospital. And the name sticks. But he only much later discovers that this is only part of the reason why he was so named by his parents, the real reason has a deeper significance.  But that comes after he rebels against Gogol as his name and formally changes it to Nikhil.  However, he finds comes to realise that finding his own identity growing up in 80s America as the child of Indian immigrants is more than a question of a name. 
This is a story about an immigrant families assimilation with all its fun and failings. The book spans the time when Ashima first arrives in Boston after her arranged marriage to Ashok. We share with her  her disappointment at  their apartment compared to her family home, at affording only second hand clothes and toys for her children, compared to having servants, and to being without family for the first time in her life. The couple slowly adjust to life in the US, to its customs and ways, and raise their family, buy their house just the same as everyone else. Except that for so long the only people they know are fellow Bengalis, their children's substitute aunts and uncles.  Their trips home are big events, the big news events from home coming via letters and middle of the night phone calls. Ashima never seems to adjust, it is only after starting to work in the local Library does she make American, non Bengali friends.
As his parents try to take on board the culture of their adopted home for their children - Christmas, Thanksgiving, and then dating and boy/girlfriends for their daughter and son - so Gogol  struggles with the family trips back to India. When a friend remarks with surprise that he had never thought of Nikhil getting sick on these visits, he says they do, that they have to have so many shots and injections and travel with a whole medicine cabinet full of precautions. As Gogol grows up, he finds American girls friends, sex, drugs, but there is always this dichotomy between being born an American and seeing this as his home compared with his parents who still see India as home whilst at the same time feeling slightly offset from it all. He lives for a time with an American woman and her family, then marries an Indian woman. Neither work out. He is neither, he is both.  
This may have been an especially topical read for me, feeling as I do  like some sort of inside outsider here, not a tourist, yet not totally of here. So many of the customs and little things that Lahiri writes about ring true - Ashima's always wearing a sari at home and never having the courage to wear a Shalwar kameez in her father in laws house, the way shoes lay discarded in piles by the doorway.  Many of their customs - leaving shoes by the door, eating with their hands etc - now seem common place to me, but if I had read this earlier I would have felt them strange and foreign.  All children of immigrants must go through a similar search for identity, feeling neither one thing nor the other, belonging and yet different to each - Nikhil and his sister speak Bengali with an American accent, but cannot read nor write it.  Immigration inevitably means some loss and some gain. Only by living in another country can one truly begin to understand the problems, the heartaches, the fun, the losses and the achievement that immigrants make when deciding to live in another country, and marvel at their success and wonder how on earth refugees, forced to live so, rather than through choice can begin to manage.
I was introduced Lahiri's writing only recently when my book club read one of her short stories A Temporary Matter - just about the most perfect short story I have ever read - succinct, to the point, ever word required, every aspect sharp , the whole focused. I was so impressed I immediately went and got our The Namesake, so far her only novel. It has this short story crispness and clarity to it, her writing is straightforward, not at all over flowery, not unnecessarily complicated. Her accuracy and attentive to details in her choice of words and descriptions, from people's appearance eg  Nikhil's girl has a chignon not a bun, so 70s; his father is pulled from the wreckage of train bogeys as they are called in India, not carriages.  A worthy read even if you are not resident in India!

Old aged home

My NGO runs an old aged persons home in Rayagada, only about 15 minutes walk from our office. I've met several of the residents before at various occasions like the Music festival, and some have been to my house helping Gunno and Pralad who run the home deliver my gas bottle and fit my fans. But I had never actually been to visit. I decided it was high time to rectify this and so today I took the afternoon off and went to call. I went with Mrs P as I needed to have someone with me who could help with the language. Mrs P tells me that Oct 1st is Elders Day and my NGO has a big celebration at the home on that day.

At first everyone is a bit wary as we arrive. Is it because of  me or is it because it is Mrs P?  Mrs P gives me a tour of the whole house. It is much smaller than I expected. From the front veranda where everyone is sitting there are two doorways, The one of the right leads into the men's dormitory and the one on the right into the women's. Beds line the two long walls of each room. There is not an inch of space between them. But each has their mattress, sheet, blanket and I am please to see, each has a mosquito net. It is extremely basic accommodation which I had expected, but much, much smaller. The dorms are tightly packed, although there are fewer beds in the women's one because there have been a number of deaths over the recent hot season.  At the other end of each dormitory a second doorway leads into another room at right angles to the dorms, running behind them. This is their dining area, it is completely bare. On the right hand wall are the toilets. I am told only the women use them - the men just go outside. On the left hand wall is another doorway into a kitchen area, where a wood fire is burning and a huge communal pot is already boiling up on the fire.

Only one of the men in the home speaks English, he tells me he was a government teacher for 36 years before coming to this home. I wonder just how he ended up here, but cannot ask. I praise his English. One of the men is blind. Slowly they start to feel comfortable enough to talk. I recognize some of the men and women from the Music evening that was held  a few months ago in the nagar. One of the women recognizes me also.  One lady is squatted down in a brilliant red sari. I don't see her picture, so I politely ask her name. I say it in my best Oriya and get a big smile but nothing is said. I try my best Hindi, still nothing. Then she says something which is clearly more than saying her name and which I cannot understand a single word of.  Then I hear one of the other women say Telugu. Of course, I have chosen to try my Language out on the one person in the whole 22 who cannot understand me, she only speaks Telugu - no Oriya, no Hindi, no English. There are smiles all round as I begin to understand. I can feel the atmosphere relaxing. One lady then shows me where their pictures hang on the veranda wall, each with their names, a roll call of residents. My lady in red is not on there either as she is relatively new to the home. But suddenly there is a lot of speaking, and I am having everyone pointed out to there pictures. I have no hope of catching everyone's names, but it feels good.

By now three of the women have started to sift through rice for their evening meal, tossing the rice in a wicker basket shaped like a dustpan, and picking out the little stones than could break your teeth. I think maybe next time I will sit down with them and help.  I am told everyone helps with chores, everyone has something they can do. One man has been pumping water and others are busy  filing up pail size buckets. I notice each has a number painted on its side, I think this is for washing prior to eating dinner.  Mrs P tells me they all help each other, if someone is not able to wash their clothes others will do it for them. They certainly all look clean, as do their saris and clothes.

Jaganath, one of the men who has been to my house, shows me their garden. My NGO has just bought a small piece of adjacent land which lies between the home and a plot of government owned land which the residents have vegetables growing in. A few very sorry looking plants are in this new patch. I am told it has only recently been cleared and planted with bringal (aubergine) but with the bad rains of last weekend the plants are suffering, from too much rain. I suspect they have planted too late and may not get a crop at all this year. The other patch is full of beans and bendi (ladies fingers/okra) This is actually the first time I have seen a ladies finger plant and am surprised to find the vegetables stand erect rather than hang down. I am not sure why I thought they would hang, but they don't. A nice crop of green papaya hangs from their two papaya trees. Ah something else I can say, Mote green papaya bhala lage - I like green papaya. I get Mrs P to add that I only recently tasted this for the first time. Amused, disbelieving looks at this, but I repeat that I like it and all seems well. In the front garden are medicinal plants, one which I am told is good for snake bites. Nods of appreciation as I understand  and repeat sapa - snake. There is also a Bitter Gourd plant - Mote bhala lageni I say with a disgusted look on my face. Smiles again, then Mrs P tells me no one here like it either.

So it is time to go. I see one of their pictures shows them playing a board game I am told is called Karrom. Now those of you who know me well know that I love to play cards, board games and the like, even winning a few  thousand Vatu ( all of £20!) in a nicely conducted "Sting" operation on 3 young  lads on the Soren Larsen who were playing poker :)  I love playing games, maybe this is the way to really break the ice. Mu asuchi, I say - I will come again if you teach me how to play Karrom.

I retrieve my shoes and struggle to get me feet in them - they are actually Mrs P's shoes because the toe strap broke on mine as I walked from home this afternoon and I have borrowed a pair to walk over to the home. My shoe struggle and my attempt at an explanation of why I am having to man handle my feet into my shoes, that they are Mrs P's shoes and I have too big feet   - bahut bura pada  - is met with laughter from the women. A good note on which to take our leave.

I make it home before the rains start, thinking about what life must be like for the residents. Better than many places, worse then many others. Certainly nothing like what I can expect in my old age. But for these ladies and gents, all of whom are into their 70s, it represents a safe place to stay, it is dry (although very hot indoors now never mind in the hot season), there is a hot meal to eat every day, regular medical checkups and the camaraderie of others. I will be visiting again, even if it is only to call in for 10 minutes to say hello and to ask them how they are. So be prepared anyone who is going to visit  because now you will also be visiting the old dears.