A while ago, I had invited a friend for a chat. My friend, like me, grew up in Mumbai, but is originally from Karnataka. She had informed me that she liked bitter vegetables and so, I prepared a traditional Karnataka dish and packed it for her to take home. This was Hagalakaayi gojju, or sweet and sour bitter gourd.
She later told me that she had gone home and had that with rice. As soon as she tasted the first morsel, she was transported back to her grandmother’s home and it evoked sweet memories for her. The sensual feeling of coconut-tamarind-jaggery-bitter gourd on her tongue brought her into the presence of unconditional love that she got from her grandparents. The laughs, the caring, and the wholesome unrestrained existence of a girl child in emotional and physical safety at her grandparent’s house.
I joked that my hagalakaayi gojju was her Proust’s madeleine. She forbid me from cooking anything but Karnataka dishes if I ever wanted to invite her for lunch. The feeling about the evocative memories was that strong. It was a call to home and my cooking felt, for her, like home. She wanted to succumb to that feeling over and over again.
Later, she confessed that having married a gent from another state in India, she rarely got to eat the cuisine of her maternal home. She had, like many married women, adopted her husband’s customs, and that included the cuisine. There are soft cultures (Karnataka, Maharashtra, Orissa, Himachal, etc) and aggressive cultures (Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Bengal) in India. The sub-cultures within the soft cultures are no match to the aggressive ones.
In Karnataka, there is such diversity in language, customs and cuisine - Konkani, Coorg (Kodagu), Tulu (Bunt etc), Uttara Karnataka etc and these will likely die out in the face of the cultural aggression of the more dominant forces. Konkani itself has three different traditions - Catholic, Chitrapur-Saraswat and Goud-Saraswat Brahmin. The language, customs and cuisine of these sub-sub-types are subtly different. Therein, lies the beauty in diversity.
My friend said that she craved to cook and eat Konkani dishes, but the lack of openness of her married family was an obstacle. For Bengalis - her husband’s family - , coconut, tamarind, jaggery, bitterness was radically different and there was feeling of disdain for her specific recipe preferences. The coconut oil favored by South Kanara folks was too dissimilar to the mustard oil favored by the Bengalis. Thus, she rarely got the taste of home.
When inter-community or cultural or religious marriages take place, quite often, the women lose their entire identity to maintain harmony. And thus culture dies. The Konkani culture and language will die out with her since her US-raised children do not know this language. This rich tribe that likely originated from the extinct-Saraswati river and travelled all the way down south will die such small deaths and will be extinguished one day.
Who will then be alive to eat hagalkaayi gojju, and make it her madeleine? Or a poem that references a french novelist’s nibbled cookie?
Lovely post!
As a native Konkani speaker married to a Malayali, the cross cultural element hit home. Our story is a little different, since the core ingredients are similar, and ours is more of a nuclear setup, we have a fair share of both cuisines in the house. My wife's copy of the Rasachandrika occupies prime spot in our cabinet :-)
Couple of other points - if Karnataka and Maharashtra have soft cultures (I'd say "malleable"), then Konkani could be called a "solute" culture. It dissolves into whatever is the dominant culture of the land (or house). The most famous Konkani speakers of the world, especially in the literary and arts world, are all famous in a language other than theirs. You'll rarely find a Konkani speaker who's first language is Konkani. We don't have our script, or our own literature. So some of this is probably self inflicted.
Second, because Konkani culture (especially the GSB /CSB one that I'm more familiar with) is so soluble, it retains the charm. A forcing of any sort now would be antithetical to what this stands for. There are so many Konkani identities to begin with, that any one identity will be an inaccurate representation. In that sense, it's probably the most suitable culture for the integrated 21st century, where one can have a public persona and a private, more personal one.
PS: The "hagalakaayi gojju" also triggered an anecdote of an aunt from Bankikodla, married to Mumbai asking a vegetable vendor for "paach rupayachi hagalakaayi" and the vendor replying "tumhi paach rupaye dya, kiti pan hagun deto"
I feel the same way about family recipes. There are so many unique dishes that every family has passed on through generations which is usually a concoction of influences from various places the family has lived in, and they end up getting lost at some point 😢