Republished after additions. Hope this is an improvement.
We mallus are inherently fruity. Hence, the incredible loneliness of the soul faced by a fruitless Mallu is self-evident. This deep angst surfaces in the deprived mallu's desperate delight in the face of such seemingly unimportant items such as coconut chutney and banana-chips. And this is all the more intense when the mallu is transplanted into a dry arid desert lands of that other Mallu-land lovingly referred to as 'the Gelf'.
Every year, the Keralite home-base faces a sharp shortage of the non-perishable edibles and snack-like as non-resident mallus flock back to their homeland. Stores are ransacked of their savories and looted of their lip-smackers; the state suffers from an acute drought of tea-snacks for months to come.But though the mixtures may go missing and the diamond-cuts kidnapped no other snack variety suffers as greatly as the banana-chip. The fruits quiver in fear as the shadow of the Gelf-returned fall upon their pliant green stalks. Bunch upon bunch of barely ripe bananas are deep-fried in coconut oil with salt to create a taste of Kerala in your desert living room. The bright gold of these gilded treats drew the marauding migrators like the doubloons that incited the plundering conquistadors.
But there are looters and bounty-hunters. The first indiscriminately haul every available flake of every available banana. The latter however are the connoisseurs who quest for that perfect, crisp, delicious chip and savor it as it aught to be. My family falls in the second category. And so our clan are receptacles of that deep race memory that flows through every mallu- the Chip hierarchy. For example, anybody knows that big bakeries never sell you the best chips. The true finds are always in the back alley shanties or in the seedy tin shops near railway/bus stations. And besides,no discerning mallu with their inherent anti-capitalist stance will ever trust a big brand. The last time I was in Mallu-land I heard a Hot Chips franchise was starting out there. I pity them. Another instance of Mallu general knowledge is that every fastidious mallu knows that Calicut is the Mecca of the Banana Chip. The crispiest, tastiest and most scrumptilicious chips are from beloved Calicut. Even my father- who hails from Trichur, and believes everything Trichurian is automatically exemplary- agrees to this. But my father was never one to bend his knees before the insolent tasty-ness of a non-Trichur chip. Besides, he had a special supplier.
The return trip from our frenetic vacations was usually a weighty affair. More than anything because of the constant worry of weight issues. The airlines being a rather fussy institution demanded that all the travelers carried only a limited amount of weight. This of course resulted in a series of weighing, tearful half-hearted unpacking, offloading of much loved items and reweighing. In our household it is imperative that every member be present at the packing arena: mostly so that my father will have enough people to order around. But in all honesty he did a great job (both at ordering and packing)- there wasn't an inch of space in those two boxes that wasn't utilised. Be that as it may, neither the airlines nor my father's edicts could deter our beloved aunt from buying half a bakery store for her darling brother to munch on far far away.
While my father- who is a big softy under all the bluster- may manage to leave behind some of these tokens, he could never say no to his mother. His mother who always had chronic knee pains.His mother who despite said knee pains would stand for hours at the old fashioned stove and fry handful after handful of raw bananas in searing hot coconut oil,bananas which she'd painstakingly sliced for the entire morning so that her youngest son can have the freshest batch.It was almost a tradition- My father would have just finished stuffing in the last maligned item and squashed the box shut when my grandmother would send up the tins of banana chips. My father would get the haunted look of a man who really really wants to say no, and then he would proceed to unzip the stuffed box and take out some of the previously unavoidable items and loving wrap up the new bulky presents.
Oh he would grumble of course. He would scowl and bluster. But funnily enough he would never tie up the box until the tins came through. And when we'd get back the first phone call would be greatly comprised of praising the chips. And the truth is, no one could make banana chips like her. Even the blessed Calicut varieties had salt issues. My grandmother's chips were perfect.
It's been more than five years since we've tasted her chips. The stroke paralysed her right-hand-side and she hasn't walked by herself since, let alone stepped into the kitchen. I remember the day my father and my uncle, his older brother, got the phone call. It is a strange moment when you realise that the adults had always been children. Their mother's stroke, coming so close on the heels of their father's demise, was the turning point where childhood living finally ended. The brothers left immediately and we followed soon after. The shock of seeing my ever active grandmother prone was quickly repressed, partly so that we could look after her well and partly because we didn't want her to think about it and mostly because we didn't want to think about it. The irony was that life,in the strangest and simplest of ways, went on.The leave ran out and the exiled had to return to their work place. And the charade of normalcy carried forward into the packing ritual. As always the boxes were packed, only this time there was little fear that they would be heavy. After all, we had other things on our mind. The last of the clothes were put in, the mandatory space check done and all was ready for the final tying up, when my aunt climbed up the stairs weighed down by parcel after parcel of chips. "Amma didn't want you to go without the chips.", she said.
We Mallus are made like our favorite food items. We are either soft and sentimental and sometimes diabetes inducing or crisp and salty going off with a loud crunch. But every part of us- from husk to flesh is stubbornly resilient. We take all the jokes thrown at us and make up several of them too. And regardless of what life throws at us, we believe that everything can be fixed or at the very least reconciled with. All we need is a cup of tea and banana chips.
We mallus are inherently fruity. Hence, the incredible loneliness of the soul faced by a fruitless Mallu is self-evident. This deep angst surfaces in the deprived mallu's desperate delight in the face of such seemingly unimportant items such as coconut chutney and banana-chips. And this is all the more intense when the mallu is transplanted into a dry arid desert lands of that other Mallu-land lovingly referred to as 'the Gelf'.
Every year, the Keralite home-base faces a sharp shortage of the non-perishable edibles and snack-like as non-resident mallus flock back to their homeland. Stores are ransacked of their savories and looted of their lip-smackers; the state suffers from an acute drought of tea-snacks for months to come.But though the mixtures may go missing and the diamond-cuts kidnapped no other snack variety suffers as greatly as the banana-chip. The fruits quiver in fear as the shadow of the Gelf-returned fall upon their pliant green stalks. Bunch upon bunch of barely ripe bananas are deep-fried in coconut oil with salt to create a taste of Kerala in your desert living room. The bright gold of these gilded treats drew the marauding migrators like the doubloons that incited the plundering conquistadors.
But there are looters and bounty-hunters. The first indiscriminately haul every available flake of every available banana. The latter however are the connoisseurs who quest for that perfect, crisp, delicious chip and savor it as it aught to be. My family falls in the second category. And so our clan are receptacles of that deep race memory that flows through every mallu- the Chip hierarchy. For example, anybody knows that big bakeries never sell you the best chips. The true finds are always in the back alley shanties or in the seedy tin shops near railway/bus stations. And besides,no discerning mallu with their inherent anti-capitalist stance will ever trust a big brand. The last time I was in Mallu-land I heard a Hot Chips franchise was starting out there. I pity them. Another instance of Mallu general knowledge is that every fastidious mallu knows that Calicut is the Mecca of the Banana Chip. The crispiest, tastiest and most scrumptilicious chips are from beloved Calicut. Even my father- who hails from Trichur, and believes everything Trichurian is automatically exemplary- agrees to this. But my father was never one to bend his knees before the insolent tasty-ness of a non-Trichur chip. Besides, he had a special supplier.
The return trip from our frenetic vacations was usually a weighty affair. More than anything because of the constant worry of weight issues. The airlines being a rather fussy institution demanded that all the travelers carried only a limited amount of weight. This of course resulted in a series of weighing, tearful half-hearted unpacking, offloading of much loved items and reweighing. In our household it is imperative that every member be present at the packing arena: mostly so that my father will have enough people to order around. But in all honesty he did a great job (both at ordering and packing)- there wasn't an inch of space in those two boxes that wasn't utilised. Be that as it may, neither the airlines nor my father's edicts could deter our beloved aunt from buying half a bakery store for her darling brother to munch on far far away.
While my father- who is a big softy under all the bluster- may manage to leave behind some of these tokens, he could never say no to his mother. His mother who always had chronic knee pains.His mother who despite said knee pains would stand for hours at the old fashioned stove and fry handful after handful of raw bananas in searing hot coconut oil,bananas which she'd painstakingly sliced for the entire morning so that her youngest son can have the freshest batch.It was almost a tradition- My father would have just finished stuffing in the last maligned item and squashed the box shut when my grandmother would send up the tins of banana chips. My father would get the haunted look of a man who really really wants to say no, and then he would proceed to unzip the stuffed box and take out some of the previously unavoidable items and loving wrap up the new bulky presents.
Oh he would grumble of course. He would scowl and bluster. But funnily enough he would never tie up the box until the tins came through. And when we'd get back the first phone call would be greatly comprised of praising the chips. And the truth is, no one could make banana chips like her. Even the blessed Calicut varieties had salt issues. My grandmother's chips were perfect.
It's been more than five years since we've tasted her chips. The stroke paralysed her right-hand-side and she hasn't walked by herself since, let alone stepped into the kitchen. I remember the day my father and my uncle, his older brother, got the phone call. It is a strange moment when you realise that the adults had always been children. Their mother's stroke, coming so close on the heels of their father's demise, was the turning point where childhood living finally ended. The brothers left immediately and we followed soon after. The shock of seeing my ever active grandmother prone was quickly repressed, partly so that we could look after her well and partly because we didn't want her to think about it and mostly because we didn't want to think about it. The irony was that life,in the strangest and simplest of ways, went on.The leave ran out and the exiled had to return to their work place. And the charade of normalcy carried forward into the packing ritual. As always the boxes were packed, only this time there was little fear that they would be heavy. After all, we had other things on our mind. The last of the clothes were put in, the mandatory space check done and all was ready for the final tying up, when my aunt climbed up the stairs weighed down by parcel after parcel of chips. "Amma didn't want you to go without the chips.", she said.
We Mallus are made like our favorite food items. We are either soft and sentimental and sometimes diabetes inducing or crisp and salty going off with a loud crunch. But every part of us- from husk to flesh is stubbornly resilient. We take all the jokes thrown at us and make up several of them too. And regardless of what life throws at us, we believe that everything can be fixed or at the very least reconciled with. All we need is a cup of tea and banana chips.
