Valiamma

I woke up early morning on Monday and lay in bed waiting for daybreak.  The previous evening at Manas, I had been showing Ammumma photographs, a ritual she looks forward to everyday.  In that untidy pile of albums was one of photos from Vrindavanam, Appuppa’s family’s home in Palakkad; that is when I thought of Valiamma, my Great-Aunt.  Your Great Great-Aunt. 
 
In those old family homes, filled to capacity by people sitting around, walking, cooking, sweeping, sorting, cleaning, gossiping (rarely done as an exclusive activity and, if so, largely by the men) and reading the Mathrubhumi, with old thick walls reaching for wooden ceilings amidst framed paintings and prints of our pantheon of Gods, photographs of family members who weren’t there anymore, mandatory calendars with tearaway pages and pendulum clocks that put forth their best performance in the still of the night, amidst wires of electricity leading to circular Bakelite switches, and garlands of colourful – if sometimes a touch too colourful – paper, and strings and threads of good fortune running down a curtain rod because no one dared throw them out….. in those old family homes, time, despite the ring of the pendulum, stood still.  As still as the summer air and the winter ripple on the water’s surface in the pond behind.  And in Vrindavanam, this sprawling, fetching home, when the fragrance of ripening mangoes wafted in from the courtyard in April, a lazy sedation would descend on that living room, with its two beds on either side of a busy walkway.  One of those beds was Valiamma’s.
 

I see her as I write this, a tall strong woman she was, with stature and a rustic dignity that was arresting.  She must have been handsome in her youth (I say this with mild hesitation, as it is a word hardly used these days and almost never in describing a lady, for the nuances of gender have been wrung tight) and must have turned some heads in her prime and swayed the palm trees - dripping toddy, fronds and all - with her smile. This is entirely speculation for, in our collection here at Manas, there is no photograph of that young woman, no sepia to quicken the heart pulse of a grand nephew……..
 
My first impression, instead, was of an enfeebled elder with irregular teeth, dark hair and a worried expression on an otherwise forbidding, strict countenance that – to a feverish imagination – rarely broke into smile (of course this was untrue, but then much of childhood speculation is so).  I was much more comfortable, even gregarious, with her younger sister, my tubby diminutive  Ammumma, who was the bubbly sort and laughed heartily at those puerile attempts of her youngest grandson at being funny.  You choose your favourites even in those years, perhaps more so than later. 
 
I was fussy with food in those pre-teen years and that did not help at all.  For, you see, Valiamma’s way to your heart was through your stomach; she was not just the family’s Master chef, she set the platinum standard in the art of Palakkad cuisine.  From picking edible mushrooms to pickling banana flower to seasoning the fish curry with those wine-red skins of the kadumpuli fruit, her formidable culinary skill was encompassing, inborn, refined and unmatched as she wove sensory magic with spices, herbs, meats and veggies.   With me, it was a matter of time.  And so it happened.  The teen years I grew into were ones when I was always hungry.  When we visited Vrindavanam in that phase of my life – the late ‘70s to mid ‘80s – I discovered Valiamma’s cooking.  No one who did could remain the same after.   
 
You walked down the passageway at the back of the house  to the dining room beside which was the large old kitchen, three steps above, with its black walls and large, amorphous dishes stacked alongside the store, with the smell of a wood fire and sweat, and the delicate aroma of spice and curry and coconut-laden stew – they called it ‘shtew’, which is about as quaint a name for liquid manna from heaven – and jackfruit.  And there she would be in her white, carelessly draped mundu and long blouse, sweating in the heat, talking to an accomplice, directing an assistant, stirring a dish.  Ever so often, she’d stand at the door separating the kitchen from the dining room taking in the cooler air (if air at 37 degrees C can be considered cooler), or making small talk with her grand nephews and nieces and exchanging gossip with a visiting relative, all of whom were about as useful to her as rancid butter (Rani aunty – my cousin and your aunt – was an honourable exception, who learnt the art at the feet of the Master).  
 
The males in the house – spanning thirteen to seventy three - lived for politics and food (not necessarily in that order), so everyone waited with but one purpose: to eat.  Your ammumma would watch in astonishment as, in the company of my cousins with excessively healthy appetites, I dug into dishes that I shrunk away from at home, ploughed my way through breakfasts of idlis-and-shtew, drank three cups of Kanan Devan tea on the trot – served in teapots with tea cosies to keep them warm – and delicately picked at the jackfruit jam – Chakkavarti – that was the piece de resistance, the pinnacle of foodie evolution, or so it seemed.  To meet the insatiable demand of this cohort of men, women and children, Valiamma and her faithful assistants cooked.  And cooked.  And cooked.  This wasn’t just food, you see, it was cuisine, made by the Master Chef who valued her reputation, loved her brood to distraction and turned out dish after dish with passion for them, spending countless days in that dark, sombre dungeon of flavour. 
 
If you spoke a nice word about her cooking, which I did frequently and with intent to please, her face would break out in a smile and acknowledge the compliment, the front teeth dangling or at rakish angles.  That was her only reward, the pleasure of hearing a soft word.   
 
When the kitchen closed after lunch, she and my ammumma would return to that room in the centre of the house, to their respective beds and rest, often engaging in gossip about relatives or others in the village of Ethanur.  This gossip I found entirely fascinating, even though I never understood a word: it was in loud whispers, with the words flowing fast and frequent expressions of derision (for, lesser mortals inhabited the land those days).  There were stories within stories, the said and the unsaid, the explained and the mysterious. Quite unlike the soil of Palakkad and its hardy, inured denizens, she wasn’t the strong, silent, one, but a constant worrier, imagining the darkest outcomes if I took that old cycle out on the deserted mud road of the village. Her deep affection for the family made her the storehouse of every worst-case scenario in existence (and many only imagined). That meant that the crop of happy-go-lucky-go-reckless cousins of mine were ticked off by her ever so often.  They would give it back with spirit and, often, humour, for the Palakkadans aren’t known for their timidity and the resultant exchange of gruff conversation and sarcasm is a delightful remnant in sepia (Palakkadans aren’t what they used to be anymore, let this be known).  
 
She was deeply attached to daddy – Appuppa – and he reciprocated the affection in equal measure, displaying it with his appetite at the table, with little regard for his diabetes that had otherwise held his gastronomic ambitions in leash.  He had been born when his mother was in her teens, so it was Valiamma who played surrogate mom along with her mother – my great grandmother.   He had, as a result, three moms, all of whom thought the world of him and measured his reciprocation by how much he ate.   A week in Vrindavanam therefore and he was a couple of kilos up, despite long walks in the countryside and to relatives’ houses in the neighbouring village of Kakkayur (where, of course, he ate again.  He was still in Palakkad, you see, and food ruled the roost).  If home is where the heart is, he never left Vrindavanam and his aunt-who-was-his-mum.
 
Years later – much after she was gone - I learnt, with surprise and curious delight, that there had been a romance in Valiamma’s life too and her brother (my grand-uncle, Ammamma) and she were to have  married another sibling pair, but that did not work, rendering them bachelor and spinster for life.  This summary hardly does justice to the events that must have transpired, filled as they were in those days with uncertainty, rigidity and social mores, assertions of identity with the pretensions that went with it……. As I reflect on this, I wonder: do I still live on the same social planet as she did?   
 
Valiamma cooked well into her late years, hobbling up the steps, ordering her loyal team around, worrying herself to distraction (it’s a skill, no less) and remaining the prima donna of that dimly lit abode of flavour, wood and spice. In the early part of the 1988 monsoon, on a day in mid-June, she served her last meal with the flourish that underlined an extraordinary journey of an otherwise-ordinary human, who loved her family deeply enough to ignore herself.   
 
Thirty four years later, I can see her standing there at the entrance to the kitchen, sweat lining her brow, her face grim with worry as it always seemed to be, watching the brood that she nurtured with the deepest affection, a brood that was three steps below her in every way, munch, crunch, chew, slurp and chomp through her day’s effort, their conversations on politics and strikes, idealogues and idiosyncrats, their humour and harangue, all built on a foundation of food that achieved a status we now know to be divinity.