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What is a Bowl of Sambar to you?

Fleeting reflections from a shiny pot,

Provide me with vague ideas,

Of how I came to be; who made me?

A lentil soup of ground spices,

Coconut, tamarind, drumsticks,

Ladyfingers, onions and tomatoes,

How revealing is my complexity?

Layers of flavor swim around,

In a swirling pool of hopes and dreams.

Jolly housewives throw in a pinch of idealized domesticity,

Urban wives follow, swiftly opening MTR packets,

Hungry college students scoop spoonsful from tiffin boxes,

The lone village boy, now a man, unknowingly transfers,

Ambitions, goals and all of his boredom,

Into a steamy, smoldering, simmering cauldron.

Each Maker has a unique identity, a projection,

Hidden in little pockets of flavor throughout my being.

But I am fluid – taking shape of every vessel I’m poured into.

All purpose is fleeting, transitory,

For I take many shapes and forms,

Although slightly overwhelmed and humbled,

By all these symbols that I have become.

 

With a sigh of relief, I watch Pradeep swatting away a pair of dangerous looking flies who were flying too close to my pot. He scooped two ladles of fermented dosa batter onto a sizzling dosa plate and flattened them into round disks, next he spread a red spicy masala paste into the middle of the batter, wiped his station clean with a cloth and proceeded to serve dollops of coconut or tamarind chutney into steel plates. All this, he did in a manner of seconds, as if following a blueprint of what happens next that was mapped out in his brain; he almost seemed like an octopus, multitasking throughout the kitchen with flying hands – wiping splashes of rasam from the counter, flipping dosas on one side and finally pouring a spoonful from my pot into a bowl. I admired him especially between 11AM to 2PM, when it was the busiest time at Sri Devi Grand, for at those times he was just a flurry of organized activity. It was only him and Alok in the kitchen, and they had to cook, plate up and do customer transactions all between them. It was a mammoth task. Pradeep is my first Maker. We seem to have formed an intimate bond, more out of habit and routine than emotion. In a monotonous humdrum of perpetual service, Pradeep opens up his shop, procures the daily groceries from a retailer nearby and starts cutting, peeling and chopping onions, tomatoes and garlic. He then prepares a filter coffee mix, checks on the fermented dosa batter and finally begins to work on me. Pressure cooked dal, tamarind water, cooked vegetables, ground sambar masala paste and spices are put to a boil. Once cooked, Pradeep then adds a little tadka of oil, mustard seeds, curry leaves and some dried red chillies.

 

Pradeep is from a village 500 kilometers from here – he goes back thrice a year to visit his family, but is unmarried and lives alone in Yelahanka. After learning the ropes in the hoteling business, Pradeep hopped from one business to another in Karnataka, and finally wound his way to Yelahanka, where he opened Sri Devi Grand, in a small corner in Yelahanka 5th phase, next to Tastebuds. He was tired of working for other people and with a desire to run his own business – to be his own boss, he opened up a small South Indian shop. Although predominantly run by him, another cook, Alok, would help him out during the peak hours of 11AM-2PM. The menu ranged from kesari bath, Mangalore buns and rice baths to various kinds of idlis and dosas. “They’re always cooking non-veg food and rolls, I don’t like the smell,” he complains to Alok about Tastebuds, the restaurant next door, scrunching up his nose. Plucking soft idlis from the steamer, he reminisces, “These are almost as soft and fluffy as my Amma’s upma. Her upma was always light, garnished with fried onions and a little bit of lemon. Her secret was in the sweet and spicy peanut chutney that she served with it. But I never had an intense passion or love for food. Starting out in the hoteling business just seemed the most logical thing to do. It was more of a career option because of the possibilities in jobs later on. Running my own business gives me more salary though,” he replies with a toothy grin.

 

 “Here, try this bowl of sambar. I’ve added something new to it,” Pradeep extends a bowl to his customer from the counter. Indeed, today I felt different, there was a green chilli paste that he had added to my ground masala paste. It was a good month in business, allowing Pradeep to throw in some brinjals into the recipe as well. I have observed that he never seems to care much about other cuisines, his daily food comprises mostly of leftovers from the restaurant and I have never seen him trying his hand at another dish, let alone even touching non-vegetarian food. Majority of his customers speak fluent Kannada; rattling away in undecipherable tongues, they validate the deliciousness of Pradeep’s cooking in guttural burps that echo around the shop. Many compliment my tangy flavor, smacking their lips in delight, many are overcome with my spiciness and drown glasses of water, but almost everyone compliments Pradeep before they leave his shop. As my Maker, I like his simplicity; his less romanticized ideal of what I symbolize to him, showcases a common understanding of life amongst most people who leave their villages and come to more urbanized areas looking for work. For him, I am a means of livelihood and an impetus for something to do the whole day, to pour his mental and physical strengths into and keep him occupied. After a few days of visiting his village, Pradeep becomes bored and wishes to come back to run his shop. Although, I may not be constantly praised or cherished by him, there is an unconscious transference and projection of what it means to be “Pradeep”, into the bold flavours that are imparted by me.

 

There is another shop across Sri Devi with has similar Makers. Often times, on closing their shops, the Makers from both restaurants would come with their leftovers and sit to eat together. Pradeep reckons that it’s his favorite part of the day, because they discuss funny anecdotes of their day, complain about rising prices of their vegetables and share plates of their food. It’s remarkable at how close and intimate they have become through these daily meals. When I come to think about what gives a homogeneity to my Makers, it strikes me that an idea of communal relatability and cooperation is often obtained when they have their meals together or share secrets of their recipes and small tricks. Jay, another Maker from Buffalo Back vehemently appreciates this idea of bringing together threads of our society by having meals together. He wants to create a family-like café in the front garden of their organic fruits and vegetables shop that would facilitate more dialogue on how to uphold sustainable production of food. For Jay, food stands as a symbol of productive dialogue. His kitchen produces the most authentic versions of me, especially since most of their spices are organic and the vegetables are from their own farms. On the second anniversary of Buffalo Back they held a communal lunch and spread the word about the opening of their newest café.

 

A group of Tasters were sitting cross legged in the front lawn of Buffalo Back, mixing red rice and a delicious pumpkin puree with their hands. Although Jay was busy serving me into small bowls that he placed in each plate, he kept his ears strained and participated in the Tasters’ conversation now and then, talking about each step of their sustainability process and how there were no plastic containers used for packaging. For Jay, I was a symbol of purpose and action; the cooks were native women from villages that were hired by his farm and they promised overtones of authenticity and nativity to all the meals. The home-cooked style of the café was created to sustain age-old Indian traditions of eating together as a family that promised communication and bonding. Urbanization and globalization are promoting a sense of multiculturalism which was increasingly blurring identities of ethnicity with more “global” ideas of being. Younger generations increasingly eat isolated meals, often relying on quick fixes, ready to eat and tiffins – like Sujata’s tiffins for instance. My next Maker, Sujata, lives in Purva Venezia, where she runs a small tiffin service and the likes of college going students, working bachelors and even in some cases working wives are her clientele. I’ve often made my way into microwaves; bored spectators watch me turning around as I heat up, wistfully waiting for the 90 seconds to be over.

 

Sujata, herself a North Indian, loves me. I’m her favorite dish, she claims. She fine-tuned her recipe through her maid, a Yelahanka born and raised resident, who told her the perfect timing of adding tamarind water into the boiling dal. Sujata cherishes this recipe, especially the tip from her maid, which has made all the difference to my tanginess. “I am always making South Indian food at my house in Delhi. Sometimes we make these tiny idlis, cooked in turmeric and mustard seeds,” she explains to her maid, while stirring in ground spices into the mixture. Sujata invokes close memories associated with this kind of food. “It was only my mother and me for five years on the dinner table. We made a ritual out of eating plain rice with sambar. I think it’s a huge part of who I am, even though I may not have any ethnic connections to the food or location. Moving to Bangalore simply made me closer to the South Indian community, in that I shared with them my love of food.”

 

Ali, on the other hand, retains his sense of self and projects who he is in his North Indian food. Ali runs Royal Darbar, a small restaurant serving typical North Indian food. He is the Maker of my close friend paneer butter masala. Interesting conversations with my fellow comrade have better facilitated my understanding of our roles in the human world. Although Ali’s closeness to his cuisine relates very deeply to his roots of where he comes from, he relates more closely to the kind of people in this new community here. Most of his food signifies this coming together of different values, which goes to say that humans’ identities are as bound to change and fluidity as ours are. It seems like we are impetus’, often talismans of sorts, which are given meaning by the Maker or Taster. We are objects and symbols – taking shape of the vessel we are poured into. Our Tasters and Makers imbue within us little parts of themselves, that are given meaning by the interactions that surface as a respect of engaging in the eating and consuming process. At any given infinitesimal moment, our relations with humans are deeply intertwined, constantly creating new meanings like ripples on the surface of a lake; objects are a profound part of communities, not only in terms of facilitating a better understanding of human behavior, practices and events, but also through emotional connections that threads together different components of our society.

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