From God's own country

The world, it is said, is all about duality and equilibrium. Each philosophy has it’s own version. Yin-Yang, good and evil. I believe that was the reason for us having to go to Kerala for a cousin’s wedding only a month after our trip to Delhi. If you read my earlier posts ( you haven’t!!! please go read right now, they are quite interesting) you would know that I was in Delhi with me wife for Xmas. We went to Kerala after 28 months and this time too it was for attending a wedding, like the last time.

A trip to Kerala is never about visiting the tourist locations since we have so many relatives to visit which means there aren’t really any restaurants to visit. No “outside” food but then I love mallu food and I am blessed with aunts who are magicians when it comes to cooking.

na-real!

So this trip was about gorging on Kappa (tapioca, the raw material for sabudaana) both steamed as well as boiled with chopped chilli-onion-vinegar dip/fish curry/chicken curry/beef curry as accompaniment, beef “ulathiya” (a version of stir-fry), “more”(not the same as opposite of less) which is buttermilk based curry, freshly plucked raw mangoes in salt/chilli/oil paste, lime-as-big-as-my-head(dunno the correct name & yes I have heard about google goggles), banana chips cooked in coconut oil(the way it should be) without insane amount of salt on it, halwa-the dark-as-sin, not-too-sweet kind, fried fish- caught by yours truly with a fishing rod [nylon thread with a bamboo pole at one end and a fish hook  at the other), oyster meat “ulathiya”, avial(three varities at three homes), milk cake (courtesy me cousin), “mutta” (egg) puffs [these ones aren’t like the sorry ones you get here]

This trip wasn’t about finding new places to eat, it wasn’t about finding the best jalebi or best seekh kabab. This trip was about food nostalgia (yeah it was about the place too).

I caught two of them :)

It was about re-experiencing all those tastes from years ago, from my childhood holidays, my teen holidays, my youth holidays, about all the memories connected to the food: It was about 8 cousins chomping on raw mangoes in salt-chiili-oil paste. It was about going to my grand-mothers and having beef, about the breakfast and lunch that she cooked years ago. It was about swimming(more like trying to hang on to the rubber tube for dear life) in the river, waking up before dawn to find out if any fish had managed to swim into our trap, having a finger bit by a fish because your uncle asked you to hold it by it’s tail.  

kappa!!

It was about many such small-but-not-insignificant memories and it felt good to be able to revive them. The break from the ‘concrete jungle’ (clichéd but explains it best) to the vast expanses of paddy fields was perfect albeit a bit shorter than what I would have liked.

So, from eating out everyday when in Delhi to eating at home everyday in Kerala. I guess it’s all about equilibrium.