My trusty old Indian pressure cooker, a gift from my mother, finally gave up on me. After enduring many, many years of my eccentric usage, it finally blew its gasket. Well, it blew its safety valve, actually, sending up a steady spray of its contents ceilingward, in a geyser quite worthy of an Old Faithful. Perhaps word had got around that a shiny, new model was on its way, and that did it in.
I couldn’t blame it, really. Feeling like old faithless, standing on a step ladder and mopping toor dal off the ceiling and walls, I thought about all the good times we’d had together. I will miss the gentle conversational, steam driven bobble-babble of my kitchen companion, punctuated with its occasional shrieks of excitement. I hear its replacement is a bit on the quiet side.
Mine is a pretty quiet kitchen. For the most part, it’s just me, going about my daily round of prepping, cooking and cleaning. Some chopping here, a little grinding there. The dishwasher is annoyingly louder than it should be, the refrigerator is silent, the oven only beeps when it’s done. Occasionally, the calm is shattered by the roar of my Indian made “mixie”. It’s hard to generate the kind of buzz and bustle that was the average Indian kitchen of my childhood.
It’s light years removed from the beehive of activity that was my grandmother’s kitchen in Coorg. If you were as finely tuned, in anticipation of a full day of holiday fun and food ahead as I was, you would wake before the dawn chorus, and listen for all the telltale sounds of a great engine being stoked into action.
First, stirrings in the cattle shed, of the cows being readied for a morning milking by the early rising help. Large wooden latches on a side entrance to the kitchen pulled open. A tumbling of freshly chopped firewood. The soft, low, metallic breath of a blowpipe, coaxing a fire to life. Water falling into copper drums. Brisk sweeping brooms made from the ribs of coconut palm leaves. The first wisps of woodsmoke drifting through the dewy morning air seemed to signal the birds to get a move on, and a sweet cacophony of birdsong would start to build. Sharp, cracking coconuts, followed soon after by crisp scraping. By the first tentative roll of the grinding stone, making room for the coconut shavings to be ground to a silky paste, my stomach would be rumbling!
Between breakfast and lunch, the kitchen was at its busiest. Menus finalized, provisions were handed out from the “store room”, and then, it was “all systems go” until lunch time. There’d be more coconuts cracked, grated and ground, vegetables peeled and chopped. Chickens were chased down, milk boiled, rice picked clean of stones and other debris. Clay pots and coconut shell ladles made contact with earthy abandon, as their contents were stirred and mixed. Pressure cookers tweeted their modernity from their perch on the gas burners, over the huffing, steaming sekalas set on the wood burning stove. Aunts chattered constantly over their tasks. My grandmother, while in the kitchen, would limit her conversation to giving out instructions. Occasionally, she and her daughters would be united in loud shrieks of outrage, as the “outdoor” dog, a sassy mutt named Fatty, spotting an open front door, would race through the house, before exiting through the kitchen. He evidently didn’t agree with the household policy that dogs should be heard, not seen.
After lunch, it was all clattering dishes and pots being scoured with ash and coconut fibre pads. Rinsed clean, and piled into baskets, they’d be carried out to dry in the sun. Things began to slow down now. While most of the adults wandered off to their afternoon slumber, my grandmother would busy herself with making teatime treats, which usually meant something deep fried. Soft sizzling, and the rocking roll of the grinding stone was the post lunch theme, as the maid turned rice and dal into a smooth batter for the next mornings dosa breakfast.
Teatime over, it was all clinking glass and china being rinsed and, by dinner time, the kitchen was a shadow of its morning glory. With the click of a light switch, followed by the slamming of heavy wooden doors, the kitchen was officially closed for the night. You listened for the sounds of scampering mice at your own peril…
As I was saying, mine is a quiet kitchen. I wonder what my new pressure cooker will have to say. Its a fancy new job, all bells and whistles. Except, it doesn’t whistle.
Hmm…silence of the lamb chops. Let’s see how this goes 😉
R.I.P. Old Faithful!
Oh, and Happy Halloween! 🙂
It has been decommissioned , it is official. It is so tough to part with ethat has been mre than just a cooking utensil. Reading your account of a typical day in your Grandmother’s kitchen was an absolute delight. I could almost feel the dizzy pace of events inside and around the kitchen. It is a heartwarming and such an animated description. The sights , sounds and smells that you have described seem to come to life so many years later in another time and world. The sassy mutt sounds a dear. Fatty indeed! You are so right, Modern kitchen appliances and a high tech gadgets impart a totally different vibe to the kitchen ! But am sure that your kitchen has a delightfully warm and loving aura about it. Thankfully the aromas that waft out remain the same . Though nothing can substitute the smell of burning wood or coal and the wisps of aromatic smoke . Have you chucked old faithful out ? In India it would have made its way to the Kabadi walla , (the indigenous crafty recycler of all things under the sun ) A maid would probably use it to store rations . Life in not so spacious flats means one has to be practical and almost heartless. The number of decrepit pots and vessels I cling to…. just because of ” this was my first “……. Sadly pressure cookers have a lifespan more than any other cooking pot. I would be so tempted to turn it into a fat squat flower vase . The whistle / weight looks noble in the picture like a lonely stalwart sentinel of the kitchen And when the lights go out it seems to guard your kitchen . Dont chuck it …. it will make a nice paper weight . Or leave it in a a corner of a kitchen drawer . It will peek out suddenly when you rummage for something flooding the moment with happy memories.
Your Grandmother’s kitchen looks mighty impressive the neat L shaped cooking hearth is such a brilliant idea , a raised platform to cook on and a chimney clearly demonstrate a level of sophistication not so common for those days . Your modern kitchen may be silent but am sure has a heart as warm and big as your Grandmother’s .
PS what is the word for kitchen in Kodva Takk “:-)
This post is lovely , have read it several times.
It’s decommissioned, all right, Jyoti. I had to be firm and resist the urge to immediately re-employ it in some invented capacity. It’s gone to the high tech recycling plant, and will probably be sailing to China, soon enough. Who knows, it may someday find its way back into a pressure cooker that’s still a twinkle in some designers’ eye 🙂 I kept the weight, which lies exactly as you described- in the corner of a kitchen drawer! I was toying with the idea of gluing a magnet to the base and using it to pin notes on the fridge.
The scale of operation in those old kitchens was quite amazing. This being a town home, there was a different energy than you’d find in the typical estate houses. There was more scope for unexpected company, for a start.There were casual visitors who had to be served tea or coffee. And vendors who came to the kitchen door, selling anything from fresh fish, to assorted “thindi” (sweet and savoury snacks), and even the beggars had their official day (Thursdays, if I’m not mistaken) when they would call to collect their measures of rice and whatever else was offered. Deliveries of produce from the estate would be offloaded at the back door too, and all the usual suspects- baskets of oranges, avocados, bananas, along with sacks of rice, coffee and pepper, had to be accounted for and stored in suitable fashion. Oh! Let’s not forget the bales of hay for the cattle! 🙂 I know running a kitchen (adagé mané) like my grandmother’s was an enormous amount of work. Still, every now and then, I feel like it would be such fun to rustle up enough numbers to activate that kitchen again, even for a little while.
But hey, my kitchen’s pretty cosy, and I do love it!:-)