When Dhania is a Treasure

Our D`Mello Christmas lunch table from a few years ago. Pic/Rosalyn D`mello

Ever since I managed to slip in a visit to the Pakistani-run ‘Oriental' shop in the city of Bozen last week, I've been in a more elevated frame of mind. The absence of coriander in my life was beginning to haunt my consciousness.

I began to dream about what it would mean to pick at a big bunch, wash off traces of soil, drain the greens and have it available at hand. I have yet to configure a sustainable system of growing the herb. In any case, it wouldn't have endured the harshness of winter.

But these logistics aside, I enjoy visiting the Pakistani-run shop. I love how it's one place in Bozen where, as a migrant, I feel most at ease, because the other customers are also dislocated in their unique way; either migrants or refugees.

The term ‘oriental' becomes all-encompassing for anything non-European. I like being able to buy mustard oil from Bangladesh and basmati rice from Pakistan. I have found a treasure trove by way of masalas, and I love knowing that there are different kinds of bananas on offer, and often enough, karela, bhindi, and green chillis.

But the guy at the counter knows that what I'm most excited about is the coriander. I find it amusing that they never keep it next to the parsley, or the chillis, but instead, behind the counter, under wraps, literally, as if it were a contraband substance.

The first time I visited the shop I looked all over for it. Finally, as I made my way to the cashier, I was asked if I wanted some dhania. I gleamed. I took two bunches. Since then, I've been a regular customer. I like being able to speak in my questionable Hindi. There is an immense solidarity to the whole affair, as well as humour, and genuine warmth. Each time I visit, I buy a few things to populate my pantry, so that I don't overwhelm my in-laws with a large stock of unfamiliar ingredients.

It's possible that my minimalist approach is also a way of encountering the muscularity of my experience of culinary exile at the level of tongue. When I first moved to Delhi, to JNU, I had to wrestle with that peculiar monstrosity that was North Indian hostel food. I began to crave peculiarly Goan interventions with coconut.

When I'd return to Mumbai for my summer and winter vacations, I'd gorge on home food made by my parents. Later, when I lived in Delhi as a single woman, I began to find ways of sourcing ingredients. I'd bring back from Goa a suitcase filled with chillis, tamarind, salt, spices, kokum, even bread, and of course, palm jaggery |and feni.

Whenever I'd return from seeing my parents in Mumbai, I'd bring back a bottle of my father's secret Reshad masala. This continued until last year, when, as I was closing up my apartment, I began to finally use up whatever was leftover. I had a koyta to break the coconut I'd source from my local fruit seller, and a coconut scraper that I got my mother to gift me once. I had a Bajaj mixer that I managed to use for almost 10 years to make my masalas. I cooked many feasts over the 10-year span of my Delhi life. I saw myself as an ambassador for Goan food in Delhi.

Here I find I am more nervous about cooking food that's so close to my soul. I am apprehensive about its reception by tongues that are unaccustomed to its nuances and excesses, and I'm often unsure how I might respond to visual evidence of someone not liking what I've cooked. I'm insecure because the cuisine is such an elemental part of my identity.

I often have to contend with my own disappointment, because I haven't managed to figure out the right substitute for an ingredient. Like how does one replace kokum? I know I can arrive at the tartness of flavour it offers, but the sight of triangular black bits of sourness swimming like sharks in a prawn curry?

Sometimes, when I'm in an elevated frame of mind, the aspiration to arrive at equivalence excites me. But on days when I feel dislocated, I feel only frustration. Like on that December day when I tried to make a Xacuti with desiccated coconut, using pepperoncino instead of Kashmiri chillies, lime instead of tamarind, black poppy seeds instead of white. The ensuing mash tasted like a stingingly sharp dip. It was the unimpressive shadow of the flavour I knew was well within my powers to facilitate were the circumstances different.

Thankfully, I have moments when the consequences of my grief, pleasure and inventiveness are unexpectedly profound. This afternoon was a reassuring example. I outdid myself with the chicken cafreal. It was pitch-perfect. It was accompanied by boiled potatoes that I then cut in large rounds and stir-fried with garlic, dried methi leaves, a pinch of sugar and chilli flakes ground with salt. After a string of recent failures, it felt good to be moved again by something I had made.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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