I had been yearning for curry leaves and the singularly divine flavour only they can add to food. Then a friend in Berlin came to my rescue and in a moving gesture, procured a bushel and mailed it to me
Right now, the almond (in picture) and cherry trees have me completely enthralled. Pic/Rosalyn D’mello
As I write this, a network of anonymous forces is abuzz, catering, unknowingly, to a singular mission — ensuring a package sent by a friend in Berlin through the post arrives at my location in South Tyrol. I may have casually mentioned on social media how alienated my culinary existence has been on account of being cut off from a crucial ingredient; curry leaves.
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While I had been able to remedy the dearth of coriander and green chillies in my local vegetable shop after having discovered potential access to a regular stash in a Pakistani-run shop in Bozen, I had been unable to fill the kadi patta void. Until recently, when an artist friend on Facebook wrote a beautiful post detailing how she frequently transported back the ingredient with her to Berlin each time she visited Karachi, storing portions of the leaves in her freezer.
I expressed my longing, which our mutual friend, Saskya, picked up on. Some days later she messaged me privately to tell me she could dispatch some to me when her local Tamil shop got fresh stock. She told me that a Gujarati aunty from London once told her that the best way to preserve them over long-distance hauls was to shallow fry them in ghee before freezing them. Saskya said she’d do the first step and I could then freeze them immediately upon receipt. I gave her my address and asked for hers. A gesture so moving deserved to be returned.
Yesterday I received a WhatsApp text with a photograph of fresh curry leaves from Saskya with this accompanying caption, ‘The path to food heaven (it smells divine in my kitchen right now after frying the whole bushel in ghee!)’ I knew exactly what she meant; those wafts wholly peculiar to curry leaves roasted in fat. ‘Divine’ indeed. The second photograph revealed glistening, translucent-green leaves, post their treatment in ghee, still cooling, perhaps, after being roasted. Later in the evening, she texted me confirmation that she had put them in the mail that afternoon. I was elated and thanked her. She responded saying she was happy to help. “I know the kadi patta blues... until just recently they were not so readily available here.”
Tomorrow I will be posting in the mail a jar of honey local to Tramin, the work of our resident bees. I thought the rich amber liquid could serve as an equivalent to her gesture. I’m still unsure whether to send fluid honey, or the heartier, slightly crystallised version from the neighbouring town of Kurtasch, which I love so much because of the ambiguity of its state of matter — it looks solid and yet melts immediately in your mouth upon contact with your tongue.
It is sufficiently unique, considering its rarity, and I imagine that Berlin is not necessarily the kind of city where you know where your honey comes from. Because I’ve been intently studying all the pre-spring eruptions upon every inch of the surface of certain fruit-bearing trees, I’ve become even more attuned to the sources of honey.
Right now, the almond and cherry trees have me completely enthralled. Their intense, liquor-like fragrance has served its invitational purpose. The bees are busy collecting nectar and invariably cross-pollinating the landscape. I like to pick at the ground underneath to forage for fallen blossoms which I then press in my books, in the hope of using them later as part of my gifts and correspondence.
Of course, Saskya was making this gesture from the goodness of her heart. And because I was raised by my mother to constantly imagine equivalences to these forms of blessings made by another without any promise of return, I like to respond with a correlating manifestation of my grace. It intrigued me, though, to think that something that grew so much in abundance in Delhi, to the point that vegetable sellers didn’t bother stocking curry leaves, is, in this other context, rare and hard to come upon. It’s an ingredient one can make do without. Yesterday, for example, I made poha, and the presence of green chillies bought two weeks ago, compensated for the absence of curry leaves and coriander. But the catch is always that I know what’s missing, even if my partner’s family has no clue because they’ve never eaten poha before.
As I eagerly anticipate the arrival of my precious package, I find myself constantly debating what I should make with it. My brain was moving in the direction of a Kerala beef fry, and I remembered a sexist remark I once was privy to in Fort Kochi. It was back then when young people were kissing each other openly as a gesture of protest against moral policing. Their daring acts had made front-page news.
My host, a female patriarch, was visibly offended to have to confront an image of two women kissing. I was eating breakfast in her kitchen. She began spewing anger and hate. She referred to them as curry leaves, because men love to lick the flavour off ‘sluts’ like them, and then dispose of their bodies. I rolled my eyes, took a deep breath, and said nothing. It was too early in the morning to argue intelligently with someone whose world view was shaped by hatred. It was a pity that she wasn’t able to access the divinity of curry leaf; its ability to give of itself, infusing everything it touches with unspeakable joy while still retaining its identity.
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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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper
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