Monsoon Diary Read Free Page A

interests was not unusual in India, where rational scientists consulted astrological charts on a daily basis and businesses accommodated religious rituals during working hours. My grandfather, for instance, never failed to do his
tharpanam
(ancestor worship) every new-moon day. His clinic simply didn’t schedule patients that morning.
    After a hectic week of seeing patients, my grandfather would become one himself. On Sundays my grandmother boiled sesame oil with fresh-ground pepper, orange peels, and fenugreek into a fragrant decoction. An ayurvedic practitioner—a wizened old man with the arms of a wrestler—would come to our home, massage my grandfather briskly, swaddle him in banana leaves, which drew toxins out of the body, and let him lie in the sun. An hour later my grandfather would carefully ingest a spoonful of castor oil, a mild laxative, and indulge in a light lunch of
pongal
and steamed greens.
    My grandmother always made
pongal
when the seasons changed. Only later did I learn that this simple dish—a combination of rice and split
mung
dal cooked with ginger, pepper, and turmeric—was a complete balanced food, at the core of ayurvedic nutrition.
    Pongal
is a hearty dish; it is also a harvest festival, the South Indian equivalent of Thanksgiving. In mid-January of each year, villagers celebrate the harvest and give thanks to the sun. They build a bonfire and burn old, useless things to start afresh for the new year. The women draw
kolam
designs with colored powder on their courtyards and adorn them with yellow pumpkin flowers. They fill mud pots with just-harvested rice and tie fresh turmeric, ginger saplings, and tender mango leaves around the neck of the pot. Young boys scrub and decorate their cows with embroidered blankets, gilt streamers, rose garlands, and bells. They parade through the town, shouting “
Pongal
-oh-
Pongal
.” The whole atmosphere is like a carnival. As the sun rises, the entire family gathers and offers sweet and savory
pongal,
along with sugarcane on banana leaves. Later in the day they go sightseeing, hold cattle races and bullfights. And they eat
pongal
on picnics.
    Sweet
pongal
is made with jaggery, cardamom, and cashews. The savory version, called
venn pongal,
is fairly bland, and gains its flavor from the fresh-ground pepper and the roasted cashews. Its neutral taste makes it a perfect foil for tart, spicy accompaniments. North Indians call this dish
khichadi
and may include grated carrots, chopped tomatoes, cilantro, and other vegetables with it.
Khichadi
also uses other spices like coriander powder, cinnamon, cloves, and bay leaves.
    AFTER DELIVERING my brother, my mother was quarantined in her bedroom, where she sat like an Eastern potentate, surrounded by pillows, cloth diapers, and baby paraphernalia, eating, nursing, and napping with the baby.
    I had little interest in my baby brother, surrounded as I was by a house full of distractions. I periodically ran into my mother’s room for a cuddle before running out again to watch the lizards, which hung upside down on the ceiling, flicking their tails and staring balefully at ditsy wasps before gulping them down with a quick lunge. Sometimes I would slip surreptitiously into my grandfather’s musty closet, sit on the medical books amidst his white doctor’s coats, and play with syringes, bandages, and tubes of ointment until someone opened the door and dragged me out. If all else failed, I would follow the maid, Maari, around as she meandered through her chores, bathing the baby, washing the diaper cloths, and carrying plates of special food for my mother.
    My mother was put on a strict, unvarying diet, the purpose of which was to prevent gas from forming in her body and giving the breast-feeding infant colic. Mostly it consisted of a type of spinach called
agathi keerai
(rich with vitamins and minerals), rice with a lot of ghee to give her energy,
vatrals,
which were dried vegetables and therefore noncruciferous,