A hullabaloo wakes me this chilly morning. Far from amused, I open half an eye to probe what’s amiss. Then the other eye. Nothing that greets my still sleep-riddled eyes – the orange and yellow marigold in august bloom, the parakeets in the gnarled guava tree, the thin lace of mist over the neighborhood grey-green pond, explains the raucous fuss.
I sit up.
Annoyance written all over my face.
Dragging my pink and green blanket along, I follow where I think the clamour and commotion is coming from.
There stands Bhola. The farmers son. In a bottle-green pullover and khaki trousers.
Surrounded by a deranged confusion of gunny-sacks. Some fastened at the neck. Some mercilessly cut open. Revealing grains of rice. And if my sleepy eyes are not betraying me, there’s chire (beaten rice) and khoi (popped rice). And gorgeous golden brown murki as well – the sight of murki makes me salivate.
The typical effervescence of the carefree chatterbox that Bhola is, talking non-stop of cricket, his new transistor and his ambitions of becoming a wholesaler of grains, even turning his hand to bowl some overs to Dada and his friends, is missing this morning. He looks ashen, far from his vibrant, garrulous self.
It’s then that I hear Grandma.
I have never had such miseries with rice before. She hollers.
She picks a handful of rice from one of the sacks and holds it out for Bhola to inspect.
Half the grains are broken. And look at the colour of the rice. Not for me. Not for me. She continues unabated. Would your father or grandfather ever have attempted to pass such an inferior quality of rice to me ?
Grandma’s tantrums on rice. Dada winks at me.
That she was furiously finicky with her rice was an understatement.
The rice grains had to be perfect.
The colour had to be a pristine dull ivory. It was incomprehensible to Dada and me, how despite her fading eyesight, she could clinically distinguish shades of ivory, something we struggled with.
The age of the rice was yet another pet peeve – This has not aged enough. This looks like new rice to me. How can you be so confident about the age of rice ? Dada and I, unable to contain our curiosity, would keep bothering her. Grandma never answered. She just smiled.
And finally the fragrance of the rice. Or even the chire or murki. It was almost a ritual – Grandma would pick a fistful of grains, hold it to her nose, close her eyes and take a deep breath. Come, come, she would invite Maa in childlike enthusiasm, a glow illuminating her wrinked face, how divine the notun gur in the murki smells.
But today even by her typical exacting standards, her fastidiousness was overwhelming.
I wondered why.
Why did you scold him so much ? I quizzed Grandma, almost complaining, when I found her alone in the kitchen later in the morning.
This is Sankranti, my Princess. She explained. A celebration of harvest. The rice, the chire, the khoi and the murki are the cynosures of the show. They need to be the best. How can I compromise ?
This is the story of Grandma. And her fierce love for rice. Not just rice, any new harvest. Any fresh produce of the soil. Her soil. As she would proudly assert.
Wasting rice in our growing-up years was never an option. Not even a single grain. This is the labour of love. She would remind Dada and me whenever we fussed about food. This is the culmination of months of back-breaking labour. Respect the grain. Respect the farmer.
Cut to the present. My chire arrived this morning. Ordered online a couple of days back. Delivered at the doorstep by a logistics company. I am blissfully ignorant of what rice went in to prepare this chire. And the farmer shall remain an unacquainted stranger to me. As would his family who possibly helped as well.
Food has reduced, I ruminate, to being impersonal, hasnt it, the consumer and the producer separated by more degrees than my mind can decipher. The price I guess for the comforts of modern life.
Nevertheless, this fortnight I shall celebrate Sankranti in my kitchen. With the same gusto as Grandma. To celebrate the new harvest. Time for pithe, puli and payesh.
And this morning it’s Chirer DoodhPuli. Chire dumplings stuffed with a delectable mixture of jaggery and coconut. Fried to a splendid golden. Then added to milk, lazily reduced over hours, perfumed with the seasons new jaggery.
Enjoy my Chirer DoodhPuli and do stay with me this fortnight as I whip up more of Sankranti delicacies !!! And yes, do spare a thought too for the millions of our farmer friends without whom this harvest festival would never have been possible.
Chirer DoodhPuli (Flattened Rice Dumplings with Coconut Jaggery Stuffing, in Milk)
Ingredients
- 150 g chire or flattened rice or poha washed and drained
- 1 lit milk
- 1/2 cup milk for soaking the chire
- 1 cup coconut freshly grated
- 100 g date palm jaggery grated
- 2 tbsp plain flour
- oil for frying
Instructions
- Soak the chire in 1/2 cup of milk for about 15-20 minutes till soft.
- Add plain flour to the soaked chire, knead to make a soft dough. (If the chire is a bit too mushy, dont hesitate to add a bit more of flour, just enough to form the dough.) Refrigerate.
- Add the grated coconut and 3/4th of the jaggery to a pan and cook over a low flame, stirring frequently. Till the jaggery is well incorporated into the grated coconut. 5-7 minutes I would reckon. Remove from heat.
- Allow the coconut-jaggery mixture to cool just enough for you to handle it. Now take 1 tbsp of the mixture in your palm, give it an oval shape. Repeat for the rest of the mixture. Keep aside.
- Take the chire dough out of the refrigerator. Shape small balls of the dough, keep aside.
- Now take a dough ball on your palm, press it gently in the middle using your thumb forming a small oval cup. Place a coconut-jaggery oval ball in the middle of the cup. Very gently bring the edges of the dough cup together to cover the stuffing. Using your palms, smoothen to a nice oval shape. Repeat for the rest of the dough.
- Heat oil in a deep-bottomed pan, deep fry the pulis till golden brown. Keep aside on a kitchen absorbent towel.
- Pour the milk into a heavy bottomed saucepan, let it simmer over a low flame till it reduces to almost half in volume.
- Once the milk has reduced, add the remaining grated jaggery. Give it a hearty stir, continue to cook till the jaggery has melted. (If you like it sweeter, feel free to indulge - add some more grated jaggery !!)
- Gently add the chire dumplings one by one into the milk. Cook over a medium flame for about 5-7 mins. Carefully stir the milk a couple of times in between.
- Allow to cool to room temperature and serve.
@Rama J Reddy I was missing your comments too (smiley) I have just migrated my blog from cucumbertown (which is shutting down in a couple of months) to WordPress and unfortunately still some niggles that I am trying to sort. Would you mind please in re-subscribing for new alerts on the blog ? Many thanks and apologies for the inconvenience.
Beautifully written. You take people to a different world with your words.
But I have stopped getting updates from your blog. So was under the impression that you are not posting now a days. Please let me know how to get email updates again!!
But I’m already registered here!