What is life without flavours.
After typing out this line that is supposed to brim with meaning, I took a first sip from the cup of tea next to me and realised that I had stirred it alright but had forgotten to actually add the sugar cubes before. Without complaining, I stood up, dropped two cubes of sugar in, gave the cup of tea another stir and returned to my original question – what is life without flavours. When spices touch the tongue, do they only touch the skin of the tongue, or do they touch the heart? Some spices do, and which ones penetrate straight into the centre of your existence depends on you. This seems to be a resounding theme, which I will address later. For now, let me tell you something else.
Once I was at my grandparents’ ancestral home for a vacation from Germany, and grandma entrusted me with the making of tea after they had all returned from someplace where I had not wished to go. Grandma trusting you with an act in her kitchen is equivalent to the recognition of a Nobel prize for your scientific work. Seldom does she delegate. And if she does, she is usually right there to direct you to the exact tools and constituents she wants you to use in the task. Now she had to take a bath, so I was left unsupervised. Before she left though, she pointed me to all the necessary ingredients, namely, tea leaves, sugar, milk, and the designated tools.
I decided to prepare the best tea in the universe for her. (Look here for a glimpse of how important grandma is – https://alleysomind.wordpress.com/2019/03/29/to-make-her-laugh/) To achieve that, I decided to add to the tea, that spice that in my point of view is the most elegant of spices, analogous to the status enjoyed by pearl in the category of precious things. With its essence locked in the tiny seeds sleeping inside shrivelled pods of a green like no other, the same essence for which the Portuguese arrived at the doorstep of my hometown in Malabar in 1498, cardamom, Elakkayi.
As the water boiled, I found cardamom in the kitchen, and as the proud chef that I was, powdered a pod and added it to the water. ‘Anjuuu,’ grandma called out from the washroom. ‘Entha?,’ I answered from the kitchen. ‘Do not use the tea leaves in the bottle with the green lid,’ she instructed me in the middle of her bath, worried that I might start experimenting. ‘No, I won’t, I am using the tea leaves you asked me to use, the one in the bottle with the red lid,’ I assured her. When I received the inner calling that the spirit of cardamom had sufficiently fused into the boiling water, I dutifully took the bottle with the red lid, made sure it is exactly what grandma had prescribed me to use, and dropped two spoons of tea leaves into the boiling water.
I always had a good feeling about my intuitions when it came to cooking. My unique ideas never failed to bring out the best of all the flavours involved. The magnificent fragrance from the blend of cardamom and tea leaves wafted in the air. I added the last ingredient, milk.
The best tea has now been brewed perfectly. I poured it into cups and passed them to the lesser mortals in the house like grandpa and my parents. Grandma was still in her bath. Everyone took a sip and lauded my idea of adding cardamom, and I brushed them off haughtily for pointing out the obvious. I waited for grandma to arrive and give me the only and ultimate validation I sought.
Her cup of tea sat waiting with me. The bathroom door opened with a creak. She stepped out, smelling fresh from the soap and the coconut oil on her long white hair. I waited with bated breath as she walked towards the steaming cup of tea. She picked up the cup of tea and took a sip. ‘You used the tea leaves from the bottle with the green lid. Didn’t you?’, she asked. I was baffled. ‘No I used the tea leaves that you instructed me to use,’ I replied. ‘Then why does this taste of cardamom?’, she asked. ‘Because I added cardamom,’ I replied with uncontrolled glee. Everyone else realised what is going on. And in a moment I realised it too. Grandma clarified anyway, ‘I wanted a simple cup of tea. I told you exactly what to use. I even told you to not use the tea leaves in the bottle with the green lid, which is cardamom-tea.’
So here I was, having added whole cardamoms explicitly with normal tea leaves, whilst the ‘cardamom-tea’ in the bottle with green lid that had by now resorted to an existence of rejection, watched on slyly.
Grandma carried on with her post bath rituals, leaving the cup of tea untouched. Because that is who she is – a woman who knows exactly what she wants and will not settle for anything else. The cardamoms and I were both utterly useless. But I know where she is coming from, so I simply picked up her cup and drank it together with my own.
(The image is from my grandmother’s garden. If I close my eyes, I can imagine being under this tree. The fragrance in the vicinity of these flowers after a rainy night is very close to my heart.)
Alleys 