Eating flowers in Pipili

Sailen Routray  

Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons

In the house in Pipili there was a kanchana tree at the edges of the garden. The house was an old-fashioned Atu house. The roof was made of chancheri (strong bamboo mats) the colour of riverine sand drenched in a sudden burst of summer rains. This was topped with a slanting thatch of straw that needed repairs every year, a full month before the summer monsoon rains. Often if the repairs were delayed, with the premonsoon showers parts of the roof would start leaking, especially on the inner verandah. It would be my responsibility as the eldest child to start putting pots and buckets under the leaks. Thankfully, these leaks were not numerous, and the task was light and not onerous for a five year old boy, tall for his years. The year we moved into that house, I started going to school; but this was discontinued immediately, as the class teacher viciously picked on me. The next time I went to school was a full three years later in Bhubaneswar, when I was eight.

The walls of the Pipili house were of plastered burnt bricks, and the floor was cemented. The floor was not smooth; it resembled the mottled hands of Lakhi, a prematurely old dalit woman of the Bouri caste who came to help ma with the housework. Her younger daughter China, then around ten but short for her age, was my only playmate. Lakhi Apa would clean and swab the floor and do the utensils. But my mother’s liberalism borne out of her growing up in a household with one non-Hindu parent (belonging to the Mahima sect) stopped there. It would not extend to let Lakhi do other housework like fetching water from the tube well or grinding masala in the sil-batta. During the scorching summer months, the house stayed cool; when you lied down on the bare floor face down after Lakhi had swabbed it clean, your cheeks felt a raw coolness that was like the touch of a shaded pool of water. 

The kitchen (with an earthen chulah) was a small annexe on the verandah at a right angle to the bedroom. There was only one other room, that was pretentiously called a ‘drawing room’, of which my most vivid memories are of sitting across an ageing tuition teacher (who started coming in after I stopped going to school) whose favourite punishment was pinching me on the thigh when my attention wavered. You entered this room after coming past the local office of the Orissa State Electricity Board (OSEB) where baba worked as a junior engineer.

 A Ho House in Mayurbhanj District, Odisha
Photo Credit - Subhashish Panigrahi, Wikimedia Commons

Ours was a rented house and had two and half rooms. A nest that is not quite a home: what we Odias call a basaa; a habitation. But we stayed there for almost three years. The rent was a royal sum of ninety rupees when we left in 1987. The front of the house faced the then Bhubaneswar-Puri highway. The garden at the back was huge, almost half an acre in size. It merged into the neighbour Sanju Mausi’s garden with no hedge separating the two. Sanju Mausi was a Christian, so was our landlord. We lived in a Christian hamlet.

The first wedding that I remember took place in the local Church; the bride’s wedding gown the colour of kanchan flowers, a white that was neither bright nor dirty, but a colour that in Odia is denoted by the flower itself - ‘kanchana ranga’; dirty white being ‘gheea-ranga’ - ‘ghee-white’. The kanchana tree was near the border of the two gardens. There was also a pear tree that stood beside the kanchana; its fruits were the size of small apples and had a slightly pinkish core that ma periodically converted into the most delicious ‘pijuli jelly’ ever. But for me the star attraction of the garden was the kanchana. Not that it had much competition.

The garden was more of a backyard. It had a few straggling hibiscus plants, a kalami mango tree, a yellow oleander tree, and not much other vegetation apart from grass that had been allowed to grow tall and wild in patches. There was a chicken coop. We had a cock, a few hens and large, intermittent broods of chicks. As a child, one of my household chores was to remove the ‘kuduki’ of the hens. After a hen had laid a dozen eggs or so, its body would heat up and it would want to start sitting on her eggs even if all these had already been eaten. If its body were not cooled off, it would not lay any eggs for the next twenty one days. So, I had to take the hen to Sanju Mausi’s pond and forcibly keep the chicken under water (with its head bobbing on the surface) till the time it ‘cooled off’. For some hens this would need to be done twice or thrice at one go. 

Pumpkin Flowers (Wikimedia Commons)

The backyard also had a cattle-shed that housed two cows and their calves. The cows did not give much milk. But their output was enough for us to avoid buying dal regularly to go with the rice. Parboiled (usuna in Odia) rice with milk and mashed potatoes was standard fare for lunch for us kids on many winter days. Dinner for me was often khechedi with ghee, curd and mango achar. The end of the monsoons and the onset of the Puja season had one more attraction. This was stuff made of kanchana flowers. The one kanchana tree was enough to provide an almost endless supply of flowers for ma’s kitchen in the season.

My mother turned milk into curd and chhena, cream into ghee, the residue of the beaten butter milk into spiced chalhaa, mangoes into achars and khata, and flowers (kanchana of course, in late monsoons and the autumn; but also those of the pumpkin vine on the roof of the kitchen) into fritters, bhajas and curries of many different hues, that often added variety to our diet.

The chickens and their chicks who marauded the backyard and scratched at everything in sight, the cows grazing on the grass, my father’s busy schedule, ma’s disinclination to work on the land, all conspired to prevent us from having a vegetable garden. Milk, curd, ghee and the flowers substituted for vegetables on many occasions, apart from the few straggling specimens bought in the local market. Baba’s low salary and his inability to take bribes meant that ma had to be inventive, for all her three kids to be well-fed.

Although I loved the dishes she made with the kanchana flowers, I remember the tree vividly for another reason altogether. The small basaa was swarmed by my two younger sisters who, even when toddlers, were the best of buddies and would not allow me to play in their group of two. And being unsocial, I did not have any other friends apart from China who was much older. Like most loners, I learnt reading before I could write. My father would support my indulgence in reading at the cost of his own (of cigarettes, the occasional bottle of cheap whisky and the stray Hindi pulp fiction tome by Rajkamal Prakashan). When the weather was right, I would often escape the house, go to the kanchana tree, sit under it and read. For a child that had no school, no friends, and no other entanglements, that kanchana tree was as close to a friend that he ever had for those three years.

 

Backyard Mushrooms (Wikimedia Commons)

Kanchana flower chatak: (Serves four)

A chatak is neither a curry, nor a chutney or for that matter, a khata. It is a savoury made with flowers that is useful to whet the appetite when one is down with a cold or a fever.

 Ingredients: 

Five dozen kanchana flowers, twelve small arbis (called saaru in Odia), ten black peppers, six strands of pippali, two square inches of peeled ginger sliced into small pieces, half a tea spoon of mustard seeds, one tea spoon of cumin seeds, five tea spoons of poppy seeds, two medium sized twigs of cinnamon, eight table spoons of grated coconut, three table spoons of desi ghee, one tea spoon of crushed jaggery, two twigs of curry leaves, salt.

Method:

Remove the stalks, stamens and pistils from the flowers. After these are picked, wash thrice with lukewarm water. With a peeler, deskin the arbis, cut into quarters and clean with water. Pluck the curry leaves from the twigs, wash these with water and set aside.

Grind the peppers, strands of pippali, sliced ginger pieces, poppy seeds and twigs of cinnamon into a fine, thick paste with very little water.

In a wok, add two table spoons of ghee. When it is smoking hot, first add the jaggery. When the jaggery starts melting, decrease the flame of the stove and add cumin and mustard seeds, and the curry leaves. After the cumin seeds start turning brown, add the sliced arbis and the kanchana flowers. Add a tea spoon of salt. Stir on a low flame for around 7-8 minutes. Add the masala paste and stir.

After the masala is cooked properly with the flowers and arbi, add the remaining table spoon of ghee and sauté for five minutes with the occasional sprinkle of water to prevent the masala from sticking to the bottom. Boil two small cups of water separately. Add the boiling water to the wok. Simmer on a low flame for two minutes and then add the grated coconuts and cover the wok. Cook on the low fire for around five minutes. With a spoon press on the arbis; if these are a little firm, yet allow themselves to be mashed, then the dish is done.

Photo - 'Boy with a Pumpkin Vine' (1854)
Photographer - Varin Frères
Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons

Kanchana flower rai: (Serves four)

A rai is made with a masala paste that has a mustard seed base. Many Odia curries (called ‘besara’) have a mustard paste base as well. But the rai differs from a mustard paste based curry in five big ways.

First, in a besara curry, the masala is sautéed first; whereas in a rai, the masala is added on top after the other base ingredients have been stir fried. Second, in a rai, no sweetening agent is added. In a mustard masala based curry, generally a little bit of jaggery or sugar is added to take the edge of the ‘kasaa’ taste of the mustard off. What is the ‘kasaa’ taste? That is another story in itself.

Third, a mustard based curry has a souring agent like dried raw mango (ambula, not amchur) or tamarind pulp added; the rai has no such additions. Fourth, the rai is always a lot less hotter than a curry, as it does not have much heat-inducing substances such as black pepper, pippali, or chillies. And, perhaps the biggest difference is the last one – it is possible to add onions to a curry with a mustard base, but it is criminal to add it to a rai. If anyone commits such a heinous offence, the minimum penalty should be a public flogging with ten slashes on the posterior. If that sounds too excessive to you, make it five.

Ingredients:

Sixty kanchana flowers, eight arbis, four tea spoons of mustard seeds, four tea spoons of cumin seeds, one medium sized (and moderately hot) red chilly, fifteen cloves of garlic, 5-6 black peppers, five cloves, five green cardamom pods, salt, one table spoon of turmeric powder and three table spoons of desi ghee. 

Method:

Clean the flowers as you did for the kanchana flower chatak. Likewise, clean and cut the arbis.  

Grind the mustard seeds, three tea spoons of cumin seeds, red chilly, garlic cloves and black peppers together into a fine, creamy paste in a mortar and pestle or on a sil-batta. Do not make this masala in an electric mixer. Grind the cardamom pods and cloves separately and keep aside.

In a wok heat two table spoons of ghee. When the ghee smokes, add one tea spoon of cumin seeds. When the

seeds start turning brown, add the sliced arbis and the kanchana flowers, and stir fry on a low flame for five minutes. Then add turmeric powder and one tea spoon of salt. Stir well for two minutes. Add one cup of water. Cover the wok. Cook for five minutes on a low fire. Remove the cover, and cook for another five minutes so that the water almost completely evaporates. Then add the mustard paste. Add one cup of water and cook with an open wok for another seven minutes or so on a very low flame. Five minutes after adding water add a table spoon of ghee. Sprinkle water and scrape the bottom of the wok regularly, so that the masala won’t stick to the vessel. After the arbi is cooked, add the cardamom and clove paste. Again, sprinkle a little water. Cook for a couple of minutes. Take the kadai off the fire.

In a wok heat two table spoons of ghee. When the ghee smokes, add one tea spoon of cumin seeds. When the seeds start turning brown, add the sliced arbis and the kanchana flowers, and stir fry on a low flame for five minutes. Then add turmeric powder and one tea spoon of salt. Stir well for two minutes. Add one cup of water. Cover the wok. Cook for five minutes on a low fire. Remove the cover, and cook for another five minutes so that the water almost completely evaporates. Then add the mustard paste. Add one cup of water and cook with an open wok for another seven minutes or so on a very low flame. Five minutes after adding water add a table spoon of ghee. Sprinkle water and scrape the bottom of the wok regularly, so that the masala won’t stick to the vessel. After the arbi is cooked, add the cardamon and clove paste. Again sprinkle a little water. Cook for a couple of minutes. Take the kadai off the fire.

Note: A shorter version of this article was published with the same title on 21st April 2019 in The Sunday Magazine of The Hindu newspaper.

An Evening in Pipili (Wikimedia Commons)