The Three
Chulhas of Balabhadrapura
Sailen
Routray
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| Photo Credit - Wikimedia Commons |
Baba
had a transferable job with the Orissa State Electricity Board (OSEB) which is now
long dead and gone. Our trips to Balabhadrapura (my ancestral village in
Cuttack district in coastal Orissa, where baba’s youngest brother lived along
with his wife, four children and his mother, my jejima) from baba’s places of
posting, were first made on a Vijaya Super scooter and then on a Bajaj Chetak scooter.
There would be five of us
on the scooter, with baba driving it. Ma would ride pillion with Soni the
youngest one sitting (and often dozing) on her lap. I, the eldest child, would
be squeezed in the middle, very uncomfortably sitting between the two seats.
Sili would stand on the foot-board in front of baba. When he was posted in
Pipili, the nearly eighty kilometer long trip will take around three hours, for
the five of us perched tenuously on the scooter.
When
we were young, this ritual took place at least thrice a year. The first one
would be in March when we would travel home for the spring festival of dola
(around the same time as Holi), that commemorates Krishna’s playing colour with
the gopis. The second time was in June when in the middle of the month, and
towards the end of the summer vacations, we would make the trip for the
three-day long Raja festival that celebrates the earth’s fecundity, and is perhaps
the most important one in the festive calendar of coastal Orissa. The third trip would be made
either during the dasahara celebrations in Aswina or for the Christmas
vacations. On our way to the village, we would stop at the tehsil headquarters
of Salepur for picking up a small bag full of rasagola for everyone at home.
The
house in Balabhadrapur was a mud one, thatched with straw, surrounded by a
middling veranda both on the outside as well framing the inner courtyard.
Although the house did have a front-yard, we almost always entered through the
backyard door, as that was closer to the road from the village. Near this
entrance, at a little distance from the veranda there was a chulah that was
used for cooking all the food (such as chicken, eggs and field crabs) that were
taboo for the caste of Khandayats that we belong to.
There
was another chulah in the inner courtyard shaded by the roof of the inner
veranda. This was the most frequently used fireplace in the house, even during the
monsoons. Apart from rice and vegetarian dishes, non-vegetarian food that were
not taboo, like mutton and fish, were cooked on this chulah. And there was a
third one in the kitchen proper, that housed some of the family deities as well,
where outsiders were denied access and family members could enter only when
they were ritually clean after a proper bath.
The
food related taboos among Khandayats mapped out differently across genders. The
women could eat fish and goat meat, irrespective of their marital status, but
not other meat like chicken (and other birds) and eggs. They were barred from
handling these latter types of non-vegetarian food as well. Widows were not
expected to forgo mutton, meat of buffaloes (killed during sacrifices) and
fish. Since women were the custodians of the family hearth, only these
non-vegetarian food items could be cooked in the chulah in the inner courtyard.
The one in the kitchen was meant for cooking only vegetarian stuff. The men
(and children from either gender) could eat meat ordinarily barred to women,
but the cooking and the eating had to happen outside of the home.
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| Western Han Bronze Chicken (Wikimedia Commons) |
Cooking
meat that was taboo at home was the preserve of the third chulah in the
backyard. These taboos also meant that men had to learn how to cook flesh like
chicken and field crabs in the chulah outside of the home and had to eat it
there as well. As a result, the skill of cooking non-vegetarian food of
various kinds was universally widespread amongst Khandayat men and boys. All these dishes were rustic. The recipes
were very simple so that they could be easily spruced up without the use of
many tools and with very little spices.
This all-male cooking relied
primarily on condiments and herbs that were dry roasted earlier and ground to
smooth powders and kept at home. Not much oil could be used; generally the meat
was cooked in its own fat. A sub-set of these dishes was a variety called
patra-poda in which the meat was first wrapped in leaves and was left to be
charred and cooked in the dying embers of the chulah. Especially small fishes,
tiny shrimps and field crabs were cooked in this manner. But that is another
story, to be told some other time.
Khandayat
style chicken tarakari (serves four)
Ingredients
A kilogram of desi chicken without the neck and
the skin, four table spoons of mustard oil, 7-8 cloves of garlic, 2 inches’
long piece of ginger, one table spoon of turmeric powder, three teaspoonfuls of
red chilly powder, a tea spoon of fennel powder, three tea spoons of cumin
powder, juice of a lime, salt according to taste.
Method
1.
Dice the ginger into small slices and pound it together on a stone with the
cloves of garlic into a rough paste without adding any water.
2.
Cut the chicken into small pieces, clean thoroughly and put these in the
aluminum wok in which it is to be cooked.
3.
Add the mustard oil, the crushed ginger-garlic, turmeric powder, chilly powder,
fennel powder, cumin powder, lime juice and salt to the chicken pieces. Mix
thoroughly. Marinate for half an hour.
4.
Put the wok the lowest flame possible on your gas stove, cover it with a lid
and cook for around 60-70 minutes. Check intermittently to ensure that the
chicken or the masala do not stick to the bottom of the wok.
5.
When the chicken is done, add four cups of hot water and bring it to a boil on a
high flame. When the gravy starts boiling, reduce the flame again and cook for
7-8 minutes.
6. If
you want to serve this chicken dish with rice, then the gravy should be thin
and watery. If it is accompanying chapatis/phulkas, you may boil the chicken
for a few more minutes and make the gravy thick.
Note: A slightly different version of this piece was published in the Sunday Magazine of The Hindu newspaper on 11th August 2019.
