The Three Chulhas of Balabhadrapura 

Sailen Routray

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.

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.