Paata-varvatta: The inseparable lovers in the Konkani Muslim kitchen
A grinding slab and hand stone get candid about their heavyweight romance
This is no ordinary love story.
A pair of old amours live in a Mumbai home. Pentagonal in shape, paata is flat-chested and robust. Its companion varvatta has a svelte, cylindrical frame. Paata’s wide surface is a canvas for the barrel-shaped varvatta to paint on. In this case, a base to grind ingredients on, turning them into power-packed pastes.
This pair belongs to food blogger Saher Khanzada’s (The Bombay Glutton) Konkani Muslim family. Elsewhere, they may be known as sil-batta or ammi-kalla. The Konkani Muslims call them paata-varvatta or paato-varvatto.
Together, they’re inseparable. They weigh 25 kilos, and their love is sculpted in natural stone, one that is non-toxic and can weather any storm.
At meal times, they sing melodies of grandmothers who lavished them with care and lament about crushing fennel seeds. On melancholic evenings, they croon a bittersweet ballad of being kitchen superstars yet outcasts.
Many moons ago, their love story blossomed in Khanzada’s ancestral home in the quaint fishing village of Murud in Raigad district. It’s one of the coastal regions where this ethnic clan, native to Maharashtra, resides. The duo travelled to Mumbai by road with her dadi [paternal grandmother] in 1975, when she came to live with her progeny but needed a piece of home with her too. After her death, when Khanzada was about 12, the paata-varvatta became her mother’s inheritance and now, hers.
The pair often reminisces of the days when Khanzada’s dadi and later, her mother asked them to meticulously grind a paste of ginger, garlic, turmeric and red chillies for special occasions that called for pomfret biryani.
Their muscle memory also preserves flavours from Khanzada’s nani’s [maternal grandmother] kitchen. Born in Africa and settled in the Upper Tudil village of Raigad, she loved their ilk immensely and owned a similar pair that Khanzada’s mother learnt to use. Once married, the latter would cajole this couple to recreate flavours of her home too.
Over the years, they have helped preserve memories of both grandmothers, contributed loyally to family meals and also witnessed Khanzada try hard to perfect her grip on them. The varvatta playfully slips!
A solid symphony
The romance of paata-varvatta once thrived in every Konkani Muslim kitchen.
Their cuisine is a rich exploration of Maharashtrian, African and Arabic influences since the group traces its origins to Arab traders, who settled on the west coast and married into local communities. The families who migrated to Africa brought home those influences too.
Rice, seafood and coconut are staple items and lentil and vegetarian delicacies, festive mutton curries, khichda and saravle (ring-shaped wheat pasta) are part of the mix too. The Konkani Muslims gave each dish their own distinct flavours and textures. It’s mainly the paata-varvatta, used to freshly grind homemade, wet spice pastes, that have helped achieve this feat.
Back in the day, the stone and slab would meet Khanzada’s nani before every meal. The paata would observe as she piled up ingredients on its flat surface, whether it was garlic, dried red chillies and turmeric root that lent thick consistency and fiery tartness to any seafood gravy called atavni; or the spice paste that went into maasacha saalna (mutton curry), eaten with saandan (steamed rice-coconut bread) on Eid or even the roasted coconut, chillies, garlic and sea salt for bhujlelya sukhya khobryachi chutney.
The paata would wait patiently for the matriarch to ensure that none of the ingredients were too watery even if they had been soaked beforehand. Else, they would slip off the surface before woven into a paste.
Then, the duo sang in perfect harmony under her watchful eye and the uniform pressure of her hands. The varvatta would grind the ingredients in rhythmic movements, breaking their tendons on the paata and releasing maximum flavour. Every fifth note was punctuated by bringing in the stray bits so that they wouldn’t spill over the stone’s surface. This symphony continued till the chorus reached a crescendo and the paata-varvatta birthed a thick paste. Before the next meal, an encore.
A challenging note to master in this symphony were the fennel seeds, introduced by the Arabs and integral to spice pastes of an array of dishes.
The varvatta would shudder at the thought of grinding the tiny seeds, under pressure to make sure that they amalgamated with the other ingredients in the wet paste.
Something fishy
In Khanzada’s nani’s kitchen, the paata and varvatta revelled in role-play too. Besides grinding spice mixes and chutneys, they helped extract coconut milk and squeeze water out of Bombay Duck.
As pieces of fresh coconut, rather than its scrapings, sat on the slab, the hand stone would work tediously to press the flesh till milk trickled down into a container. The duo knew that Khanzada’s nani loved this method of extracting coconut milk, since it lent better body to the preparations. The thicker extract went into dishes ranging from naralachya dudhachi hiddi (field beans in coconut milk) to vangyache bharit (eggplant mash). The thinner liquid was used to boil rice for a dish called naarali dhan.
Meanwhile, as varvatta watched, its heavyweight companion would squish the Bombay Duck under its girth till the fish lost all the water content so that it would crisp up when fried.
Though rockstars in their ancestral homes, the star-crossed lovers were never allowed to enter the kitchen, fearing they would dirty the floor. Their space was reserved on the porch.
Now, the paata-varvatta are often lost in thought, gazing sadly at the modern food processors they have to share space with. They regret that their sweet nothings (read: nuanced flavour and textures) are unable to woo a generation happy with 140-character love bytes. There may come a time when the paata-varvatta will become lovers of the past, found only in the yellowed pages of cookbooks.
Until then, they solemnly swear to sing you a sonata for every meal, if only you will listen.
