Narayan, Wodehouse, Divakar, and The Good Doctor
A little riverside village. Largely unknown. Childhood stomping grounds. Sri Narayan’s “Malgudi” stories. Italian food. Curd rice, chitraanna, chappati. All connected through geography. This is my story today.
Last time, I shared with you the recollected landscapes of the charming village called Jeeyapuram, in Tiruchchirapalli District, Tamil Nadu. Between then and now something fun happened and I am writing again about Jeeyapuram because of the connections that occurred to me.
Rewind a little.
During my high school days, not only was Jeeyapuram the stuff of my childhood memories, it was also where I imagined Malgudi to be. I was Swamy, the protagonist of many of Sri R K Narayan’s Malgudi stories. Every character in those stories, I used to imagine, was someone I had seen or known in Jeeyapuram: station master, post master, shopkeeper, and so on. I could see the streets of Malgudi pictured on to Jeeyapuram. To a great extent.
This was one reason the Malgudi stories were so popular. They evoked a place, its people (cultural geography), and its environment (physical geography) so vividly and with such simple language. For me, what was more, I could very clearly hear the Tamil behind the English dialogues in those stories. Every person I had met in Jeeyapuram had some quirk, a peculiarity, a mannerism, a bearing that I could easily fit into some Malgudi story or other.
In my mind, I, Swami, would go around the agraharam of Jeeyapuram and experience what my character in the books experienced.
This is the power of a well-written story. It evokes in you a place (geography) and time (history) that you feel you personally inhabit. You may, as I did, map the story’s place and time to some place and time you had actually been part of.
Or you could merely imagine the place with great detail. The latter experience, for me, happens only with the books of Mr P G Wodehouse (especially his Jeeves & Wooster, Blandings Castle, and Mr Mulliner stories) and Richmal Compton (the “William” stories) — mainly because I have personally not experienced anything similar to the landscapes in them.
Fiction evokes imaginary landscapes in our minds. In fact, any well-told story can evoke any landscape depending on how the author and the reader participate in it. History books also can evoke such landscapes.
Anyway, my undying love for the past Jeeyapuram — an example of topophilia (remember that term?).
A few days ago, The Good Doctor suggested that we go to a certain Italian restaurant for lunch. On Thursdays and Fridays, this restaurant has a buffet lunch that, according to The Good Doctor, was simply amazing. I agreed, and along we went.
What was interesting was that the food had many items that I have always associated with “West Asian” cuisine. Chief among these was hummus — a paste made of cooked chick peas (Kabuli kadaley in Kannada) with olive oil and a tiny sprinkling of red chili powder. As I sat down to the meal, I realized that West Asian, Greek, and Italian cuisines would be related.
So, we enjoyed various dishes, with special appreciation of the hummus and the salad (which had my favorite cheese: feta). All the dishes were superbly prepared and presented as well.
In this restaurant, the kitchen is open to the dining area and one can talk to the cooks in the kitchen quite easily.
At one point, as I was getting some salad, I overheard the kitchen staff, including the chef (which is French for “Chief”; hence, the chief cook), talking to each other in Tamil. There I was, with Italian food arrayed in front of me, Indian people (except a few foreigner patrons) all around, and hearing Tamil. It was a lovely experience to see so many geographies coming together.
The chef was within hearing distance and I looked up. Our eyes met and he smiled. I said to him, in English, “The food is superb. Very well prepared and the presentation is also very good.” He beamed and said, “Thank you.”
So, it was that The Good Doctor and I waded through excellent food. But the chef knew, from a previous visit, that The Good Doctor disliked eggs in his food. All the dessert pastries had eggs in them, so the chef had made eggless dessert especially for him. Same this time.
Then, we saw the chef, who told us his name is Divakar, with a large bowl on which we saw a few chappatis. He was about to have his own lunch. He passed by our table and stopped to ask how the food was and if we were enjoying our lunch. We were and we told him so.
I always as the geography question when I meet someone for the first time: “Where are you from?”
Chef: “Tiruchchi.”
I: “Oh? No kidding!! My grandparents used to live in a small village called Jeeyapuram in Tiruchchi district. I have been there many times a kid!”
Chef: “Oh, really? My wife is a native of Jeeyapuram.”
On Sri Divakar’s plate were: chappatis (a kind of Indian bread), chitraanna (a kind of rice pilaf with spices), and mosaranna (rice mixed with yogurt). He was having an Indian menu for his own lunch. We bade him goodbye as it was getting late and he had evidently been toiling all day in the kitchen.
So, here was a full geographical circle. Bengaluru, Jeeyapuram, Italy, West Asia, Bengaluru and all the cuisines that connected them. If we join all the places with lines, the area within that polygon (a shape with many angles) would be vast indeed.
Geography is so much fun when you ask the geography questions and sometimes find surprising answers!
Things you can do:
- Why would West Asian, Greek, and Italian cuisines be related? (Hint: Geography is the key!)
- Find out what the geography of feta cheese is? (Hey, by now, having read at least a few of these articles, you should know how to find that out!)
- Try and find instances where the word cuisine does not have a geography word in front of it.
- Do some research online and identify areas where olives, oranges, grapes, fig, and pomegranate are important crops. What geographic similarities do you observe among these places?
- They say that olive oil is very good for health. Find out why.
(A version of this article appeared in the the Deccan Herald Student Edition, Thursday, 12 February 2015.)
