A Syrian Christian bemoans the gradual extinction of certain culinary traditions of her community
Words by Anjuly Mathai; Art by Sruti Menon
My parents are out attending a function and my grandmother and I are having dinner at our home. I watch her hand shake as she stirs a bowl of oats, the lattice of veins on it standing out, bearing witness to the 91 years of her life. Then, the plates are cleared and the tube light is switched off. In the dim glow of the overhead lamp, my grandmother transports me to a different time — her time — when she was a gawky young girl with stick legs and pigtails, eager to bring forth the stories rattling within her.
“I used to play many pretend games in Paroor (a small town in Kerala), where I grew up with my cousins,” she tells me. “Like building a tent out of some blankets and imagining it to be a general store. Everyone would want to be the manager of the store. Or playing ‘school’. Whoever could get hold of a stick would get to be the teacher and we would all have to call them ‘sir’ or ‘madam’. Then we played ‘church’, where a white sheet would be draped over the ‘priest’ and a coconut husk wired with a string would make do for the incense pot. All of us would have a bag made of old rags slung over our shoulders, which would be filled with balls of kaliyadakkappam.”
