Fixing Things with My Father
With our recipe for halva (an Indian dessert)
When I was little, my father was a bogeyman that I feared. Not that he did anything explicit to cause me to dread him. My mother was the Queen Victoria of the small kingdom of our family, consisting of my two younger brothers, myself, my father and her. She ruled with the authority and zeal of a life dictator. She used all tactics and tricks she could muster to control us children. Depending on her mood, she would cajole, shout, or threaten future punishments.
I was not a badly behaved child. I might have just wanted to play, whereas she might have wanted me do a small errand for her. It might even have been a trivial transgression or a failure to pay attention to her command while I was at play. Slightly larger offenses, of course, called for larger repercussions. One such punishment was a threat. “Wait till your father comes home” or “Wait till I tell him how bad you are,” she would yell at me. These words would sent waves of fear down my spine. Not that my father was mean or hit me. Just the specter of him standing in front of me, scolding me using a stern voice, would be enough to send tears run down my cheeks.
My fear of him increased as I grew older. My father worked for the Indian foreign service. We moved from a country to country every few years. We changed schools. At time we skipped grades and at other time we repeated grades, depending on the whims of the administrators of the new school. The biggest change often was the language the school was taught in.
We had moved to Pakistan. The school my brother and I were enrolled in was British, run by a British lady. The school was taught in English and students were required to speak in English among ourselves. My previous education was one year of schooling in India with Hindi as the medium. The year before, my mother home-schooled us because we did not know any Hindi. Prior to that, we were at a school in Africa. My parents somehow or other had managed to find a Sikh school where we were taught in English and Punjabi. My youngest brother started kindergarten in Pakistan.
At this time in Karachi, Pakistan, I was in sixth grade, having skipped the fifth. And my brother was in fourth having skipped the third. I did remember a smattering of English from Africa, whereas my brother did not. My mother was not good in English. As the empress, she ordered my father that it was his job to teach English to my brother. (Being a girl, I did not count. However, it was important that my brother did well in school.)
Every day, after my father came home from work, he summoned my brother to the dining table. They both sat down with my brother’s books, exercise notebooks, pencils and pens. Father would go over some simple English words and explain them to him. Spell out the words. Ask my brother to repeat. Later my father would quiz my brother.
My brother, like me, was raised to fear Father. All we wanted to do was to keep out of his sight when he was home. My brother was so petrified that he would be quaking in his shoes during these evening lessons. If he knew the meaning of a word, he would forget the spelling. Or if he could spell a word, he would forget the meaning. The whole cycle would repeat over and over again. As time passed, my father’s voice would become louder, and my brother’s crying more shrill. One time it ended up with my father pressing the pen so hard on the table that it broke.
I would watch this debacle unfold from the next room. Fear would envelop my body. I never wanted to be in my brother’s shoes. I would study on my own. The goal was to do well enough in school that I needed no tutoring. (Since I was a girl, I did not think I would be called to task unless I did badly.)
With time, I grew even more distant from my father and only talked to him when absolutely required.
Years went by. I grew older, got married, had children, got divorced. I lived in New York. My parent retired, built a retirement home and lived in Haryana, a state in India. When my children were in their mid-teens, I felt comfortable enough to travel to Europe on business. Frequently, I would extent my airline ticket and visit my parents too.
My relationship with my parents changed over the years. My mother had mellowed with age. I still hardly talked to my father. On one of these visits, my parents took me to visit my grandparents who lived in a village in Punjab, a couple of hours’ ride away.
These were bad times in my native state of Punjab. Sectarian violence had become rampant. Buses fully loaded with passengers were burnt. People were shot at crossroads. My mother would tell me the number of people killed on various spots as my father drove. They planned it to be a day trip. They felt it was too dangerous to stay overnight in Punjab. My father was a clean-shaven Sikh.
The Sikh religion also has its fundamentalist offshoot. To some fundamentalists, no matter of what religion, a non-observant person of their religion is worse than a non-believer, and deserves worse treatment. My parents and I (I have short hair too) would be considered infidels. We wanted to be safe. I covered my hair with a veil. We acted as non-Sikhs so as not to draw attention.
It was a beautiful day in the verdant green fields of Punjab. It was nice to see my very aged grandparents. An hour before sunset, we bid our adieus and set on the drive back. About half an hour into the drive, among the green fields of wheat, the car stopped accelerating. A minute later we cruised to a stop at the edge of a road. The car was broken. There was not a chance of getting to a mechanic in this pastoral setting. My parents were in a panic. We were in on the wrong side of the state border, in the middle of nowhere. And it was getting dark.
I asked my father if I could try the car. I got into the driver’s seat. I tried the accelerator. The pedal would move up and down but the car did not react.
I am an engineer by profession. Debugging is something which comes naturally to me. I opened the hood. I asked my father to push the accelerator. I looked at the end point of the accelerator pedal under the hood. I saw the accelerator link. The link was not reacting to the pedal movement. I gauged that the link-pedal connection was broken.
We jury-rigged a crude connection between the link and the pedal with a wire. With this temporary fix, we were able to limp home.
Coming up with a temporary solution to a problem was something I would do regularly, and was nothing extraordinary. My father thought otherwise. He was impressed. It seemed like in a matter of minutes, my father saw me with new eyes. I was a person, with my own thoughts, feelings and personality. I was no longer a wallflower, an inanimate thing fluttering in the background. The next day he brought me all his gadgets that needed fixing and talked no end.
That day, he discovered me — and I, him.
A couple of years later, my parent moved in with me. At this time, I was working on an addition to my house, mostly to accommodate my parents. I did lot of work myself, in the evenings and on weekends. My father was always there as my third hand, holding things for me, fetching tools, doing odd jobs. He would try to work in my garden to help me while I was at work. Sometimes he would dig up and throw out some of my precious plants, because they were unfamiliar to him, and he thought they were weeds.
To his dying day, I was his best friend.
Recipe for Halva (an Indian dessert)
The one item that my father always cooked at our home was ‘halva.’ Halva is the offering given to the congregation at the end of the service at the Sikh temples. It is often served as a dessert with addition of nuts and cardamom. The grain used in the temple is whole wheat flour. For dessert, semolina is the choice. (The ratio of the main ingredients is equal when served at the temples. At home, I reduce the proportion of ghee and sugar slightly. ) My father always used half flour and half semolina.
Ingredients (serves 8):
1 cup semolina (cream of wheat), coarse
3/4 cup ghee
3/4 cup sugar
Optional ingredients for garnish:
1/8 cup almonds
6-8 cardamom pods, skins removed, and freshly ground
1/8 cup raisins
1/8 cup coconut slivers
a few stands of saffron soaked in a couple of tablespoons of water milk (warm)
Directions
- Make a syrup from the sugar by boiling it a small pot with 4 cups of water. Add the ground cardamom. Keep it warm over very low heat.
2. In a 12-inch pan, melt the ghee. Add the semolina and cook over medium low heat, stirring constantly, till the semolina looks light brown and you can smell the nuttiness (don’t overcook and burn it). This will take about 6 to 10 minutes, depending on the stove heat.
3. Add the syrup all at once, stirring even more vigorously. (Watch out for your hands, since the pan will emit lots of steam. Use a long-handled wooden stirrer and hold it near the end of the handle.)
3. The mixture will expand, and will become very liquidly. Keep stirring. Pretty soon, all the liquid will get absorbed. Add all the remaining garnishes you wish to use at this time.
4. Keep on stirring until you can see a thin film of ghee at the side and bottom of the pan, and the halva no longer sticks to the bottom of the pan. This will take about 5-7 minutes.
5. Remove from heat. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes. Serve.
Note: Most Americans do not like Indian desserts. They tend to be overly sweet. However, Indians born in India generally love them.
Kulwant Pandey is a retired computer hardware engineer who enjoys gardening, knitting, sewing, quilt making, cooking, and reading. She lives outside Poughkeepsie, NY and is the mother of Nandini and Vidhu. Stay tuned for further family stories with recipes — and please leave your responses and requests in the comments below!
