Vanishing Village Life in India
With a recipe for kheer, Indian-style rice pudding
In the early 1990s, my children and I would often visit my brother, who at the time lived in New Hampshire. The route we took was Interstate 84, followed by I-90. When we drove by Sturbridge, we saw billboards welcoming visitors to a recreated old village from the 19th century. Once we stopped and took a tour of the village, replete with period costumes. The streets were lined with old vintage shops like a blacksmith’s and a carpenter’s workshop. [Editor’s note: my mother remembered this as “Stockbridge” from the 1700s…]
Over the years, I have been visiting my nana and nani’s village. Some of my first memories are from the summer just before we went to Karachi in 1961. We arrived in the early evening, on a hot day. We were very thirsty and were served water from earthenware pitchers called surais. The water was nice and cool. We children insisted that we wanted our own earthenware pots. My nani took the three of us to the street where the potters lived. Potters are called kumhars in Punjabi.They were not paid with cash. At that time, the economy in the villages was run on a barter system. When the harvest came, the potters, carpenters, and blacksmiths were all paid with a share of the wheat crop.
There was no electricity or running water or indoor plumbing. When the evening came, the lanterns and the lamps were lit up. (I wonder why they did not have candles for everyday use. )
My nana and naniji lived in an adobe house. Their main door opened into a courtyard. My grandparents usually had a couple of buffalos and a cow or two. In the daytime a herder would take them out to graze. By evening they would be tethered in the courtyard. We would wait for an opportune moment to cross the courtyard. (We were afraid we might get kicked by a cow.) Beyond the courtyard was a thatched open area. This area would be equivalent to a kitchen and family room. In one corner was an open hearth for cooking. My grandmother would sit on a mat on the floor and cook. There were low stools called pirhis scattered around where the rest of the family and visitors would sit.
The house itself was L-shaped. There were wooden doors on both sides of the L leading to three large rooms, two on one side and one on the other. The single room was used to provide shelter to the cattle during winter nights, when we occasionally got frost. On the longer side, the back room was used for storage. The front room was where everybody slept in the winter. (In summer we slept on the flat rooftop.) Once, during the winter, we had just gone to bed when I saw a bright light outside (the doorboards had a lot of gaps). I casually mentioned it to my nani. I never saw her jump out of her bed so fast! Apparently my brother had brushed against some hanging clothes on a peg with a lamp, igniting them on his way inside. (We all loved to hold the lamp). Naniji luckily was able to thwart the fire before the whole house burned down. (I have no idea where my nana and my mother were; probably visiting her cousins in the neighborhood.)
We did have lot of other kids to play with. I was already interested in arts and crafts. Women would stay indoors on hot summer days. They would make hand fans with the golden stalks of wheat chaff. Some of the stalks were soaked in water to soften them, then split into strands used to weave the rigid stalks into beautiful shapes.
In the monsoon season, all field work would come to a stop. Men would bring bales of reeds from the swamps. The reeds would be flattened and woven into mats for the floor. Cots would be weaved with jute. Daris (rough rugs) would be woven with cotton.
Every couple of weeks, the miller would visit, driving a train of half a dozen donkeys, laden with sacks of flour. He would take new grain to grind into flour for next time. Occasionally he would be late by a few days, and nani would run out of flour to make rotis. She would then grind the wheat on a hand-turned stone mill. It consisted of two very heavy slabs of stone (I could not lift either stone). The bottom stone sat in a basin, fitted with about a 4- inch diameter and 6-inch tall vertical shaft. The top stone had a handle and a hole to sit on the shaft. It also had another slot in the center for pouring grains.To grind the grain into flour, the top stone was turned by the handle. The friction between the stones would turn grain into flour. I was fascinated by the many specialized hand tools and gadgets for different uses, like shredding fresh fodder.
In summer, naniji would churn butter very early in the morning, when it was still dark. The churn consisted of an earthenware globular pot, about 2 feet in diameter. The beater was a wooden rod, fitted with a lid in the middle. The bottom flared into 4 paddles. About a foot above the lid, a rope would be wrapped around 5 or 6 times, with loose ends. My grandmother would sit on a pirhi with her feet holding the pot steady and tight. She would churn the butter by pulling the rope back and forth with each hand holding one end of the rope. Swish, swish, she would go. Meanwhile she would be calling to us sleeping on the roof to wake us up. When we were little, we would comply; when we were a bit older, we ignored her. However, when the churn stopped, we would rush down and wait for a special treat. She would soak a handful of almonds from my grandfather’s hatti overnight, peel them, and mix them with this freshly churned butter and some sugar. She would ladle a huge lump of this in the center of our palms. I can swear that to this day, nothing tasted better! (You can try this treat for your children by using whipped cream instead of butter. The butter we get here is not as light and fluffy as the kind my grandmother made.)
When I was in college, I would go to visit them on holidays. (My parents were not in India.) All the girls I played with had been married off and did not live in the village anymore. It was quite boring for me. I would take a lot of books from the college library to read. One of my uncle’s friends was commuting between the village and the city where he taught college. I would often grade papers for him. (My uncle had emigrated to the UK.)
Later, my grandparents built themselves a concrete home near the main road. There they had electricity and running water.
I took my mother for one last visit to the village, about four years or so ago. We visited her youngest aunt who was still alive. Life is in the village is so different now. The homes have running water, indoor plumbing, and electricity. The kitchens are similar to ones in the cities. Women no longer sit on the floor to cook over open hearths. They have gas stoves and counters, and they cook standing up. There is hardly any difference between city and country homes.
Before I retired, I used to go to Bangalore on business. I often would meet American colleagues who were visiting too. One of them, John, asked me to take him around to see ‘authentic’ India. We did a tour of the “golden triangle,” Delhi, Agra and Jaipur. In Jaipur, we dumped our car and driver and used the Rajasthan tourist bureau to visit various places, like Indian tourists would do.
One of the places we visited was ‘Chokhi Dhani,’ a replica of an Indian village in Rajasthan before modernization. The village was a sanitized version of my grandparents’ village. They had real village people living in these adobe houses in their regional clothing. They cooked meals on open hearth fires. The little streets were lighted with lanterns, only they were electrified. The tourists sat on charpoys (cots) instead of benches to watch local dances and singing. There were very modern clean bathrooms, better even than in the US.
India has progressed so much during my lifetime — at least in Punjab. To see how people lived there a mere 40 years ago, nowadays, one has to visit a mock theme village, just like in Sturbridge.
Recipe for kheer
Kheer is an Indian version of rice pudding, but it tastes much better. I have chosen this recipe because a couple of days ago we had a full moon. In India, most of the festivals are based on a lunar calendar. Full moons are celebrated, and the “hunter moon” is extra special. This time of the year, the moon appears very large. People make kheer and leave it exposed to the moonbeams overnight. The absorption of moonlight is supposed to confer some benefits to the kheer.
Ingredients (serves 4, according to my mother; the editor doubts 6 people could eat this much after a dinner she prepared)
2 quarts milk
1 pint heavy cream
1/2 cup rice
1 tablespoon of ghee (see recipe below*)
1/2 to 3/4 cup white sugar
approximately 10 pods of cardamom
2 to 3 tablespoons of blanched slivered almonds
(can also add chopped pistachios and/or raisins for garnish)
Method
Wash and soak the rice for about 1/2 hour to 3 hours. Heat the ghee. Sautée the rice in the ghee for 2 to 3 minutes. Add boiled milk to the rice ( I pre-boil the milk in the microwave oven so it doesn’t burn; it takes about 18 minutes). Strictly speaking, one can add milk without first boiling it; one needs to stir often (to prevent sticking), till the milk comes to a boil.
Once the milk boils, lower the heat to barely above the lowest level. Cook for about 1 1/2 hour to 2 hours. Add the heavy cream half way through. Stir every 20 minutes or so. Rice should become plumped up, evenly suspended, and the milk should become thickened to about tomato-soup consistency. Stir more often for the last 1/2 hour. (Don’t overcook; if you do, the kheer will become very goopy.)
Add the sugar, starting with 1/3 cup. Taste. Add more sugar, to your taste. Slightly crush the cardamom pods with a small mortar and pestle. Remove the peels. Crush the seeds to a coarse powder. Add the cardamom powder and almonds. (You can use already ground cardamom, but the freshly ground kind is more flavorful.) Cook a few minutes more.
Serve cold or hot. (I like it hot.)
*Recipe for making ghee
Ghee is Indian clarified butter — it’s a very a useful all-purpose ingredient/condiment to have around, e.g., to use in cooking or to butter naan bread. It will keep for months in the refrigerator, though my mother always went through it so fast she kept it by the side of the stove!
To make ghee: Melt 1 pound of butter in a heavy 1 to 2 quart pot at medium heat. Once the melted butter bubbles, lower the heat slightly. (Don’t lower the heat too much; if you do, it will take very long to make ghee.)
After about 15 to 20 minutes or so, the butter will clarify: that is, the whey will coagulate and most of it will sink to the bottom of the pot. (If you cook too much, the whey will turn dark brown and stick to the bottom, and the ghee will smell very nutty. Ghee should have a very light aroma.) Strain the ghee (the clarified liquid) into a jar, where it will keep for a long time. (Add the solids to cooked rice; it makes the rice taste very good.)
Kulwant Pandey is a retired computer hardware engineer who enjoys gardening, cooking, knitting, sewing, and reading. She lives outside Poughkeepsie, NY and is the mother of Vidhu and Nandini. We love your comments, recipe requests, and photos/notes/questions (with special thanks to Athena Kirk for her egg curry photos — don’t miss last week’s post)!
