I have no use for Times Square or Michigan Ave, no business on the lower East Side, and I have never been to Wicker Park. As far as most parts of most cities go, I could take ‘em or leave ‘em. It’s the out-of-the-way quirks and corners, the holes-in-the-wall that I’m charmed by. One of my most vivid memories from Kolkata is of a tea stall so tiny that the proprietor couldn’t stand up in it. It was the size of the lower half of a telephone both but with its own shutters. There was just room enough for a propane burner, a couple of pots, some loose tea and chai masala and sugar. The proprietor could probably have crammed himself in, too, in a case of dire necessity, but his preference was to squat on the sidewalk while tending his chai pot. Needless to say I stopped for a cup of the sweet, milky stuff, squatted there a while on the pavement wishing I spoke some Bengali and slurping up my tea.
OK, so I’m nostalgic for Southasia. No surprise there. This state of affairs has both causes and effects. The causes are apparent enough from the content of this blog, and the effects are predictable enough: I’m already planning my next trip. I intend to head straight for the belly of the beast: to Varanasi, Banaras, ancient Kashi. Strung out along the thrice holy Ganga, it’s the spiritual heart of Hindu North India, a center for Vedic learning from Sanskrit to Jyotish, a mecca for Indian classical music, and one of the oldest continuously-inhabited cities on earth. (Plumbing the depths of the Wikipedia article, now) Mark twain said "Benares is older than history, older than tradition, older even than legend, and looks twice as old as all of them put together." I can add, based on hearsay and premonition, that it’s also a great place to learn Hindi, to get swindled, to acquire a leaky gut and to choke on tuk-tuk fumes. In short, it’s my kind of city. (Behold.)
in the meantime, there’s Devon Avenue. Granted, it’s no Jackson Heights (the microcosm of Southasia accessible via the 74th street and Roosevelt Ave 7 stop in Queens). Devon is to Jackson Heights as Chicago is to New York: less concentrated, but with a distinctive flavor of its own. Appropriate to the rest of the city, the predominantly Southasian stretch of Devon is spread out along half a mile or so of low-grade urban strip. And though it may not be apparent to the casual observer, this one-dimensional transcription of the subcontinent has its share of volatile borders: on Devon west of Western, it’s little Pakistan. East of Western, it’s little India, with a smattering of Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan for good measure. On the day of the Indian parade, I hear, celebrants march up Western to Devon and turn right. The next day, Pakistani marchers take Western to Devon and turn left.
For someone in my shoes, there are three reasons to visit a place like Devon: to eat, to shop, and to malinger, soaking up the ambiance of puja samagri (Hindu worship materials) shops and chatting in broken Hindi with the proprietor of a cookware store (a fruitful endeavor, in this case: I got a stockpot for half price. Despite the late hour--it was after 6 o’clock--I was the first customer of the day). On another visit I let myself be talked into getting my ear cartilage pierced by a no-nonsense Indian matron.
On my last visit, Thandiwe had come for all three of the above purposes. We wanted to stretch the evening out, make it last, but we were overcome with hunger by the time we parked the car. There was one obvious recourse: the Indian tea-sweets-samosa shop. Now, I consider it anomalous in the extreme that I haven’t found occasion to revel in syrupy descriptions of mithai (the generic term for Southasian sweets) before this. The topic fully deserves a post of its own, and it may yet get one.
On the occasion in question, however, in order to preserve our appetites, we ordered only tea (served milky but unsweetened, as in the diabetes-conscious fashion of some of the classier establishments in India) and made up a box of sweets to take home. Not so much as a taste of gulab jamun for the moment. Still, the eyes may feast: the display case is jammed to capacity with trays stacked pyramid-wise with sticky spheres and flat, silver-leafed diamonds. Saffron milk-soaked sweetmeats float in their sweet amniotic fluid, flecked with flakes of pistachio. The elephant headed god Ganesh’s favorite, the spherical cookie called laddoo, comes in a dozen varieties, featuring different nuts and sweet spices. A one-pound box fills quickly.
Fortified by the tea and the thought of sweet ballast brightly boxed, we ambled down the avenue and selected Patel Brothers from amongst the five or so sizeable grocery stores on the strip. It was large enough, brightly lit, inviting, and bustling with brown people doing their weekly shopping. We had a modest list, but knew to grab a cart.
Now, the first thing to be said about Patel Brothers and its Patel and non-Patel brethren across the country is that it’s cheaper than you can imagine. I fail to understand the economic situation that allows ethnic markets in general to maintain the low prices characteristic of national currency, but when you’re buying cilantro at five bunches to the dollar and cashews at $2.50 a pound, it’s insidiously easy not to question it. Daal (any legume, from red lentils to split mung beans to white, hulled urad to square horse gram) comes in 1-5 pound bags for a buck or so a pound. Rice prices range from intensely inexpensive to rather pricey, depending on the quality. For a rice-eating culture, this is a matter of status and keenly-felt personal preference. Top quality, well-aged basmati from Dehra Dun or Pakistan fetches almost $2 a pound. (Compared with what, $2.99 for middle-of-the-road stuff in the bulk section at the natural foods store?) Brands in this class include Zebra and Tilda. This is the rice that seems to triple in length when cooked without fattening at all and releases a heavenly and pervasive aroma. The stuff of wedding feasts, fine pulao, first-class biryani. The stuff most Americans manage to make a mush out of because they use too much water and stir while it’s cooking. [As an aside, here is a fool-proof method of cooking rice. Rinse the rice once in a strainer or in the pot you’re going to cook it in. Add cold water until the water level is an inch or the length of the last joint in your pinky finger above the rice level. Turn the heat on high, bringing it to a boil. You can stir it once or twice at this stage if your heart desires. Now for the important part: once the sinking water level has drawn even with the rising rice level, cover the pot and turn down the heat to as low it will safely go. Forget about the rice, don’t even think of stirring, and in 15 minutes it will be perfectly done. Fluff the rice by dragging the tines of a fork across it and serve.]
Back to Patel Brothers. Perhaps the most outlandish value is to be found in the spice department. Cumin, mustard seeds, coriander--the colors of the Southasian flavor palette come in bulk, in half-pound to one pound bags, sometimes for as little as 99 cents. I can picture the monkeys at McCormick buying these things up and gleefully filling their little ounce jars and slapping the five dollar labels on. But it’s not so much the prices that excite me as the variety: I think, ‘here is a culture that knows how to make use of every plant.’ Along with the more familiar spices like cloves and cinnamon bark are pungent, resinous hing (“devil’s dung,” as it was once known), thyme-like ajwain seeds, delicate “royal cumin,” oniony, black kalonji seeds...and interspersed with these, blurring the line between food and medicine, are amla and shatavari powder, two of Ayurveda’s most widely used tonic herbs. The cart is starting to fill up.
We’re almost out of the grocery store now, having bypassed the bulk tea aisle (I’m well-stocked from Upton Tea) and even the produce section, except for a couple-pound sack of slightly worse-for-wear ginger priced to move at $1.49. (That’s been turned into delicious ginger candy by now and lies awaiting someone’s sore throat or upset stomach in my freezer.) But there is one unexpected treat in store: back in the mustard oil pressing lands, gur-making season has just come around. After tapping coconut palms for their sweet sap, sugar-makers boil the sticky stuff down into various shapes, colors and consistencies of delicious. Normally gur or jaggery, as it’s also called, comes in hardened fez-shaped blocks wrapped in burlap. But at this time of year, some of the oozy fresh stuff makes it even as far afield as Devon Ave to be packed and sold by weight in clear plastic pint containers. If mustard oil is Bengal’s olive oil, than this is her maple syrup. You can taste the iron and minerals in it, eat it by the spoonful. If it ever snows in Bengal, maybe people will catch on and melt some jaggery to pour over it. May that day never come.
By now the cart is heaping with dal and rice, spices, oils, and some odds-and-ends. I’ve resisted most of the Ayurvedic products, genuine and otherwise, and passed on various deities and trinkets. I’ve satisfied my curiosity and discovered that the inviting barrel-shaped bulk bins are in fact filled with a dozen kinds of Indian snack mix (namkeen). It’s time to check out and get something to eat.
So far our strategy of choosing places well frequented by Southasian immigrants has been working great. On the way to Patel Brothers, we had noticed an enticing but suspiciously well furnished South Indian vegetarian place (cut to image of paper thin, three-foot wide dosai), and spotted an Indian or Sri Lankan family in the window, eating with their hands. A very encouraging sign. But I had also spotted a sign in the window of a lower-budget, fluorescent-lit tea shop advertizing a special on Makki ki Roti with Sarson ka Saag. Punjabi comfort food, I thought: this is the place. Not a gringo to be seen, and the price is most righteous. We walked up to the counter, admiring the sweets arrayed therein, and placed our order for one Makki ki Roti special and one vegetarian thali. We picked sat down at a table on our plastic chairs, helped ourselves to water from the cooler, and awaited the onset of our feast. Out it came, steaming, on styrofoam plates. Thandiwe’s plate featured a pair of well-puffed poori, a pile of rice, an oily potato dish, some mushy chana reminiscent of packaged masala, and a greasy buttermilk kari. It was all extremely spicy but otherwise not exceptionally flavorful. The main impression was of heat, and of grease (the very definition of Pitta-provoking). ‘Ah,’ I thought, ‘she’ll be happy when the Makki ki Roti arrives, fresh corn flatbread with sauteed mustard greens. They’re the real draw around here--we should have ordered two.’ But I bit my tongue when my plate arrived. The roti was a thin, hard yellow disk, dry inside but coated in what seemed to be petroleum-derived oil without, and the saag was a brown puree languishing under a film of chili-infused oil. Now, I’ve never been to the Punjab, but I know this isn’t what the ammas the village are making. ‘Still,’ we laughed, pushing around the grease on our styrofoam plates and eyeing the deranged sannyasin in the corner, ‘we can’t fault it for being inauthentic!’ From the non-decor and the hard scrabble denizens to the unforgettable cuisine, the place called to mind any number of sub-mediocre eateries in India and Nepal. Ah, the perils of authenticity.
Further reading:
Bannerji, Chitra. Bengali Cooking: Seasons and Festivals
This is exactly what I look for in a cookbook, with its emphasis on cultural context. The recipes are suspended in a wonderful web of information on bengali life, with special attention to the play of the seasons and the religious calendar in both Hindu and Muslim parts of Bengal/Bangladesh.
Svoboda, Robert. Ayurveda: Life, Health and Longevity
Svoboda, Robert. Prakriti: Your Ayurvedic Constitution
The first of these is my favorite English-language book on Ayurveda. It is suitable as an introduction to the subject without being simplistic, and it avoids the formulaic self-help trap that Ayurvedic literature is prone to. The second book is also excellent and includes more practical information for the beginning student of Ayurveda along with more food and diet-related material.
Svoboda is a link in the living tradition of Ayurveda. He was the first non-Indian Bachelor of Ayurvedic Medical Science and is versed in traditional arts from Sanskrit to tantra, which he has written about elsewhere. Luckily, he is also a witty and incisive author whose prose will keep you reading about the infinite nuances and intimidating depths of traditional Southasian healing and cultural practices.
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