Because of hectic work, man may get irritated. Don’t take it to heart…don’t be too proud of your education and don’t be too boastful of our achievements. Your father-in-law is like a jackfruit, rough outside but soft inside, affectionate and hospitable. Don’t wander too much every night. Tell them (your in-laws) when you go out. Did you get the wool?”
Step 1: Try and get the ghol fish from your local fish market; it is the equivalent of the freshwater betki. Abhijit Bhatlekar / Mint
That was my grandmother, in a letter to my mother a year before I was born, worried that her daughter—a working physiotherapist and thoroughly modern Bombay girl in the 1960s—would need help being a good wife.
My grandmother, as you can tell, flitted from topic to topic.
It was earlier this year on a crisp spring morning that my mother reluctantly agreed to read out a clutch of letters and recipes, all written in Marathi 46 years ago and in danger of falling apart.
I like the little bits of gossip. My grandmother irritatedly talks of her boastful uncle who obviously liked to compare sons-in-law. Her son-in-law (my father) was an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, and the uncle’s son-in-law was an Indian Accounts and Administrative Service officer (IA&AS).
“You know what your uncle says? ‘If Rajendra Prasad (still the President in common conversation then) comes, your son-in-law will be seated outside and my son-in-law will be seated inside.’ Anyway, let it be…”
My father walked into the room and offered his only comment: “Oh, she used to make such great biryani!”
Here’s the best part. My mother found 30-40 loose-leaf pages, a handwritten cookbook of sorts written for her by aforementioned anxious mother.
I must mention that my mother is a very good cook. It’s just that she is very diffident about her culinary abilities, not helped by my father who tends to say “good” when something is excellent, or will nit-pick to the extreme: “Well, it’s good but there is just a little of this missing, and maybe a little of that.” Given comments like these, and the belief that her own mother was a fantastic cook, my mother doesn’t really talk about her substantial culinary talents.
The letters from my grandmother reveal the family menus of the time. A few: Thalipeeth (a hand-flattened, spicy Maharashtrian roti), cutlets, brain masala, pudina (mint) eggs, biryani, coconut vadis (cutlets), chiwda (savoury puffed rice).
“My mother sent me these when I got engaged (in 1963),” explained my mother, who was at the time very busy with her private physiotherapy practice. “I went to two-three houses carted around by my brother and did a job at a rehabilitation medicine centre at Haji Ali, Bombay.” At 26, she wasn’t very well acquainted with the kitchen, as most Indian women were.
The letters are hard to understand, full of mysterious symbols, scrawled in Devnagari and written in a trademark staccato style.