MORE ON MORINGA

Some time ago I waxed eloquent - if not exactly waxed, sang paeans of praise to -  on the humble Moringa Oleifera, aka Murungai kai in Tamil and how it has suddenly been discovered by the West to be the latest "Superfood" in an unending chain of "New", "Magical", or "Super" foods.

The principal requirement for an object to belong to this category appears to be the ability to violate the laws of Physics and Nature; ie, provide something for nothing, mainly gain without any pain (like  weight-loss without control over what and how much we eat, how much we exercise, etc). Moringa is only the latest in this genre which has at various times included Acai Berry, African Mangoes, and the like, and which to the best of my memory was started off by the Kiwi Fruit in the 1970s.

To those who doubted my ability to divine the future trends and stay a few steps ahead of the rest, I would recommend this article where the redoubtable Ms Vandana Shiva of sundry causes, mostly of the green persuasion, expatiates on the humble Moringa.

At a tangent, I am somewhat intrigued by the title that has been bestowed upon the aforementioned Ms Shiva (bestowed, or self assumed? My guess is the latter); she has been described as a "seed activist". What exactly is a seed activist? What does a seed activist do? Theses questions have been agitating my mind since I read this latest neologism, egregious even by the standards of global activism. The only satisfactory answer I have come up with so far is a seed activist is one who sows the seeds of agitation and sits back and enjoys the fun in considerable inactivity.

Enjoy reading more about Moringa; perhaps even a Sunday lunch of Murungai Sambar.

As for me I shall for ever live in the shame of not knowing that benzoil is derived from Moringa - I used to think it was the manufacturer-recommended engine oil for a Mercedes Benz.
Thank you Ms. Shiva for being my knowledge activist!

THE HUMBLE SUPERFOOD

I have just been informed that a humble veggie that we were forced to consume and one which was associated with frugality  - even poverty - in my childhood, has now become the new superfood.

It is known as Moringa Oleifera in botany. In Tamil (“Tamizh” in Tamizh) it is the humble Murungai Kai; the Latin Moringa doubtless derives from the Tamizh “Murungai”, “kai” being the generic Tamil (?) suffix for any green vegetable which is not a root. Roots get their own the suffix “kizhangu”. If non-Tamil speakers can – and dare - pronounce it right they can call them whatever they want (“kizangoo”, which is what I most often hear, just wont do). Given that there is no known equivalent in any language other than Tamizh (ah ha, it was coming, wasn't it?) for the sound loosely represented by “zh”, those that dont speak Tamizh get it wrong. Heck, even the Tams get it wrong most of the time – they say “kilangu”, or even the typically Madrasi or Anglo-Indian “Kaing”.

Moringa, I am told, is a family by itself and thus quite unique. We Tams are quite unique too: we arguably speak the oldest language, which has no known progenitor and only a couple of derivatives, with hardly a change over centuries. The various arguments that the Northerners might advance to deny us our uniqueness not withstanding (all of which are specious anyway), we and our Murungai Kai are unique, one of a kind and very very tasty. Alas I cannot say the same for Tam clothing sense.

Back to the humble Moringa.

For the sake of simplicity and ease of writing I shall use the Latin version Moringa rather than the Tamizh Murungai Kai in the following paragraphs. This in no way represents my preference for Latin over Tamizh. Besides, Moringa sounds very much like how this veggie is colloquially known in the land of the Tamizh people. Some might quibble that it is a pod and not a veggie; to them I say botany does not matter when something tastes as good as this.

Murungai Kai Sambar is without doubt one of the high points of Tamizh cuisine if not its most evolved and most subtle expression. This, in English, is Moringa in a Tamrind-and-Coconut sauce, but that description doesn't even begin to do justice to what a “Sambar” is. Given that English Cuisine is an oxymoron it is not surprising that the English language is inadequate to describe the subtleties of Tamizh cuisine. If I am permitted to be factually correct but politically incorrect I might say “Tamizh Brahmin” cuisine (TamBram cuisine for short).

The Sambar, most often incorrectly pronounced “Sam-burr” by the ignorant Northerners, does use Tamrind and Coconut as two of its ingredients, but that's is not all. To call it it a “sauce” is sacrilege, knowing what the English sauce is all about. This is not the forum for discussing the culinary intricacies of Sambar, the benefits of using cold-pressed sesame oil as against a generic “refined” vegetable oil, or the use or the absence of Fenugreek seeds or a pinch of Asafoetida; nor for using Tamarind instead of Kokum (Garcinia Indica) favoured by those from our Western Coast; nor for singing the praises of a significant regional variation thereof involving the use of sour “buttermilk”. You just have to accept it on my authority as one possessed of a subtle palate.

The very popular Sambar comes in a variety of flavours involving a wide range of different vegetables from the humble potato to the delightful horse radish. Once, in England, when shopping for the latter root to make sambar with, I was countered with a question if I kept horses. Apparently people there didnt eat radish in any form and I didn't look like the “horsey” type. I was also asked the same question when I was shopping for Oats to make breakfast porridge with. Suffice to say I wasn't the “horse-keeping” type and it showed. I stopped shopping at that particular supermarket which appeared to favour horse-owners over normal people.

Moringa is truly the food of the indigent. It grows on a tree which grows all over the south of India. The tree gives of itself liberally and its leaves are also used frequently in our cuisine. The tree however has a secret or two which you ignore at your own peril: you never climb it, for even the strongest-looking branch or limb is apt to break without any notice at the application of the smallest of loads. It also has another trick to protect itself from the depredations by humans or animals: it harbours a certain variety of caterpillars (known in Tamizh as “Kambli Poochi” or “woolly insect”) which appear to find its leaves irresistible.

In certain seasons the Moringa tree is covered in these caterpillars with stiff wool-like bristles (hence the sobriquet). Woe betide those who came in contact with these larvae; “itching” doesnt even begin to describe it. The unfortunate humans usually end up with painful welts and swear off Moringa for the rest of their lives. The trick for harvesting the veggie is to attach a sharp sickle to the end of a long bamboo stick and cut the pods out from their branches from a safe distance – safe from falling branches or caterpillars. Or you can take the easy way out and shop for them. However, horsey supermarkets do not stock this veggie.

The leaves are similarly safely harvested, making sure that no larvae are present when one cooks them. This is a useful precaution for I have seen nothing, absolutely nothing, molest those larvae. Not even the crows which are generally voracious and are not very discerning eaters. I might have seen a foolish crow or two trying the woolly larvae one time; but they never returned for second helpings. The dead crows in our garden were probably dead from consuming this larvae and had nothing to do with the catapult I used to wield with considerable skill.

The leaves were supposedly possessed of cleansing properties; useful in cleansing the remnants of unwisely large and rich meals, that is. Monthly administration of these leaves was as much part of my childhood as after-school exercises in arithmetics or Algebra. I am sure that Srinivasan Ramanujan was fed more than his share of Moringa in his childhood giving him a certain abnormal facility with numbers. Given his claim that certain goddess spoke to him in his dreams offering solutions to mathematical exotica, I am equally confident that those leaves he was fed were not very well cleaned of the woolly larvae. It is surprising that he did not have any offspring, though.

Surprising, because the humble Moringa pod is considered a substance that inflamed a man's base instincts. It is supposed to be avoided during the times when one's thoughts are supposed to turn towards spiritual matters and away from temporal stuff. Even today many elders avoid this veggie on holy days of the Hindu calendar. I am unaware if its purported aphrodisiacal properties are based on facts or are merely myth. It is certainly not phallic in looks unless of course one were ignorant or optimistic enough to imagine a male organ of 20 inches in length (in which case its girth would disappoint).

This is not a vegetable that lends itself easily for the making of a “vathal”, another TamBram specialty. A vathal, literally, is a sun-dried vegetable. Careful as they are, TamBram families usually bought green veggies when the latter were in season and the portion surplus to the day's requirement was sun-dried for use during the off-season. With a veggie like the Moringa, which had a thin layer of pulp inside the fibrous and tough outer layer, the sun-drying eliminated the pulpy layer as well as its delicate flavour. But still some sun-dried it for future use. They were mostly the Iyengars.

It is said that if some one could tease a yarn out of a stone or sun-dry a Moringa, he/she has to be an Iyengar. These Vishnu-worshipping sub-set of TamBrams produced no Nobel Winners but did produce a few outstanding beauties. It is generally believed that the Iyers had the brains but Vishnu favoured his devotees with the looks. During the ninth and tenth centuries these two sects were at each other's throats and even took part in palace intrigues of the Chola dynasty. In more recent times the Iyers have focussed on migrating to America and the Iyengars on making desiccated veggies and succulent women.

Imagine my surprise when  recently I read that the humble Moringa is the latest superfood, imbued with all sorts of exotic goodnesses and that discerning and health conscious Americans are taking to it.

Something tells me that it is not for its alleged cleansing properties.

A VISITOR

This is not yet another rant about people dropping in unannounced at all times of the day (or night for that matter). Don't get me wrong - they continue to do so with the regularity, lack of consideration, and a sense of entitlement that only Madrasis can muster. Ubiquity of fixed line phones and the near-universality of mobile phones appear not to have made one iota of difference to their visiting behaviour, which you may recall, is to arrive at any time of the day without so much as a phone call expressing their intention to do so. Some times they call us after getting no response to ringing our doorbell. So it cannot be the cost of a phone call that deters them from making that call beforehand. It must be a sense of entitlement to be received as a guest should be. Athithi Devo Bhava and all that.

Unannounced visits can be especially embarrassing; embarrassing to us, that is; the visitors are never embarrassed and are possessed of a sang-froid usually associated with cuckolding Frenchmen caught in the act.  Our respective schedules are literally as different as night and day. For example, most of the visitors have had their "meals" or lunch when they arrive; we are just about contemplating breakfast which occasionally may involve eggs which is a big no-no in Tambram households. Sometimes they arrive at their "tiffin" time which is our lunchtime. We are expected to offer "tiffin" at that hour, but we are too tired and in need of a short postprandial nap to bother getting back into the kitchen. They are offended at such patent lack of courtesies, and we are offended that they are offended, and so on.

There is a school of thought, of which my father is a firm adherent and a vehement proponent, that family means not having to say they are coming. I am unable to summon up any level of enthusiasm for this view which he attributes to my "westernized" outlook and decades of absence from Madras. He dissociates himself from my decidedly family-unfriendly ways by telling callers - there are some misguided elements in this city who do call to check our convenience - that they can come anytime with an emphasis on "anytime".  So far subtle hints or  even brazen ones have failed to effect a change in the visiting behaviour. I suspect that their sense of entitlement far outweighs any guilt at not having called before. This is what results from a life based on self-denial.

Be that as it may.

Last evening I had an unannounced visitor. Given that Elections are around the corner this in itself is not an unusual event. Elections are  occasions when people who dont think you matter come to  seek your support; just in case. The visit itself was not a surprise. Of course they did not call - this is Chennai after all.
Around 7 p.m. the doorbell rang and I attended to it in my sweat-soaked tee. Outside stood a well-groomed middle-aged man and he was whispering something in tones suggestive of great reverence and awe. He was accompanied by our watchman or gatekeeper. "Gatekeeper" may be an overly-optimistic description of the role he plays for he does nothing to keep the gate; ie, he does nothing to screen visitors. He is like a traffic policeman who has been told that he can only direct traffic one way or another but not stop it in any direction.

This chap, the gatekeeper, is not a loquacious sort. He is the laconic type. He is also an ace mumbler. He uses his mumbling to great effect. When he wants to claim having informed you of something that does not want you to know, he mumbles in a most incomprehensible way. He would have made an outstanding senior Babu in our government. Think of him as Sir Humphrey Appleby with a pronounced speech defect. When he is asking for a raise or a day off he can be remarkably precise and clear. He also never smiles. Never ever. Not even when his son recently got engaged to be married and, I suspect, even when his own marriage was fixed. Last evening he had on a dazzling million dollar smile. If he had had more hair on his head or his mustache been darker, he could have passed for a Tamil  starlet who just got her big break. He was smiling like a "light-boy" on a '60's movie set who got lucky with the Great Diva who made a career out of cavorting with a geriatric "hero" when not getting wet under a waterfall.

Imagine the scene, if you can, that confronted me as I opened the door: a well-dressed man speaking in hushed tones of reverence and awe, accompanied by our watchman who was smiling from ear to ear. After requesting a few repeats I gathered that some VIP had arrived in our compound and was requesting our presence. Despite the hushed reverential tones and the presence of a beaming Cheshire cat I was in no doubt that it was a demand rather than a request. Quite an art, that is: sounding reverential towards one's master (Mistress in this case) even as one sounds imperious towards the subject of one's address. It was so breathtakingly audacious that I was gobsmacked and was without a response other than, "yes of course, I shall come down to meet her".

When the door shut, and all my rage at the political class boiled over. After a short but sharp rant against them I went back to watching the mating habits of crab seals in the southern ocean when the doorbell rang again.

The flunky was there again, as was the Cheshire cat. There were two young women too, each holding a large stack of hand-bills. And there was this middle-aged woman who managed to look imperious even as she was pretending to be supplicating, and left you in no doubt that while she was obliged to put on the latter mask, the former was what she really was. The flunky once again went into a mumbling introduction. The Cheshire cat was speechlessly beaming away. She cut the flunky short and introduced herself as "the Artist's daughter".

Now in contemporary Tamil the word  "artist" is exclusively used to denote a certain  screenplay writer of the sixties who parlayed his screen-writing skills into a successful political career and unimaginable wealth even as the Cheshire cats remained poor as ever. They are still smiling, which beats me for they have nothing to smile about. Just so there was no doubt as to who I was dealing with, the lady added for good measure that she was the sister of a politician named after a great Soviet Dictator.

They are so confident of winning, that the rivals  headed by the  Diva with a penchant for standing under waterfalls did not even bother to show up and ask for my vote.

GIVING AND RECEIVING

The regular readers of this blog might have noticed that after my attempts at waxing poetic about plumbers and (human) plumbing in late November, I have been silent. If you haven't, then you are either irregular or you don't care, neither of which possibility augurs well for my literary ambitions.

Now this word "irregular" means a lot where I live. Preceded by "highly" it denotes cause for extreme alarm, annoyance and disfavour, as in "what you have done is Highly Irregular". That phrase used to be the death-knell of many a budding career, but with a steep decline in public morals and financial propriety at workplace it is no longer so. Unless you are "Highly Irregular" you are not even trying. It has become a badge of honour just as a Tax Raid signifies having arrived.

The word is also used to describe someone's bowel habits or in a delicate reference to the possibility of a bun in the oven. Unlike the English the Tamils are not obsessed with the former, perhaps because we are full of it. The latter is a matter of great concern for the mothers of unmarried girls and of anticipation to mums of the married ones. The word "Regular" or its variants are also used by banks in India to refer to the conduct of loan accounts. That was of course before Loans became "Assets" and their condition began to be referred to as "Prime", "Impaired", or "Non-Performing"  and Gibberish replaced English as the principal language of Banking.

Down where we live there is nothing irregular about giving and receiving, though. It is the very basis of all retail therapy in which a certain area of Chennai tops the rest of the country. Accordingly we have created many occasions for giving and receiving. Childbirth, naming of the baby, its first birthday (even when it is given its first rice-feed - feeding rice-based infant formula does not count), various birthdays, what is referred to obliquely as "coming of age" - or its male equivalent the "thread ceremony"-  engagement, marriage, getting pregnant, becoming parent(s), men turning sixty, them turning eighty, completing every decade thereafter and finally on being bid the final goodbye, and so on.

There's a long gap between getting married and the man tuning sixty during which he may not receive gifts; the modern lot celebrate all sorts of events in between like birthdays, promotions at work, successful deal-making and stuff like that, but none of them carry the weight or sanction of tradition. Traditionalist or modernist, he will however be expected to give gifts on various occasions listed above in the lives of those near, not so near, dear, as well as despised ones. Our forefathers knew a thing or two about economics of retail consumption and realized that giving and receiving made the world go round.  

The art of giving - and what a fine art it is - has its own overt and covert rules, practices and traditions. The act of giving is an expression of respect or blessing depending on whether the recipient is superior to the giver in age and social and economic statuses. It must be appropriate to the occasion, and must always reflect the financial position of the giver while being sensitive to that of the receiver. For example back issues of Playboy magazine is not appropriate for the sacred thread ceremony, even though a portion of the cash gifts received may find itself surreptitiously invested thus; a loud Hawaiian party shirt is not an appropriate sixtieth birthday gift.

A popular gift at weddings is the Taj Mahal. Not the real one, but a miniature look-alike. It symbolizes not only the love between a husband and his wife but also their fecundity - after all Mumtaz Mahal died delivering her fourteenth child. When you have no idea what to gift the couple at an Indian wedding, especially a South Indian wedding, a miniature Taj Mahal is a safe bet. These items come in plastic, plaster of paris, terracotta painted white, or in marble, enclosed in a glass cube or without one, and with or without little blinking lights. When we wed, my wife and I received many Taj Mahals; we remain married but only have two children. Modern couple cleverly get around this problem by prohibiting the giving of gifts, shrewdly guessing that the Indian habit of never going to a wedding empty-handed would result in cash gifts!

The second most popular wedding gift is the "lemon set" comprising a glass carafe ( brittle plastic is a popular alternative) and six matching glasses. This is expected to enable serving visitors lemonade on a hot summer's day. Whereas one is expected to wear the items of clothing received as gift, Taj Mahals and Lemon sets are marked for recycling; that is, it is perfectly OK to repack them and gift them at another wedding or some such occasion. After all what would anyone do with a dozen Taj Mahals and even more Lemon Sets? One must not be too disappointed to see a Ta Mahal gifted at a long ago wedding coming back as a sixtieth birthday gift. What goes around, comes around.

Sarees and Veshtis (aka Dhoti) are for the close family. These items being open-ended fixed-lengths of fabric, are free-size and can be worn by anyone within a fairly wide range of waist sizes. They are thus ideally suited for recycling, but the eagle eyed females of the species are bound to catch you out if you tried to recycle a saree. The women commit to permanent memory the colour, shade, patterns and fabric of every saree ever gifted and god help you if you tried to recycle one back to her. The Veshti, being  white in colour, is difficult to identify as the one you or I gave and is therefore shamelessly recycled. I once tried to set off the inflows of Veshtis with the outflows but the timing went awry and I was left with three dozen Veshtis which was three dozen too many for someone who never wears them. The timing is impossible to get right, so one has to accept a certain idle inventory of veshtis.

It is mandatory in Southern India to gift women guests of whatever status, rank or relationship with shorter pieces of fabric known as "Blouse Pieces" or fabric to make bodices with. The precise significance escapes me, but I suspect it is a not-so-subtle injunction to other women to cover up and not tempt our men. These items are always recycled. I have noticed, partly with alarm and mostly with glee that the length of fabric so given is shrinking with time and am hoping that I live till ninety.

Reciprocity rules giving and receiving. As you give, so shall you receive. Quality and quantity of textiles (read veshtis, saris, shirts, etc) given shall determine what you will receive when your turn comes.
To assist in this process, the price tag is thoughtfully left on the gifts.