The first time I had Rasam was at Lokesh’s house. I was going through a difficult time. I remember, I drank it and tweeted that I like it more than water.
I did not grow up eating fancy food or surrounded by cooking stories or living in a cooking havens that some homes become. And honestly, I have a bad relationship with food. I care about food to the extent of satiating my hunger or fulfilling a taste craving; like if I want to eat something very salty or sweet. But it also brings baggage. It increases your weight, it spoils your health, among other things.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike food; I just don’t have a good relationship with it. I have had phases of stress-eating and I have had phases when I was eating too little and starving myself.
But I liked Rasam the moment I had it. I like it so much that I knew I needed it in my life. But it isn’t something that is easily available, like pizza is. I knew I had to make it, and that only I could make it the way I like. It was one of the first complex things I made. I had made chicken curry and all before. But this was something no one in my extended family knew how to make. So making Rasam felt like an activity I was doing solely for myself.
Rassam is indescribable. It is warm and tangy. It makes you more patient; you drink it slowly and you absorb all the taste. You take all the time in the world. You can’t hog it. It is good for someone with a perpetual sinus issue. And it is a great companion for loneliness; it warms you from inside.
My experience making eating and cooking Rassam
- Feelings are contagious. I guess so are cravings. Because I wanted to make Rassam as soon as I heard Soumi’s story. My family has been having a hard time lately and I wanted the tangy warm for our insides too.
- I usually cook in the afternoon, so I have food for snacking at 5pm, a meal grossly ignored by my family. As soon as I was done making Rassam, I got a call from kaki. She asked if I had something nice to eat; something that could cut the bitter taste of Chemo in my mouth. I took the Rassam to her house. Kaki had it in her bed and kaka drank a mugful in the balcony, while dadi had it in her room while watching TV. The rassam that was to last me for dinner was over within 6 minutes. I had been feeling sad that our evening snack ritual was broken since the cancer diagnosis; because it was just the kind of ritual a bad time needs. I guess it is not 🙂
- I had a realisation. There are 3 types of Rassam eaters: ones who have it with rice, ones who have a spoonful from a bowl every few minutes and the are ones who drink it from a coffee mug. R eats her rassam with rice, dadi slurps hers from a bowl and I nurse a mug for a long time. Which one are you?
We have a curry-leaf tree under our house; I wish I could write “in our backyard”. I ran down and got some fresh leaves for the Rassam. I took my time in picking the branch I wanted. What a joy it is to pluck fresh produce and take it to the kitchen. A joy that I had neither known nor thought of as a shoe that would fit me. But here I am, one more realisation older.
Little Prachi would be baffled. All she ever wanted was to go live in a big city next to a mall; as if to avenge her mother’s desire to do so. She went too. She stayed and I came back to her small town and started loving it. It’s easier to love, now that the mother too has come to love the smallness, now that she is not burdened by second-hand regrets. She has come far from the malls; she wants a backyard now, to grow herbs and vegetables in. But she will settle for plucking her own curry leaves.
