How I learned to Love Rice

Taking in the gift of our ancestors

Right after I was born my mother asked my father if they could move closer to where her parents lived. My mother’s family lived in a small town called Rangia. A river ran behind my grandfather’s house and a huge Thursday market sprawled in front of the Radha Krishna Mandir every week just outside the gates of the house. My earliest memories of the place is of strong powdery turmeric in the air and mountains of spices all along the alleyways. On the way stood numerous tea stalls and shops where samosas were fried every evening. I would perch on my grandfather’s shoulders and roam around the whole town greeted by every vendor from carpet weavers to curtain sewers and pan-makers as Lahkar ji ke naati (Lahkar Sir’s grandson). I was the second child of my parents, and the first alive. Her first was my brother who didn’t survive. They were already scared. My father’s village was far away. There weren’t any hospitals there or doctors who could save an asphyxiated child or a breathless infant. It was a village called Sarthebari in the heart of lower Assam. My father’s ancestors made beautiful and shiny-golden utensils of bell metal and ate rice. No one ate rotis or wheat. Kanh is what we call bell-metal in Assamese. It is known for its alkalinizing qualities in Ayurveda, enhancing immunity and steamed rice is said to retain its purity when cooked and served in these utensils.

My father’s family had never come to Guwahati (where he studied and worked). Sarthebari is famous all over India for its bell metal craftsmanship, and my father’s family, like any other family in the village, were known for rice, lentil soup, cauliflowers and colocasia. They ate cabbage fry with ginger and mustard oil, carrots with steamed pea, ground sesame seeds with oil as a paste and a simple dish of mung beans with pigeon meat. Sugar was rare and my mother would often recount stories of how my father loved jaggery as a child. So much so that he’d cry and roll on the muddy floors of his house if his mother didn’t give him jaggery with rice and milk at night. They had not seen biscuits, bread, or cakes. Or the kind of sweets that my grandfather’s sweet shop was known for in Rangia. It was situated close to the railway junction where all the trains running from Assam to Delhi, Bihar and U.P. stopped for a long break. Rangia was also the town for cargos of all kinds and businessmen of spices and clothes. A lot of people from different parts of North India came and settled there. It was easy for them to do business, thanks to the railways. As a result, my grandfather — who could speak Hindi better than my mother or father — as a local business man started working with them. He was respected by everyone and seen as the son of the Zamindar who died young while on an expedition perched on an elephant. These people became my grandfather’s best friends and their families cooked delicious North Indian meals that would be sent home. My grandfather’s old taste buds slowly disappeared, his palate transformed and he grew fond of them. All the people in the house — his wife, daughters, and helpers started cooking the same dishes that his friends sent. While kalakand (sweet made of solidified, sweetened milk and paneer), gajar ka halwa (carrot pudding) and anda curry (egg curry) became regulars, roti became an inseparable love in the life of my grandfather.

In Rangia, they owned a huge house with gabled roofs and three big courtyards full of jujube trees where as a child I would run around. My mother would run behind me holding a slice of roti smeared with ghee and aloo bhaji (potato fries). I would run back to my mother, check if it was not a morsel of rice she was trying to fool me with. After having examined it with a keen nose for the warm, buttery smell of roasted wheat in ghee, I would let her put it in my mouth and run away again. She would run behind me cajoling me if I would like to have some jaggery with rice and curd, and I would wince at the name of it. Whenever she would bring lentils and rice in a kanh plate with boiled peas and carrot on the side and try to feed me, I would cry for I didn’t like the sight of it. She would then promise me that if I ate the food, she would take me to my grandfather’s sweet shop and I could then eat peda (a doughy sweet) and nimki (salted ribbon like strips of pastry made of fired flour, oil and water). Naturally, I would acquiesce and swallow what I could never bring myself to love — rice.

Like many other people growing up in a small city like Guwahati in the nineties I didn’t know what a pizza looked like. That the best of pastries could only be found in a shop in Uzanbazar next to the Brahmaputra. Between two buns rested a fried chicken patty and that was called a burger — such names were never heard of. When chowmein became popular during festivals like Durga Puja and Bihu, people started selling them on the streets. Maa and I would often go out and pour green chilly sauce covering the whole plate. We would relish, sweating all over, tears streaming down our hot cheeks, while Papa would eat rice at home. When we got home we would not tell him about it. We would keep quiet and watch him ask for jaggery and milk to eat an extra small helping of white rice with. When Grandfather gifted Maa an oven, I would then eat cakes for the whole week and not look at rice or lentil soups. I loved the smell of baked wheat and the warm smell of eggs whipped into an unforgettable softness. However, what continued to be my first love was roti. I couldn’t ever part with my mother’s ghee ladled roti. Sitting on the same dining table as my father, I would eat roti while he would eat rice with jaggery and milk on a kanh plate. I would eventually grow up to tell him that he mustn’t have so much rice — it’s fattening and full of starch. That’s where he got his big belly from. I would grow up to almost hate rice, watery lentil soup, jaggery and the sight of boiled vegetables that he ate. It was almost as if I could look down upon people who ate such food and the idea of such ordinariness became an object of shame for me. When I went abroad I took great pride in being able to digest ‘foreign’ foods like cheesy pizzas, creamy pastas, and burgers loaded with bacon and cheese. While the point here is not that some foods are great and ‘some’ foods are less than great, the point is I couldn’t ever embrace what my father ate. Perhaps I couldn’t embrace what his family ate, the utensils they ate in, the place they came from, the childhood he spent crying for jaggery, milk and rice.

It was during the lockdown in Delhi, I started experiencing shooting pain all over my back. All my muscles tightened and the middle of my back became an epicenter of such excruciating pain that I couldn’t move a limb. Not only that, but I would feel unnaturally full, as if my whole body was bloated and fatigued. Out of desperation I would ask my partner to press my shoulders each night, and every time I’d feel a finger digging into my muscles I would wince and cry in pain. I worked out each day — meditating, practicing asanas, chanting and stretching my whole body on the floor for forty five minutes. Nothing helped. I kept imagining the different spiritual reasons for which the pain had come to me and my whole body was sore and inflamed. I kept reaching different conclusions through various, different methodologies, but my pain didn’t go away. One day just after my morning meditation, I walked up to the breakfast table. On the plate lay two beautiful rotis ladled with ghee and stuffed with some thinly sliced paneer. For the first time, I didn’t feel like eating them. I felt full just by looking at them. I asked our help if she could get me something else. Something like kholasapori pitha (Assamese rice flour pancake). She seemed surprised. But then she immediately rushed to the kitchen and pulled out the bag of rice that my parents had sent me from Guwahati.

My condition had a name. My partner and I (we both are medical doctors) put two and two together and reached at the diagnosis that I was suffering from a condition called Gluten Intolerance. Apparently, it is a fairly common problem that people all over the world experience. It is characterized by adverse reactions to gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. It’s what makes dough elastic and gives bread its chewy texture. The most severe form of gluten intolerance is a condition called Celiac Disease.

Though I didn’t have it in that form, I must also tell you that celiac disease is an autoimmune disorder that’s triggered when you eat gluten. It’s also known as celiac sprue, nontropical sprue, or gluten-sensitive enteropathy. Some of the common symptoms of gluten intolerance are bloating, abdominal pain, headaches and chronic fatigue. In some cases, it could even mimic fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. Initially, as we concluded our diagnosis, a deep ringing anxiety ran through my hands and legs. I immediately felt stabbed and betrayed. As if someone had taken away what was most dear to me. Someone had snatched away a beautiful toy from my hands and replaced it with an ugly, torn one. My partner tried to make me see reason and explain that it wasn’t the end of the world and I could still enjoy my meals. I mean, logically we were living in 2020. All kinds of alternatives were possible, come on! But I continued to feel betrayed and deprived. The next day I called my parents. I tried to explain to them the reason behind my aches and pains. I told them that there was an actual condition called gluten intolerance and that I couldn’t eat wheat anymore. While my mother looked visibly shocked that such a condition existed, my father laughed and said, “Don’t worry, Baba! When this pandemic thing is over, just come home and carry some more joha rice and some  kanh utensils with you. Everything will be fine. You have that bagfull we sent you last winter don’t you?” I said yes and kept the phone down. For the first time, the image of my father as a little child asking for jaggery and rice became a reality in my head, and I cried (much like him) rolling on the floor for what I had judged in him, and what I could never embrace. It was not the food, it was my inability to take him in my heart for what he ate. I felt my breath leaving my body and I broke into spasms of guilt.

Within the next few weeks, I learned to enjoy rice. Steamed, sometimes mashed and mixed with ripe bananas, other times with mustard oil, salt and boiled peas and carrots by the side. It was possible to live a life without gluten. I could certainly buy some gluten free wheat and get my favourite rotis made. It’s at the tip of your fingers and food is just a click away on Zomato, Bigbasket or Grofers. But I didn’t do that. Instead I ate rice and rice flour. I ate kholasapori pitha for breakfast and rice with lentil soup for lunch. At night before bed, I relished a piece of brown jaggery and bit into it thinking of my father’s love for me as a child. Memories of spending evenings on his lap munching on moori (puffed rice) and boiled black chickpeas filled my mouth and heart. Fragrant mustard fields and the sweet smell of paddy grew into a gentle fondness inside me as I found an immense, almost forgotten sense of strength in choosing to cook my own food. Each meal I cooked, I thought of him and I thought of my ancestors who made Kanh utensils, and who enjoyed rice three times a day. I prayed and imagined them standing behind me, my father first in line, supporting my painful back while I ate what they ate. We all ate together. We all ate full. We ate in deep gratitude to the kind earth, the brimming sun, the clouds and the nameless, undrunk rivers and ponds of my father’s village. In a week’s time, I healed.

Love,

Gaurav.

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