Nayanamma Kathalu- Grandma's Tales

My parents come from very large families. My mother is from a family of 12 kids and my father from a family of 9. Almost all of my father's older siblings have great grandchildren now. They all live in Hyderabad. They all believe in get-together's for basically everything- birth to death and every occasion in between. Quite naturally, my parents, though retired, have a social life in Hyderabad that even President Obama might find hard to beat. They are always either attending one family get-together or just returning from another, or sometimes both. Their recent family meet was to perform the anniversary ceremony of my father's uncle- his mother's sister's husband. I asked my father if he had ever seen this uncle and his answer totally boggled me. Even his own wife had not seen him much aside from the day of their wedding!

Going into the details, my father's peddama (mother's sister) was married when she was 8 and was widowed when 9. She basically saw her groom only on the day of her wedding. My father tells me that the only thing she remembered about her husband was that she saw him from the back reading a newspaper. It was all back in the day when widowed woman's remarrying was completely out of question. So she remained a widow, always had shaved head and only wore white. She only ate bland porridge (uppudu pindi) at nights. That is how I always saw her growing up and that is how she was from age 9 until she passed away. My paternal grandmother passed away when my father was very little and it was this Nayanamma that helped raise my father and his younger siblings. She adopted one of my father's older brothers so the family's lineage can continue. She donated the piece land on which our home in Hyderabad now resides. She was the pillar of strength for my father's household. She, to me and to my family, epitomized the very definition of selflessness. She, incidentally, was also the unintentional comedian in many of my family's funny stories!

The most famous of my Nayanamma stories is about her making the Mysorepak sweet (solid diamond shaped brittle made out of flour, sugar and butter) and goes like this: My father and three of his siblings wanted to eat Mysorepak and asked Nayanamma to make it. Nayanamma said "sure- let me go to the store and get the finest of flour first". Days went by and the kids reminded her of the sweet again. She said "sure- let me make the freshest of clarified butter from our cow's milk first". More days went by. Kids got impatient and whined about not seeing that Mysorepak. Finally she decided it was time to make that sweet, to the absolute delight of the kids. They put up their best behavior that afternoon and eagerly awaited the diamond delicacy while she got busy in the kitchen. A couple of hours later, she walked out to announce that it was time and that the kids should bring a glass each for their Mysorepak. And that's when all the kids froze. A what each? Glass? For mysorepak? Turns out my Nayanamma's mysorepak, after enticing the kids for days, was a disaster. The kids ate it, err drank it, anyway, and grew up to tell us this story a zillion times.

The story I could not stop thinking about today was about how Nayanamma made a dosakai pachadi* (cucumber chutney) for lunch that none of the kids liked or ate. They claimed the cucumber went sour. It was basically left untouched all afternoon. Nayanamma made a rasam (soup) for dinner that night and the kids absolutely devoured it. When the kids went for seconds and asked for more, Nayanamma twisted the kids ears and said "Vedhavallara, poddunna pachadi okkallu muttukoledu, ippudu ade charu cheste laginchestara. Ivvanu pondi, antha nene thagesta". She converted the sour chutney from lunch that nobody wanted into a delicious soup for dinner! 

I too happened to make a very healthy dosa batter on Sunday with oats, finger millet, flax seeds and lentils that nobody at home cared much for. When I announced I was making something with cabbage and oats for dinner tonight, I heard protests come all the way from the next room. But one bite of cabbage fritter later, my 5yr old basically parked herself right by me, wanting more and more of those fritters. The fritters had cabbage dipped in the dosa batter from Sunday. I bet Nayanamma is virtually twisting my kid's ear from wherever she is right now! 

Oats and Cabbage Pakodi

* Apparently the original rejected dish was a chutney and not a dal. Corrected per my dad's version :)