It was just another ordinary day as I finished my lunch with my comfort food, thayir sadham (curd rice) and maavadu (pickled tender mango), licking my fingers clean on my way to wash the plate. Just in time, my daughter (Miss.M) gets back from school, her never-ending school stories starting right from the ring of the doorbell.
As she sprints into the home, just by a sniff of the wafting aroma from the tempering, she knows that her favourite dish awaits in her lunch. She quickly cleans herself up, changes into house clothes and comes running to the kitchen to her plate of thacchu mammu (a fond, alias name for thayir sadham). She prefers it with a tempering of mustard seeds, curry leaves and mor milagai (chillies soaked in salted buttermilk and sundried). Even before having one mouthful of it, this happens:
Miss.M: Amma, why don’t you keep thayir sadham for lunch?
Me: What happened, pattu? Don’t you like the other rice and tiffin varieties I pack for your lunch?
Miss.M: Hmmm…it’s not that. My friends tease me for not bringing curd rice. They say that you don’t know how to cook, so you don’t send curd rice.
Thundering laughter spilt out of my mouth along with rain showers of drinking water that was meant to run down my throat. Come on, how on earth can anyone assume that I’m not a good cook just because I don’t pack a bowl of humble, easy-to-prepare curd rice for a lunch box? Well, it seems, that kids have the luxury and creativity to assume anything!
A puzzled look surfaced on Miss.M even as she burst out into laughter. After we got back to our jaws to rest, I assured her of packing thayir sadham for the next day. Satisfied, she got into her plate of indulgence while grabbing a book to keep her company.
But something just didn’t sit well with me. I let out a belch and suddenly felt a sour aftertaste of memories come up. It then made me realise why I had never packed thayir sadham for my girl’s lunch box.
Have you ever been called by the name of your favourite food in a sardonic tone? Like, ‘Hey B-i-r-i-y-a-n-i’, or ‘Oye Fishhh Fry’? Has anyone condescendingly remarked, ‘You are such a Pasta!’ or ‘Why are you being a Kaarakozhambu’?
Finding it funny and wondering why anyone would even do so? Maybe then you are lucky enough to have escaped from this distinct form of discrimination where people of a particular caste are stereotyped by the choice of their food.
Here’s a piece of the truth—digest it or not— just being in a majority land or being born in a caste that’s “considered” superior doesn’t shield one from mockery or discrimination. Scapegoats are not confined to a particular caste, colour, creed or gender. They are found or instead pulled out from every tiny hiding space. I can say for sure because I was one such scapegoat, a “thayir sadham” as everyone mocked.
I am a Tamil Brahmin (aka, TamBrahm), which I very much reluctantly put for the first time in a public (or online) space, fearing accusations of being superior/dominant just for my birth into a particular caste. My earlier years of education were from a school where the students were religiously made to chant Sanskrit shlokas three times a day —during the assembly, before having lunch and before leaving for home.
Right before the lunch break, every room echoed chorus chants of “Annapūrṇe sadāpūrṇe, śhankara prāṇavallabhe…”, salutations to Mother Annapurna, the Goddess of Food & Blessings. By now you must have inferred that it was a Brahmin-dominant school. Despite studying in one such school, I grew up being remarked as ‘being a thayir sadham’, derogatorily implying ‘I have got no spunk’.
I’m damn sure it’s not because my mother packed thayir sadham in the upper tier of my two-tier steel lunch box, every single day. Had that been the case, my friends who brought eggs every day should have also been mocked as ‘Eggheads’ or so, right? But no, that wasn’t the case.
Also, it’s not just me, many other TamBrahms too grew up being called so. But why? Why us? And more importantly why thayir sadham? What paavam (sin) did the thacchu mammu do?
Thayir sadham is the humblest meal that I have ever known. It is made with just two ingredients (or three, if you count a pinch of salt), boiled rice and curd, and it can easily fill a poor man’s plate. Also, with a variety of tempering from mustard seeds to sliced cashews to pomegranate seeds, it can please a rich man’s palate.
It can be part of your main course or one wholesome meal in itself. It can be in the comfort of your home or served in a donnai (food bowl made of leaves) as a prasaadam (holy sacrament offered in Hindu temples) after religiously waiting in a temple line. Yet, this humble meal is shaded with sarcasm for no fault of its own.
What looks like a seemingly silly or unconcerning thing, had significant effects on me, which I had been ignorant of until then. I just realised, as a part of a coping mechanism, I had developed a ‘linguistic- camouflage technique’ (for the lack of a better word!) since my teens.
To stay away from being criticised, knowingly or unknowingly, I have developed this talent (??) of switching/adopting to others’ dialects while conversing and not talking in my dialect. This way, it became easy for me to blend in and not give away my identity.
For instance, in the Brahmin dialect, we say ‘aathu’ or ‘aam’ for a house while others say ‘veedu’. I was often teased for saying aathu as it meant ‘lake’ in another dialect. So over time, I subconsciously started using words from other dialects while abandoning mine out of fear of being mocked. This way I was shielding myself from any hurtful remarks.
Meanwhile, I grew up, got married and shifted to Pune. I gelled in easily because, by that time, the linguistic camouflage had become a part of my personality. Effortlessly, I would ask for ‘dosa’ and ‘vada’ like the North Indians, instead of the TamBrahm style of saying ‘dosai’ and ‘vadai’ (note the spelling!). But guess what? My husband turned the scapegoat for not being as talented as me.
He is a multilingual person and yet his speaking of the Brahmin dialect made others corner him. He never complained or mocked of vada pav (a Maharashtrian staple bread/snack) being served at every party in our gated community yet he was mocked for having curd rice from his office canteen to end his meal everyday.
By the way, we never called chappati chappa just because chappa is a familiar term in Tamil, meaning flat or bland, either way being apt for chappati(no offence please). Yet, we were mocked as ‘thayir sadhams’.
So the saga of this weird discrimination over our choice of food continued and in a moment of epiphany, I knew that not packing curd rice for my daughter’s lunch box was one way of guarding her against such discrimination.
The epiphany then overwhelmed me with a question- “Had I become a ‘thayir sadham’ as they remarked? Not courageous enough to stand up for my identity? Not able to defend my favourite thayir sadham? Had I lost my spunk?”
Definitely not – a voice inside me echoed as an assurance as otherwise, I would have not penned this piece. With a lighter heart and greater conviction, I then made a mental note of the lunch menu for the next day- thayir sadham with maavadu. I could at once feel it in my gut, an ever-forgiving, humble thayir sadham cooling me down with its tenderness.
With the humility of a thayir sadham in my heart, I shall now extend the tenderness it endows on me, by sharing an authentic recipe of its preparation:
Recipe: Thayir Sadham for your tummy!
- Take nicely (read overtly) cooked and cooled white rice (not Basmati rice, though) in a deep bowl and mash it well. A potato masher does the job but for an authentic version, mash it with your cleanly washed hand.
- Add salt to taste and add home-set curd (not the sweetened yoghurt stacked in shops), little by little. Mix it well with the rice. Keep mashing until rice and curd become inseparable—a single soul.
- Now for the tempering, heat ghee or refined oil (keep olive oil for other fancy dishes, please) in a medium flame. Add small black mustard seeds and wait till it splutters. (You can even maintain one arm’s distance from the vessel if you are afraid of those tiny splutters sticking to your skin). Just as the splutters stop, add fresh curry leaves, and finely chopped green chilly. Toss it for a minute and put the tempering over the curd rice.
(Pro Tip: Add very little water to the tempering vessel to neatly get every bit of the tempering and add the water to curd rice.)
- Mix the curd rice and the tempering well and as a final touch, garnish with finely chopped fresh coriander leaves.
- Bonus Tip: If serving to guests or wanting to feel pampered, add pomegranate seeds and ghee-fried cashew slices for the posh-ness.
Caution: Do not overdo the garnishing. The simile ‘As white as curd rice’ holds its place.
And just like that, a gluten-free, probiotic, healthy, easy-to-make, gut-friendly, saatvik thachhu mammu is ready to relish. Have it with a pickle by the side or savour it solely. Either way, feel your gut thanking you happily.
[P.S. I just saw a global nutritionist endorsing ’thayir sadham’ for its probiotic properties giving it a must-include tag in a healthy diet. I’m like, ha, what a triumphant comeback, macha! THAYIR SADHAM DAW!]
Written as part of #BlogchatterFoodFest.
