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Chapter 3: The Source
I give up scouring the web, which is full of more confusion than I can stomach–and turn to literature instead.
Chutneys are, after all, not just a condiment but by now a literary trope. This is thanks largely to our post-colonial papa, Salman Rushdie, who established that history writing is “chutnification,” or the pickling of fragment and memory in time.
Chutneys can never be perfectly, identically reproduced–the tamarind will not be uniformly sour or the coconut not so sweet or the chillies not so hot–so also will history modulate in the hands of each new narrator. Midnight’s Children‘s famous narrator, Saleem Sinai, is “by day amongst the pickle vats, by night within these sheets, [steeped in] the great work of preserving. Memory, as well as fruit, is being saved from the corruption of the clocks.” For
“to pickle is to give immortality, after all: fish, vegetables, fruit hang embalmed in spice-and-vinegar; a certain alteration, a slight intensification of taste, is a small matter, surely? The art is to change the flavour in degree, but not in kind; and above all (in my thirty jars and a jar) to give it shape and form–that is to say, meaning.”
And so at the stroke of the midnight hour are born the pickle ladies and pickling factories and all the many pickled scenes of post-colonial writing in India. Arundhati Roy’s Paradise Pickles and Preserves factory lies abandoned at the close of God of Small Things, faith in the preservation of diverse histories and memories presumably lost. Hardly a novel has been written since that didn’t make some mention of pickles, chutneys, and preserves as markers of feminine skill, historical dimension, and the cultural texture of the land itself.
In other words: “chutnification” is by now one of the most tired tropes to have emerged from the feast that is this subcontinent.
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Trouble is, too, the broad-nosed Saleem Sinai makes chutnification indistinguishable from pickling–what with all the talk of preservation. There’s just no room for the fresh and impressionistic in this account, the sort of fleeting, fresh combination of diverse tastes that exists only for as long as it can linger on your tongue. (Or your fingers, if you’re still licking).
And although the subcontinent speaks back in all its quotidian daily diversity, we’ve remained pinned under the tremendous metaphorical weight of pickle vats, ever since.
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Absolutely wonderful essay on the mystery of “chutney”! “Chutney” displays the lovely tension between India’s almost Germanic love of naming and its studied cavalierness to the use of those names in practice. Combine that psycho-linguistic conflict with the ambiguities inherent in its internal diversity — and those created deliberately in chauvinistic displays of difference — and its small wonder that we all talk past each-other.
Loved it! :-D!
I would also add our particular quirks for the word Chutney/ Chammanthi.
Folks from South Malabar would use the tern ‘Sammanthi’. If it is a ‘thick-non-watery texture’ it would be ‘Unda-Sammanthi’. Not dry but acheiving that balance in moistness which gives ‘shape’. Whereas ”Thekkaru’ ( Southerners ) would use the term with “Ch’!!!! :-D!
And for the Pacchadi’s there is also an in between version, the ‘Parekku’/ ‘Parukku’. This version usually adds a pinch of mustard. In doing so, it highlights the freshness and the fact that it will not ‘keep’ for long. This will be an uncooked version without any tempering.
Whereas the Pacchadi can be with cooked or raw vegetables folded into the coconut based sammanthi. It also has tempering.
I LOVE the coconut graters! Both of them. And this discourse on chutney is fascinating and enlightening. And revealing. Language, understanding, history, and the amendment of them all by travel, colonisation, memory….
You’ll have to come shopping with me sometime on the East Coast road where traders make fortunes off our collective nostalgia. We’ll rummage and find you one of those old graters to sharpen and put into use again 🙂
Deal!
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I spent an entire hour late in the afternoon relishing your chutney series, Deepa! I was posting moringa leaves rasam on my blog and wanted to link to your blog for some rasam definitions, because for me you’re my rasam guru! And what were the odds that I ended up on your chutney essays! I just saw “How do you chutney”, and that was enough inclination for me to jump into the boat and sail into chutney land. I’ve forever been trying to unravel chutneys, and the more I’ve read, honestly the more confused I’ve been and still got more intrigued! Is it serendipity that writing one such essay has crossed my mind often? Blessed to know you. 🙂
Soooo nice to find you’ve been on here, Lopa! No surprise at all that the task of writing such an investigative and elucidatory essay on chutney crossed your mind, too — we’re interested in food categories, aren’t we? I wonder if you’d be interested in a collaboration on this. I mean, my own knowledge has widened and lord knows my pictures here need some updating… I was taking new photos of the same chutneys and having similar thoughts this weekend — now that’s more than serendipity, that’s the universe sending signs! xoxx
A collaboration sounds utterly fabulous!
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My parents migrated to Trinidad and Tobago during the latter part of the 19th century from what was then called the United Province (I think it’s now part of present-day Uttar Pradesh and spoke Bhojpuri…sad to say I can’t speak any of it). My mom made coconut chutney to go with khichari, during the ‘dry season’.
She first roasted the coconut in the chulha (clay oven) and then crushed, and ground it on the ‘Sill and Lorrha’ (not sure if that’s the right spelling but it’s the hand-grinding stone…I think it’s called an Ammikkallu in the South). She’d then the other ingredients: chilli peppers, garlic, onion, culantro, Cuban oregano, and salt, and mix it all together.
Yes, I know the silbatta (it goes by other names, too) and the amikkal, which are still used here though less and less (blenders are common). Your mum’s recipe sounds lovely, especially the cuban oregano/ karpooravalli addition if I got that right. That must have made it very distinctive. I shall have to try! Thanks so much for taking the time to comment and share!
Thank you. I came across your blog quite by accident and am glad I did…the recipes are quite an eye-opener as, being so far from India, both in time and distance, the ingredients used in the cooking back home were very basic.
But there’s magic from those basic ingredients, as I’m sure you know well. After that of course the edible world and human creativity are vast, but what people often managed with simple daily things continues to strike me as remarkable!
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