Maavilai rasam & the Rasam Series

Sometime earlier this long and strange year, I decided to start making and exploring this everyday dish that we know as rasam. It began with this, a tender mango leaf rasam:

And a series of notes about the idea of rasam itself, which interests me perhaps even more than the dish itself. Starting thusly:

The word “rasam” refers to a category of light soupy preparations typically associated with south Indian cuisine, though variants in the form of “saar” and “chaaru” take us much further north. The Sanskrit “rasa,” after all, is a much wider idea—familiar, but not deeply understood. Rasam is at once the sensory experience of a substance, an indication of the pharmacological behavior of said substance (read: most rasam ingredients are medicinal and we know this), and a classification of the fundamental character of all (usually plant-based but not exclusively) substances. The Caraka Samhita (v.64) names “rasa” quite precisely as the “knowledge perceived through rasanā indriya [roughly: gustatory senses] located at jihvā (the tongue).” [Source]

The task of the cook preparing a common rasam for an everyday meal, then, is nothing short of momentous, no less than those given to physicists or rhetoricians: she has to ensure that this essential knowledge to be communicated to the rasanā indriya located at the jihvā is clearly stated, with any other accompanying perceptions being anurasa, or sequels.

I find this utterly fascinating, don’t you? Rasam is a way of clarifying knowledge, of being spot-on precise—in this case, capturing the taste of mango leaves with only what others it takes to land that experience unequivocally on the eater’s patiently waiting tongue.

See that color of the tender mango leaves for example? In Tamil, it’s manathulir–that precise color, that precise fragrance at that precise moment after the rainy season and before flowering, that precise taste. (Go to Kanchi, and you can find saris in this red-green-yellow-sort-of indescribably fresh color, so evocative and indeed emotive is the seasonal appearance of these on mango trees. Read more about Kanchi weavers and the specificity of their color choices and names here). And it’s manathulir that’s the star of the maavilai rasam. Of course, there are medicinal properties, too: from topical applications for burns to hiccup relief to the dissolution of kidney stones. But rasam is a theory of taste, above all else, so health benefits are not secondary, but they do come after.

Now, I don’t claim to know all there is to know about rasams, nor do I dare to vie for spotlights of the sort that Usha Prabhakaran, Pickle Queen and now crowned Rasam Queen, command. Let’s just say that I’m a little tired of the cliches about rasam being “not just a dish but an emotion” {{big eyeroll}} and with folks falling all over each other because this wants to be called a soup but isn’t (that’s the New York Times for you). I know Indian classificatory systems can be beguiling, and I’ve wrestled with them before (here on chutneys; here on amaranths) but they’re not unfathomable. One just has to roll up sleeves, be patient, and get to sources.

It was in the hope of doing just that, that I started posting about rasams on Instagram. My little efforts soon became a partnership with two delightful and generous friends, @thethiruvarurgirl and @leftofwrite & the invitation to tag us and use the #rasamseries hashtag made it rain rasams for a while–unusual rasams, classic ones, grandmother’s versions, tips on the use of “mel podi,” zero waste rasams and on and on. Forget rasam-as-emotion, it appears an everyday household philosophy. The #rasamseries was a great space in which those worldviews, otherwise tucked away in so many household corners, could articulate themselves. No rasam royalty here but polyvocality at its best.

Lovely though that sojourn has been and full of learning, a splash here and there, and happy camaraderie–it was frankly a distraction. Recipes are great, Indian culinary ingenuity is boundless, but I am much more in search of the logic of the recipes themselves in some idealized sense far beyond the mechanics of it all. Plus I’m interested in the total ecosystem: the ingredients, the vessels, the prep, the choices of powders, the approach and attitude, the idiosyncracies, the special moments of joy, the evocation of nostalgia or memory of relationships, and so on and so on — the collective totality that we call simply by one word, “rasam.” Call me a pedant or a hermit as you please, but my quest requires stepping back and observing, even oneself. Coming back to this sadly undernourished blog after so long is a way to return myself to roots. Admittedly, I am also craving a little room for crabbiness and away from the compulsions of social media to be just so darned nice all the time (Twitter is unbearably the other way, but Instagram and LinkedIn’s saccharine normalcy can be insufferable, too). The secrets I seek on rasams might be of interest to nobody other than me, at any rate, so this corner of mine is likely good enough. And I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I’m a witch, and witches do have mightily crabby sides.

Are you still reading? Grateful, if you are. So the recipe which I finally put together in this little video below is my thanks for your patience then. You don’t have to be on Instagram to play it; it should start directly from your browser, on mobile or computer.

Enjoy!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Deepa (@paticheri) on Sep 9, 2020 at 12:10am PDT