Murungai-poo Rasam [Rasam with Drumstick flowers]

For Appa, who always had two birthdays this month, a nakshatram or star birthday on July 7 and a passport birthday on July 15, and who enjoyed my rasams. The text below was written in late October 2021, barely a month after he passed away, and the taste of everything was still quite raw. Perhaps it still is.

There is a beautiful little samishti charanam kriti in Raga Amritavarshini, composed by Muttuswami Dikshitar who often skipped the anupallavi in his compositions and went straight to charanam [last verses] and soulful chittaswaram [the chitta seitha swaram, notes composed for the kriti]. Story goes, the great composer was travelling to a wedding and his route cut through parched lands wanting rain. So moved was he by the plight of those he met, he composed a song in a raga that brings rain—Amrita Varshini, rain like sweet nectar—with a final exhortation: salilam varshaya, varshaya, “surging, flowing water, may it rain, may it rain.” And there are times in life, like when the monsoons are setting in, or when your father dies, when it does just rain and rain, as though someone is singing Amritavarshini and no other raga.

Nobody tells you, when such things happen, that you will lose your voice—not just to sing but to talk, because the words won’t congeal, and what words do come are in the language of procedure and legalese: death certificates, legal heir certificates, nominations, transfers, a hundred and one request letters submitted in one hundred and one offices, all the bureaucracy of a life that is no more. If the first language of grief is in the prayers of death and passing you don’t yourself know or are not allowed to speak–a woman, after all, summarily written out of your father’s last rites–then this is the second.

Nobody tells you that it will rain a thousand details and a thousand needs that now all demand attention like the drips from a leaky roof, as though someone is singing Amritavarshini and no other raga, while a wake of vultures assemble on the sheltered branches of some nearby tree. Dikshitar saw that, too, that incessant rain that now threatened to ruin even those vast, parched lands that had been so thirsty, and offered this counter in the same song, the same raga: salilam sthambaya, sthambaya: “surging, flowing water, may it stop, may it stop.”

So one day you’ll go for a walk in the wet mud and drizzle and find a murungai maram or drumstick tree which has showered its flowers on your path and you’ll collect them and make rasam. The rasam your father used to love. The rasam he would mash with rice and scoop in his fist in that characteristic way. The rasam that would perk his taste buds when nothing else would. The rasam that could have been a detoxifier for the liver that finally failed him, had he only trusted in such things more and relied on hospitals less, because that’s the magic of the murungai.

A thousand rasams for you, Appa, one for each drop of falling rain.

I’ve extolled the virtues of murungai in a prior post. Here’s a recap of why the flowers matter:

• They are detoxers, really good for both cardiovascular function and liver.
• Both leaves and flowers are good for women’s health, they say, not only because of high calcium content, but because of their effectiveness in regulating menstrual cycles (ie, for irregular periods)
• They improve circulatory/cardiovascular health
• They reduce hair fall, improve hair health

The flowers are beautiful, and don’t take much more work than just pulling them off their rather spiney stalks. They’re then fried and added to just about anything from adais to regular vegetable curries–and rasam. The written recipe is below, and there’s a video, too.

Murungai-poo rasam

A classic rasam with murungai or drumstick flowers for an added detoxing, nutritional twist.

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Ingredients

  

• 1-2 cups of fresh murungai flowers
• 1 teaspoon ghee, to fry the flowers
• ¼ cup toor dal
• ½ teaspoon turmeric
• 1 lime-sized ball of dried tamarind
• 1 large ripe tomato
• 1 teaspoon rasam powder, optional
• Salt to taste
• Jaggery, to taste, also optional

For the tempering

• 1 tablespoon ghee or neutral flavored oil
• ½ teaspoon cumin
• ½ teaspoon mustard seeds
• A pinch of hing/asafoetida
• A broken dry red chilli
• 1 sprig curry leaves

Instructions

 

• Clean and wash the murungai flowers. Set aside.
• Set the toor dal to cook either on stovetop or in a pressure cooker. Don’t add too much water, just enough to make a thick dal.
• Soak the dry tamarind in a cup of warm water and extract a thick pulp.
• Once the dal is cooked soft, beat it well with a spoon to break up the pulses.
• Return this to a 1 litre eeya chombu or other pot on a medium flame.
• Add the tamarind pulp you’ve extracted, and dilute the dal-tamarind mixture to about ¾ liter.
• Add the ½ teaspoon turmeric, the ripe tomato (if using) and allow to simmer until the tomato cooks and the raw tamarind smell and taste are gone.
• While that’s cooking, in a separate pan, heat a little ghee (or oil) and fry the flowers. Mash them well with the back of a spoon to release their flavors. Set aside.
• Now add the rasam powder to the tal-tamarind mixture and reduce heat to a simmer. Add the jaggery and salt to taste.
• Now allow the rasam to heat through—it will start to get foamy. Reduce the heat to minimum and add the fried murungai flowers.

For the tempering

• Heat the ghee in a small tempering pan, and follow quickly with all other dry ingredients. Once these crackle and splutter, add the curry leaves.
• Fry until the curry leaves are starting to crisp, and pour this directly on top of the foaming rasam.
• Turn off the flame right away.
• Serve hot with a soft white table rice like a semi-polished kullakar or parboiled polished iluppaipoo samba. Ambasamudram idli rice, Ambai 16, is famed for idlis but works brilliantly as a rasam-rice, too!

Video

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