Chukkumanam & other lickable lollies

Chukkumanam, while there are still stray mango blossoms putting forth from the odd tree here and there, and the tamarind trees are calling to be harvested.

Call them rustic lollipops if you wish, these are made of ripe tamarind, jaggery, lightly toasted red chillies, salt—and mango blossoms, which introduce a light floral astringence. All pounded together and already making me salivate at the thought of that potently sharp-sour-sweet combination of tastes.

Do you feel it, too?

As though providing ready proof that this is, indeed, an effective digestive, which is how it’s typically used at the end of heavy Sumangali Prarthanai feasts, which is a sort of annual felicitation of all “Sumangalis” or married women in a family, living and not, particularly before other major events like weddings and upanayanams [Brahmin thread ceremonies]. It is a Tamil Brahmin women’s tradition which most these days will dismiss out-and-out as “patriarchal” because it celebrates married status, and goes as far as to valorise those women who have passed away before their husbands. Being a widow is a curse, dying before is a blessing, and so you can see why modern feminists get all in a twist over this and why there could be a great deal of finger wagging at “the hegemonic Brahminical patriarchy.”

And yet, the Sumangali Prarthanai is an exclusively women’s event, not attended by male family members, not officiated by male priests, and seeking the blessings of married women, both those present and those who’ve become ancestors. Matriarchal, shall we say? So, unless we’re suggesting that all these Brahmin women are just poor duped souls who are upholding the very women-unfriendly traditions that oppress them, embodiments of what Marx might have called “false consciousness” [they don’t see their own oppression-types] — unless we’re suggesting by extension that it’s we who see the oppression that they don’t; we, whose perceptions are clearly more evolved and liberated than theirs such that we know better than them — unless we are wanting to claim these things, well, then, it’s necessary to admit that this is a women’s event that’s every bit expressive and assertive in its own ways. After all, the upholding of an ideal of marriage cannot be regarded as any less of an assertion than the smashing of some other one.

Of course as kids none of this mattered to us. Feminism is not what it used to be, and only the festivities and the fun and food really mattered to us. I mostly only heard about Sumangali Prarthanais, growing up, because we were so often in Nigeria, and the full-on elai-sappadu was legendary—ending with this pounded mixture of chukku [dry ginger] and jaggery, and maybe also paanakam to drink.

I’m not at all sure how that evolved into my pictured version, which is based partly on the combinations that felt right when I made my mango blossom rice, partly on a recipe from @too_many_interests Usha’s mother. No chukku in this, rather chukku has been replaced by mango flowers, but still called chukkumanam. Still works as a digestive. And so quickly becomes a lollipop because you so badly want to chap-chappify it.

All of which takes me back to that other ripe tamarind confection of my childhood, and that of my parents, and likely their parents before them: nokatambuli!

Same-same as chukkumanam, but without the mango flowers and maybe with some idli podi added. We used to find Mexican “tamarindo” candies in Houston which were similar, but really not because they were in grocery store packets and more of an admixture [the sugar granules were distinct from the tamarind and the chilli tastes stood apart] where nokatambuli is an entirely smoothened experience. Made with ingredients pinched from home pantries and pounded with stones under some tamarind tree in the company of co-conspirators and preferably without parental approval. All that—the petty theft, the rascaly escapes, the company of conspirators, the tamarind tree, the stone-pounding, the challenge to authority—all that was the joy that comes in no plastic packet, at no price.

So, while the mango trees are blooming and the tamarind is coming, make hay, make chukkumanam. It’ll settle your stomach after a big meal and it’s its very own way back machine, so will carry you way back, maybe to what truly mattered about all those Sumangali prarthanais you never attended, maybe even to childhoods you never had, and to just that distilled, simple pucker-face happiness that such treats create in childhood.