Missing India

If Mama Filipinas calls me up from bed everyday, Sister India whispers to me in my dreams.


Nitraj, a special Mewar horse with ears that turn outward like petals.


Carrying petrol to their home across a lakeside.


School boys, attentive.


Peaceful denizens of the streets.

The Rising Cost of Samosa-Eating

Samosa with chole at the food counter of Assad Mini Mart.

The cheapest samosa in Manila is now 3 pesos more expensive. It now takes a shiny ten peso coin to buy one piece of these deep-fried potato dumplings, along with some sauce, at Assad. With some chole (garbanzos simmered in spices), they go for 15 pesos a pair.

This is still much better than the two for 55 pesos at New Bombay, and I'm not even gonna wonder about Bollywood. Assad also has an extensive array of Indian sweets, and a grocery full of ingredients for your next culinary foray into the spicy subcontinent.

If you're sick of the skyscrapers and relative orderliness of Makati, come down to UN Avenue. Hop on an MRT to Taft station. From here, transfer to the older LRT line (there's a passageway through the mall) and stop at UN Avenue. When you get down the stairs, you'll see pedicabs. They will take you to Assad for 20-30 pesos.

If you want to walk the samosas off, the UN Avenue station is just ten minutes away from places like the National Library, National Museum, Rizal Park, and more.

Assad Mini Mart
1268 IJK Midtown Executive Homes
UN Avenue, Paco, Manila
(+632) 526 1349/ (+632) 526 5034
LRT Station: UN Avenue
Pedicab towards Assad

Idli and Chutney Time

Green mango and coconut chutney, the idli-pies, sambar idli, fried turmeric rice, curried veggies.

I've finally been able to scratch my idli itch.

Since leaving South India, I've been dreaming of idli. It's been sort of an abnormal yearning.

I remember motorbiking out of Sadhana Forest to the roadside restaurants to get my fix. I remember scheduling my trips to the cities extra-early to eat them at the "hotels" by the bus stops (they call them hotels even though they are restaurants). They are cheap (10 rupees for two or three pieces), they are always tasty, and they give you energy to work or carry your backpack. I also like that it gives you a bit of protein.

Idli is a kind of rice cake. It tastes slightly sour because the rice flour is left to ferment overnight with lentils and fenugreek. The batter is then poured into idli moulds and steamed. It is like un-sweet Filipino puto that has gone slightly bad. The tangyness is special.

I cheated and used a box of idli mix (purchased at Assad along UN Avenue). I made sure it had no preservatives like a good box of anything should. Because I have no specialized moulds, I poured the batter into oiled steel bowls and left them on top of almost-cooked rice, as well as on a steamer inside a pot of curry. They came out looking like giant idli, so I cut them like pizza pies.

The chutney I learned how to make from a family in Vellamathara, a small town in Allepey, Kerala. They actually use it as a siding for palapum, a fermented rice flour pancake. I tossed unripe green mango into the blender with grated coconut, onion, and some chilis, then added salt to taste. It was quite tasty, although not sour enough, as our mangoes were starting to turn yellow.

We also had some sambar idli on the side, made with kangkong leaves.


A piece of idli with chutney and sambar.

Next time I will try to make this from scratch. Stay tuned!

Halva, Halwa: Two Variations

Only looking to use the toilet in the middle of the Jaisalmer desert, I suddenly found myself in the middle of intense inter-village wedding preparations, with all community members manifesting extreme curiosity towards my ethnicity. In a nutshell, it ended in near-indigestion as the village people made us taste a variety of fresh dishes made for the ceremony... and then led us into some riotous dancing.



It was here that I tasted the freshest halva ever. Still steaming and hot, it was moist with ghee (Indian clarified butter). The sweet semolina, ground almonds and pistachios melted in my mouth. If heaven was a grain-nut dessert, this would be it, and it would be cooked just in this kitchen:



Anyway, weeks later, I found myself in the Mission District of San Francisco, face-to-face with a large block of something that claimed to be halwa (in India, the two words are used somewhat interchangeably, and various other peoples mess things up a bit more by saying halawa, helva, etc.). It looked like the Indian pista barfi, which I would describe as essentially a large gob of pastillas de leche.



Does it have milk? I asked. No, the shopkeeper said quite adamantly, it is halwa, and only has sesame seeds, sugar, pistachios, and some root that it was named after. So apparently, they put something called soap root into it ('erq al halaweh) to make it chewy. Was the root named after the snack or the snack after the root? I'm not so sure, but I speculate that he got it mixed up.

$0.90 got me a good size, and it tasted good, albeit on the too-sweet side. I appreciated the ground sesame. I thanked the cosmos that it wasn't one of those flossy halvas, which are very dry and make squeaky sounds against your teeth as you eat them.



I swear, this whole "we are all connected" thing is making itself more and more apparent to me as I wander about, stuff my face, and listen to people just talk. My fascination was ignited by reading the journal article "The History and Lore of Sesame in Southwest Asia" about four years ago, as well as Doreen Fernandez's Philippine-Mexico discussions in her book Tikim. This perspective makes travel extremely engaging, with your imagination running wild about stories of exchanges past-- from everyday interactions of common people to sudden changes brought by culinary equivalents of invasions.

Anyway, back to halva, halwa, whatever. So our protagonist found its way across the desert, completely transformed and indigenized, retaining almost only the original meaning of halaweh-- sweetness. Halva is, as it turns out, a general term for sweetmeat.

I prefer the moist Indian version to the sesame one, mainly because the latter made me really thirsty, next time I will have just an inch of it. I cut the SF purchase some slack though. I may have liked it equally, or more, if it had been served to me inside a sandstone hut along with crazy music and merriment-- or its contextual equivalent in another end of the desert. After all, our condiments, as Thoreau advised, are often right where they should be-- in the "condition of our senses". To more joy, wherever!

Valderi, Valdera!

Samiramis Imports
2990 Mission Street
(Between 25th & 26th Streets)
San Francisco, CA
(+1415) 824 6555
BART Station: 24th Street Mission

Dosa Memories

Regular crêpes are inferior to the savory South Indian dosa. (Usually) made of rice flour and slightly fermented ground beans, they come with lovely sambar and chutneys, and often exceed normal plate size. This makes them slightly comical.

Eating dosa is a sensory experience. Of course, being in awe everytime they bring out your gigantic serving. Smelling the masala filling as you tear open the crispy dough. Popping that morsel into your mouth... Aaahh.

Here's to the dosa, to its various incarnations, to friends I've made over plates of it. Most especially, to the folks who keep churning them out in hot and steamy kitchens-- you are my absolute heroes!

The Land of Milk

If there's one thing I figured out from my first days in India, it was this: I was not going to be vegan in this country.

Dairy is a way of life here. There are even stores that look like the water refilling stations back home, instead they sell milk, and an endless array of milk products (yogurt, ice cream, etc.). People of all gender, age, persuasion just come up in their motorbikes and hang out drinking plain or flavored packets of milk. Unbelievable.





And the more conscientious ones save the packets for recycling.

Nimbu-Mirchi

The nimbu-mirchi is as ubiquitous in India as the hanging Christian stampita or scapular is back home. You may debate me on this, but they serve the same purpose: to ward off the "evil eye".



It consists of one nimbu or lemon, and seven mirchi or chilis. The latter count for seven days in the week. After one week, you must replace it, to keep your protection going.



Apparently some people forget to.

Take a look at this freaky nimbu with some voodoo-doll like thing. I was imagining that the owner was wishing someone to be crushed by a large citrus boulder.

Peanut Balls And The Kindness of Strangers

The beautiful lady living next door to my friend one day caught me climbing up the apartment stairs. "Come here!", she commanded. And so I did. She was clutching a steel jar full of homemade sweet peanut balls, one of which she shoved onto my hand. It was objectively delicious, and doubly so because of the random kindness.

Paan

I don't get along well with flowery foodthings in general (jasmine tea, I'm looking at you), so I never got into paan.

There are small stalls and stores all over India that have leaves painted on the outside. These places are surrounded by moustached men at the most ungodly hours of the night. Overcome by curiosity during another motorcycle ride around Pune, I asked my friend what they were. I was guessing this was a place to get an alcoholic beverage, some kind of Maharashtra moonshine, under the guise of consuming healthful and herby things.

He explained that it was a digestive you eat after a large meal, but plenty men tend to abuse it and have it more than they should. He ran in to buy me one for Rs5. So out he comes with the most syrupy and flowery thing ever.

It consisted of dried fruit with rose flavor and sugar, wrapped in a betel leaf and sprinkled with grated coconut. The first bite was actually alright, but it was a weird sensation, eating through the tangy leaf into a sticky incense ball of tough fruit, and pushing the coconut bits around in my mouth. I thought, how is it possible that people abuse something this cloying?

Well, maybe the answer is that betel leaves are also used to make (presumably non-sweet) paan with tobacco or other natural stimulants. It would be much easier for me to fathom them being habit-forming in those incarnations.

Eating Pune

In addition to what I've already discussed, these are some other things I ate in Pune:


Vegetarian burger at "Burger King". I use quotation marks because the small eatery is not connected to the fast food behemoth. It feels like the little joints around the UP campus, and is likewise filled with students cutting class and eating cheap and tasty food. There are both vegetarian and non-vegetarian selections, none of which exceeds Rs50, if I remember correctly. It is not fake meat, but rather, something really made of vegetables, and lentils perhaps. The bread is slightly crusty and has good texture. I mean, screw large corporations, right? Steal their names and do it better.



Pune'd Version of Idli. Before I tasted what real Southern Indian idli (steamed rice flour cake) was like, my friends gave me some of this for breakfast. It was good in its own right. The sauce was not sour like a sambar, but was rather orange and sweetish. There were all these crushed snacky sev (dried noodle thingies) sprinkled on top. Very interesting.


Pooha. I don't mind having this for breakfast every day of my life. Apparently, pooha or poha is "beaten rice". To further explain: the freshly harvested rice is poached and pounded into a thin version for snacks (like our pinipig, I suppose), or into a thicker one, to make more substantial dishes. The thick pooha is cooked with mustard seeds, turmeric, coriander, and a bunch of other things. Sometimes it comes with sev and fresh cheese on top. Savory and satisfying.


Vegetarian Thali. A thali, I have come to realize, is best defined as "an assortment of pretty good things served on a steel platter". That's about as specific as I can get. This particular one had chapati, rice, spinach, dhal, sweet mango paste (ten stars!!!), and assorted Indian sweets. Best eaten on the the floor.


Masala Papad. This thing is genius. It's easy to make, and is a good light midnight snack. A papadum (Indian crispy wafer made with lentil flour) is topped with something salsa-tasting (raw onions, tomatoes, and cilantro), and masala (spice powder blend). This version has sev on top, and fresh cheese. Here is how to make it. When my friend ordered it, I actually thought he said "masala popcorn" and thought it was a good idea. But of course, this is way better. I don't remember where we ordered this, as I was quite sleepy.

Yesterday's News

Eating snacks out of newspapers is common in Pune. During my first time, I was fortunate that the contents were good enough to distract me from the questions that plague the foreign mind: Are they using vegetable-based ink? Am I eating off the front page of the issue that was touching the street when piled the papers up? Was someone reading this when he was on the toilet? Am I eating off bad news or good news? Was my puffed rice in someone's picture's nose? All these worries were eased out by the simple goodness of the bhel puri.

Bhel puri is a common snack in Maharashtra. Puffed rice, fried lentils, sev or crispy noodles, potatoes, and other supporting actors are served with spice powder, cilantro, and raw onions. And chili! Slices of green chili that only the brave don't toss out.

How does one eat these tasty bits off a daily? I was given a scooper that was cut out of a magazine cover. It was not easy to use, but stopped me from pouring the stuff into my mouth and getting indigestion. The serving must have been as large as a small cat, but I managed to get it all in, and even be a bit covetous of my friend's.

Neera, or Palm Juice

I asked my friend what all those painted stalls around the city were selling (possibly psychiatric advice?). From the colorful illustrations, one would guess it was the juice of the superstar coconut tree. It turns out, though, that they peddled neera, which in Pune is a sweet juice from the shindi or date palm. In other places, they harvest the juice from other palms, such as sago, palmyra, and even, yes, coconut.

For Rs5 (around Php 5 or US$ 0.12), you get a glass of the delicious thirst quencher. It tastes like coconut juice, but without the astringency. Some sources say that neera ferments so easily that it can only be sold near the place it is harvested. Keeping it cold helps to preserve it, otherwise it will shortly become palm wine, much like our fermented tuba from back home.

They say you should drink the stuff during early morning for guaranteed freshness, but we had it late afternoon. I've read about some vendors adding preservatives, who knows?

To Pune, With A Homecoming Indian

The taxi moved at glacial speed through distended bowels of Mumbai, struggling to reach the freeway and burst forth into the city of Pune. Meanwhile, its passengers made friendly conversation.

I would only later realize what a coincidence it was, sharing a vehicle with an Indian who once lived in the Philippines. Exchange between ours and the spicy subcontinent is not so vigorous. Mohan's family still runs a general store in Bacolod. He has since, however, moved on to establish his very own general store in more developed Santiago, Chile.

(The initial fantasy/stereotype I carried was that Indians do a subtle and apparently benevolent kind of conquering, via their bhangra, marvelous curry and reasonably-priced, well-stocked general stores.)

“In Chile, it is not like this. There it is orderly. People have discipline. It is not dirty like this. People are not lazy,” he mused, obviously irritated and disappointed at the lack of change since his last visit home.

I looked at our driver to my right (!), who remained reaction-less. So, I said "mmm-hmmm" and continued bobbing my head to the filmi music playing on the radio. Oblivious to any annoyances, I was still google-eyed and infatuated with the banal sights that slowly brought flesh to the skeletal idea I had of India. Illustrated signs bore proclamations in the strange and curvy script, while trucks reminded all other vehicles to “Horn Please OK”. Women dressed more colorfully than an Eat Bulaga! dance number and had stuff on their heads, while men wore untucked and pressed collared shirts.

When we pulled out of the airport earlier, Mohan had immediately begun qualifying the mess that I was seeing. This was not really Mumbai, it was something a bit off the city center, Mumbai was really more beautiful, etc... These I already knew.

We have our own ill-designed airport (with its surrounding vehicular flow nightmare), a relic of past generations and a victim of unprojected variables. In fact, our first thirty minutes on the road could have easily passed for a ride through the streets of Metro Manila. I must admit that I am acquainted with the fear of visitors letting these tidbits mar their whole experience.

As we pulled off into the spacious inter-city tract, the number of cars tapered off and I thought of the multitudes of immigrants who mouth semi-contemptuous apologetics about their homelands. It is never difficult to find something to complain about-- and it always feels better to do so from a comfortable position. These people had always bothered me. Now, however, I wonder if they really mean it, or if they are only trying to make themselves feel alright about being away from home.

As Mohan spoke, more softly now, about the virtues of fresh Indian cooking and how his mom chose to move back from Chile, I imagined the hugs and dishes waiting for him in Pune.

First Impressions

Aaahh, touch down.

The airplane doors open and you walk out of that tube, noting how the temperature differs, how comparatively un-modern the carpeting is, how the ground staff greets you in English that is informed by verbal habits of another mother tongue.

I had not stepped outside of the Mumbai Chatrapati Shivraji International Airport when I got my first taste of the cheerful persistence that many Indians possess.

The man manning a public phone asked me in a remarkably loud voice if I had chocolate. I was startled by the randomness of this and his apparent ESP, and answered yes.

"Give me!", he insisted, jolting my more modest Southeast Asian sensibilities.

I protested, explaining it was very much sealed in a box, and that my friend had specifically asked me to bring them. I wasn't lying. I had gone on a last-minute run at the store for the goodies before leaving San Francisco.

"No whole box! Give me! Only one! I eat!", he demanded, with a smile. He began making motions of eating with his right hand, fingers puckered up like a flower bud, clasping some fantasy choco-bonbon.

When I politely denied his request (using progressively simpler English), he merely asked again. This continued for some time. I began to feel guilty and was close to tearing open the box of truffles in my bag, when he beamed me a kind smile, tipped his head from side to side, and conceded.

"Acha acha. Thank you! Have nice stay! Okay, no problem!"

And he meant it too! I could tell.

And so I gleaned that in this land, people (often strangers) may make the most brash requests, but they do so with few expectations. The are simply exploring possibilities of making life more interesting. Fantastic.

And so I left the almost-empty airport, which was in a mess due to renovations. The familiar mugginess of the afternoon clung to my skin like a tropical Manila vapory balm. The growing sound of traffic and human chatter-- in Hindi!-- had my heart jumping. A denizen of the third world backpacking the third world.

In a place familiar and strange all at once, I set off. With little goals or expectations. Simply exploring the possibility of making life more interesting.

Transcribing an Adventure

The next few days will see me getting my India musings off my journal, onto this blog. The Notebook is showing signs of rebellion, i.e., falling out of my bag, getting slathered with sticky mochi, the unexplainable bending about of its spiral-spine, the subsequent falling out of its pages.

I'm beginning to think it may not live to tell the tale of my journey.