Treasure of Sweet Memories

We were on a shopping spree getting ready for our housewarming party. I met Sheba when I moved to the new city, and we quickly became close friends. During our long stay in a foreign country, we tackled numerous challenges together. Had it not been for mutual support, both of us would have found it very hard. Although we miss “home”, a place that never stopped being one even after a decade of living away from it, we keep ourselves busy with raising our kids.

One day, we decided to try the new coffee shop that had opened near our homes. As we stepped in, Sheba’s face lit up in excitement- a certain smell in the restaurant reminded her of her grandma’s beef pastry. She felt like she had found a piece of home. As soon as we took a seat, she called a waiter over to the table and she ordered the meat samosas. We were talking about our busy lives and venting about our husband’s annoying mannerisms when Sheba’s order arrived. With a smile on her face, she starting sipping her masala tea and taking a bite of her samosa. She suddenly stilled and her expression dropped. When I asked what was wrong, she replied, disappointed, “ It's not the same, how I wish I taste my grandmother’s cooking with my tea!” Her mood was dampened for the remaining time that evening.

I was rather taken aback by her sudden nostalgia. I was surprised that smell could trigger such strong feelings. I was ruminating on that thought on my return from the restaurant when a new one crept up, “Why don’t I feel that strongly about things that remind me of my past? Does this mean I don’t appreciate my childhood? Am I uncaring for not feeling that way?” Slowly, the confusion scattered and guilt crept in. As I tried to dissect and confront my feelings, I realized something about myself- I had shut the past out, at least I had tried to. Shutting them out was my coping mechanism for the stresses of life I had been facing and the long stay away from relatives in a foreign country.

I cleared my schedule for the day, found photos I had brought with me when I first moved and sat in a nook by the window to reminisce over them. Tears welled in my eyes when I saw my mother, father, sisters, aunts, and my grandmother. A flood of sweet memories gushed. I could vividly remember my happy childhood in my family home, where my entire family of 30 people lived (my aunts and their families lived also lived with us and my grandmother). I was transported to our kitchen in our ancestral house where there was always a strong aroma of Indian spices and Sri Lankan dishes. I could smell the food being prepared. I could hear my grandmother telling my aunt to knead the dough with her knuckles and my mom to add more coconut milk to the brinjal (eggplant) curry. Although maids were hired for helping around the chores, the ladies of the family always cooked the meals.

It was always the traditional lunch - rice with a main dish (usually fish or meat curry), two vegetables curries, buttermilk, a tamarind soup (called rasam), and fried appalams (a crispy flatbread chip). The curries were made with fresh spices ground with a grinding stone in the open part of the kitchen, organic rice from our fields, buttermilk made with fresh milk delivered daily from the farm to our home. I began yearning to live through my memories again- how good life was back then!

My favorite food made by my grandmother was her signature rose cookies fried in oil. This was always prepared in big batches and only on special occasions. The smell of her cookies being fried is indescribable, and cannot be sufficiently expressed with words like heavenly, delicious, or divine. I remembered the effort that would go into every step of that recipe. My aunts would start by scraping six or seven coconuts (grown in our grove) using a manual scraper, where the serrated blade was shaped like a semi-circle. Then they would squeeze the coconut milk out with a cloth and then carefully mix the ingredients, without the help of blenders or grinders. The last part was dipping the metal cookie mould into the batter and expertly maneuvering them into the hot oil to fry. I wasn’t interested in helping around in the kitchen, and my grandmother would often let me go as I was the youngest in the family, but I would promptly return when she was frying them. She would always allow me to have them first much to my elder sister’s offense.

As I took a walk down memory lane, a quote came to my mind “A good fragrance is a powerful cocktail of memories and emotions.” I understood that nothing can erase sweet memories. Little did I realize how much I had missed them. The readjustment of my life goals had led to this selective memory loss. Upon this realization, my stress melted away and I felt refreshed. Feeling energized, I started positively looking at things. I thought to myself, “Why am I trying to erase my memories? I just need to see them as positive memories instead of negative present ones. Each phase of my life may be different as a wife and mother, but I am shaped by my early experiences as a daughter in the comfort of my parents’.” I remembered how my aunts would cook together in the kitchen chatting happily without any sign of boredom or tiredness in their faces. Watching the whole family enjoy the food prepared by them made them completely satisfied. They lived simple lives with fewer expectations. Their humbleness was reflected in their personality.

My grandmother, who was not formally educated, was the connecting thread of our family- her vast experience of life with its length and depth was the best university for me to learn how to live mine. Her unwavering love for the family made us remember her even after all these years. This train of thought made me wonder if my children have missed out on the fun from being around extended family. The feeling of empathy and the bond of kinship seemed lost, and those were replaced with materialism and selfishness that a nuclear family set up seemed to fester. I decided I had a greater responsibility of inculcating the morals I had grown up with, in my kids. I decided to make more of an effort so my children could one day recall their childhood memories fondly. That would be the most precious gift I give them.

Picking up the phone to call Sheba, I poured my heart out and my take away from those thoughts. She laughed and said, ”I remember reading once that smell goes into the emotional and memory parts of the brain, whereas words go into thinking parts of the brain.” I agreed wholeheartedly. After our call, with a huge smile, I took out my frozen prepackaged shredded coconut and my blender. I began making a surprise for my family.