Even before she died, I had fully intended to write about Nana's life. One of the books that I planned to write — and she and I would talk about these books often during our lazy afternoons in Dalipuga, after our respective afternoon naps — was a cookbook that detailed all the dishes she used to make for us in Nangka Road.
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One time, I was helping her chop vegetables for dinner. I asked her how she wanted me to chop the vegetables. She said, "Any way you like." I started slicing them into cubes, and then I second guessed myself, "Maybe I should've julienned them instead." And I looked at the half-chopped cucumber in front of me. I could either keep on cubing them, knowing I should have julienned them, or start julienning them, knowing that I wasted half of the cucumber by cubing them. Julienne or cube? Julienne or cube???
I started to shake. My heart started to palpitate. My eyes filled with tears. I couldn't breathe.
"What's wrong?" Nana asked.
"I think I did the vegetables wrong. I'm so, so sorry, Nana," I wept.
She held me close.
Before, when my ex mother-in-law would ask me to help prepare the meal, she would get mad at how badly I chopped vegetables, sliced the meat, stirred the pot, anything. She would get the knife from me and show me how to do it, all the while speaking to me like an idiot. "Bakit hindi mo 'to alam?!" She would seethe. "If you do it the way you do, it ruins the skin/breaks the fat/scratches the pot/consumes too much electricity/etc." This was just one of the many micro-aggressions I had to endure with her.
That afternoon with Nana, when I was telling her about That Woman, was also the first time I held a knife after trying to use one to fatally harm myself.
I wept this whole story to Nana who listened quietly and held me close. She said, "She's far away now. And you are here. You are in our paradise. You are safe. And we will eat the vegetables any way you want."
I wept and ate the vegetables.
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Seeing this article ("A Granddaughter's Powerful Love Story, Told Through An Indian Cookbook" by Kamala Thiagarajan) made my heart weep a bit. I haven't really written anything of substance since she died. I feel like I've lost the ability somewhat. I have this book in mind, one that tells of her adventures before she was married, but that's a little too painful to write about right now — because I know how difficult life was for her soon after that period of her life.
Anyway.
This article was beautiful and I expect the book to be the same.
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From the article:
The five morsels in the book's title refers to these cousins, who bonded over such exquisite meals. They're represented in the recurring motif of the five grains of rice that prance across the soft yellow cloth-bound cover like snowflakes.
Her grandmother's death in 2007, barely nine weeks after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, devastated the family. Pidathala, who had recently moved hundreds of miles away to Bengaluru to begin a career in IT, particularly reeled after the loss.
"I had always promised her we'd work together on an English translation of her cookbook, written in Telugu [a language native to Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana]," says Pidathala. The simple paperback had seen three print runs since it was published in 1974. It was the kind of book that emigrants sought to carry back with them overseas. By offering an authentic taste of home, it helped them ache less for what they'd left behind.
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Postscript: My Nana died after a short but painful bout of cancer in March 2016.
