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Abstract

e back to our house, in Tatanagar, in 2009, to die. Of course, we didn’t know she was going to die. She was fit and moving around though she was hunched over. She’d inspect the house and deride the tiny garden and we thought she’d live forever. She was always planting basil trees.She was very fond of what she called chutney. She would sit at her breakfast, flatbread and vegetables made soft with yogurt, and say, bring me tomato chutney!<figure id="339d"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*jXvegtzID7d5F8p8HYhzKw.jpeg"><figcaption>Doodhnath ji, with the bulls that were yoked to the plough. My dad-in-law got him a tractor, and he got diabetes soon after. Don’t ever let anyone tell you diabetes is a rich man’s disease.</figcaption></figure>(The maid and) I zapped some tomatoes in the microwave, skinned them, ran them into a wok and garnished with cumin and garlic, and got them on to her table in record time.Only, she said this is so common! I was asking for that chutney. (Pointing at bottle of tomato sauce on side-table) You are making a fool of me! You have saved the bottled variety for the children, and you are serving me the free garden tomatoes?Organic tomatoes, straight from the garden, [which grow only twice a year, our garden is so small], with all their natural goodness intact… cooked and served in moments, hot and fresh, were commonplace. She wanted the one from the exotic factory, the one she couldn’t get in the village, she meant ketchup, not chutney.Of course, to a village-dwelling person! The produce from the farm was cheap and available, while the tastes of the bazaar were exotic and smooth, which could be purchased with money, cash, earned by selling the farm produce!All I did was buy her a “buy two get one refill pack free” and keep it in plain sight, and scream (her hearing was awful),“This has come for you! Eat as much as you like! I’ll get more when you finish it.”She was happier with those bottles than I would have expected. She had very little, a spoonful a day.Then she discovered salsa. This was when she’s 96. My daughter was having a pack of nachos with salsa.<h2 id="eb70">Bride of Chotu, not Younger Daughter-in-law</h2>“Chotu dulhin! Yeh lao!” That meant Bride of Chotu, bring this!Chotu is my husband’s pet name, at home. Otherwise, he is called Vikesh. I have been referred to as Choti bahu, which means, the younger daughter in law.One difference in the name she gave me was, it said “bride of Chotu”, not younger daughter-in-law.<figure id="405f"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*ptR17J9SNqsh0XcFarOU6g.jpeg"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><figure id="41ae"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*OvTZERzOxtfDasqQYRlBPA.jpeg"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><figure id="2c89"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*20BXqQvYj5PJ0M96abWPaQ.jpeg"><figcaption>My husband at the village. We really shouldn’t have gone in May, it was even hotter than our city. The new house for Ammaji was being constructed at the time.</figcaption></figure>It referred to my husband’s pet name without making me a diminutive person in the household, because he was called by that name all day, by all the elders in the house: Chotu! (Which means Younger child!)So essentially, just by calling me Bride of Chotu, she had me eating from her hands.<h2 id="cf9a">The grandma in law wanted a new kind of chutney</h2>This time I wasn’t doing any cooking before I had nailed what the lady really wanted.<figure id="a67c"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*QPf8Nrkc2h8JBDqtr4EHhg.jpeg"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><figure id="ba75"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*VCjc6pHVq4mpFLLFyCWy5Q.jpeg"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><figure id="4565"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*urYf7vAfaSnS78tcZKA2Ow.jpeg"><figcaption>The pink-shirted man is a staffer with my father-in-law’s farm. The man in blue with white hair is Doodhnath ji, who is wrestling with the bulls in the

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previous frame. My grandma-in-law’s daughters are standing. I am holding the baby, and my mother-in-law is sitting. Ammaji is in center in pink. She’s very sad in this picture because we are all leaving, back to work and city.</figcaption></figure>So she wanted a different kind of chutney, the one my daughter had given her. Since I already spoke Tween, this was easy.My daughter said that she had been eating a pack of nachos and salsa with mayonnaise, and when she offered her great-grandma some, Ammaji had loved the salsa but had hated the nachos and the mayonnaise.Only, my daughter had been eating a pack of nachos somebody had bought from a foreign goods store in Bistupur, which had a tiny sachet of salsa and tub of mayonnaise in it, and a bottle of salsa was nowhere to be found in Tatanagar.This is in 2011, well before Amazon had started delivering to us.It took me over 20 root canal treatment cases before probability landed me a patient from Kolkata. Only then could I procure that bottle of salsa, but I got it.Many thanks to Mr. Arup Mukherjee who got that bottle of salsa for her from the Spencer's Supermarket there, and refused to let me pay for it.<h2 id="d979">Blunt but cutting</h2>She would say things very directly, as in, this (sweeping and mopping) maid wears a blouse made from very little cloth! Get rid of her!You smell worse than the gardener! Go take a bath!Upon which, my mother-in-law would try to mollify the comment, Did your clinic air conditioner break down today? (Actually, it was a traffic jam, and it was the car AC that was on the blink that day)I wish she’d hung around and told my teenager off.<figure id="eadb"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*jJIDkSzijJkF97Vo5c_qnQ.jpeg"><figcaption></figcaption></figure><figure id="c9f7"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*3uVMkCPUp5n08PVgB-ZSqg.jpeg"><figcaption>Me with my father-in-law’s sisters and their daughters-in-law in their Lucknow city house. This is 5 hours away from where the farming is done, shown in the photo of the house in the village on the right.</figcaption></figure>Maybe she’d say about my daughter’s friends,“That girl who you brought in today, she didn’t say Namaste, she averted her eyes. What’s she hiding?”<h2 id="9f5c">The Ammaji Solutions</h2>I vaguely miss her, though sometimes I don’t know what it is about her I miss. She’d cut straight to the point, when we wheedle about pussyfooting about being fat, or poor, or lazy or indulgent.Arguments about money? “What do you expect when you order so much food? Cook at home”<figure id="5951"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*xLtfDJvY3HfUyQrSg_f8aA.jpeg"><figcaption>This photo shows is the kind of harvesting she was so keen to get back to.</figcaption></figure>Arguments between husband and wife? “Make the kids sleep early! Of course you will feel frazzled if they’re awake when they should be asleep!” (And you should be getting busy as a couple, this was never said directly, even by her.)Arguments about kids being rude to parents? “Why did you buy her that mobile? She never did a whit of work to earn it, she didn’t even put her plate in the sink!”Arguments about the weather? “Take more baths! It isn’t that hot!”Arguments about getting late in the morning? “How can you get late? You have three bathrooms but only two people leaving for work at the same time!”She used to make our problems look so trivial, as if we had brought our problems upon ourselves.<figure id="5635"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*z82F5EQX99qsZ73sqkaQjQ.jpeg"><figcaption>My daughter enjoying a hand-pump in the village, as my grandma-in-law’s cook looks on.</figcaption></figure>She was right.Good night, dear Ammaji. You were way wiser than I realized at the time. I am so honored to have been able to merely clip your toenails, I haven’t covered myself in glory serving you.</article></body>

Ammaji, Gifting, Chutneys and Salsas

My grandma-in-law, what she remembered in gifts, salsa and nachos

My husband and his grandmother at our wedding in Bangalore. Among the seated ladies, you can see Ammaji in the front row in the blue saree.

My grandma-in-law was an Uttar Pradesh, India farm-owner.

We came down to Tatanagar after the Bangalore wedding, year 2000, and she had to leave for the village.

At the wedding, I hardly met her or spoke with her. I barely registered all the new relatives I suddenly had.

Her husband had passed away long before I was married. Amma-ji soldiered on and kept the farm going.

My father-in-law, her son, has a medical degree. She had insisted he become a doctor. This took him away from his mother, in the farm, and she was alone at the farm most years of her life after my grandfather-in-law died.

After my wedding, she left our Tatanagar, India house, and went back to Basti, India as the harvesters were waiting for her

My Tatanagar, India dental clinic, and the adjoining house. My daughter would peep into the clinic if she liked, and my good-natured patients never seemed to mind. The lady in the green saree is my mother-in-law.

Ammaji (=mother, respectfully) had come to our wedding, from the farm. We lived in the city. My husband and I were to soon run a dental practice close to the hospital where my father-in-law worked.

Amma ji in the courtyard of her house. Village houses have a large courtyard in the center of the house. In the picture where Ammaji is seated, my daughter can be seen, asleep, in neon green pajamas.

We live with my husband’s parents. My husband chose a profession that has kept him close to his parents.

When Ammaji was leaving for the village, I touched her feet, and they were so frail, and the skin was so soft, it felt like tissue paper.

The entrance to the village, which is called Basti. The next picture shows the court where my lawyer grandfather-in-law worked. The village school, with an elephant.

I raced back to my suitcase, and hunted around for what I had there. I couldn’t find anything to gift her, and then went to the fridge.

Bingo. Assorted chocolates from Hershey, very uncommon and unique in India because of the bite-size.

I bunged them in a steel tiffin box and gave them to her. I had a steel tiffin because somebody had gifted me one when I was married along with the usual vermilion, turmeric and rice.

Ammaji never forgot that box. Every time she spoke to me, she would say, I remember you gave me toffees. I still have the box.

(In India, the word toffee is used for chocolates as well as toffee)

Organic is for Scrooge

She came back to our house, in Tatanagar, in 2009, to die. Of course, we didn’t know she was going to die. She was fit and moving around though she was hunched over. She’d inspect the house and deride the tiny garden and we thought she’d live forever. She was always planting basil trees.

She was very fond of what she called chutney. She would sit at her breakfast, flatbread and vegetables made soft with yogurt, and say, bring me tomato chutney!

Doodhnath ji, with the bulls that were yoked to the plough. My dad-in-law got him a tractor, and he got diabetes soon after. Don’t ever let anyone tell you diabetes is a rich man’s disease.

(The maid and) I zapped some tomatoes in the microwave, skinned them, ran them into a wok and garnished with cumin and garlic, and got them on to her table in record time.

Only, she said this is so common! I was asking for that chutney. (Pointing at bottle of tomato sauce on side-table) You are making a fool of me! You have saved the bottled variety for the children, and you are serving me the free garden tomatoes?

Organic tomatoes, straight from the garden, [which grow only twice a year, our garden is so small], with all their natural goodness intact… cooked and served in moments, hot and fresh, were commonplace. She wanted the one from the exotic factory, the one she couldn’t get in the village, she meant ketchup, not chutney.

Of course, to a village-dwelling person! The produce from the farm was cheap and available, while the tastes of the bazaar were exotic and smooth, which could be purchased with money, cash, earned by selling the farm produce!

All I did was buy her a “buy two get one refill pack free” and keep it in plain sight, and scream (her hearing was awful),

“This has come for you! Eat as much as you like! I’ll get more when you finish it.”

She was happier with those bottles than I would have expected. She had very little, a spoonful a day.

Then she discovered salsa. This was when she’s 96. My daughter was having a pack of nachos with salsa.

Bride of Chotu, not Younger Daughter-in-law

“Chotu dulhin! Yeh lao!” That meant Bride of Chotu, bring this!

Chotu is my husband’s pet name, at home. Otherwise, he is called Vikesh. I have been referred to as Choti bahu, which means, the younger daughter in law.

One difference in the name she gave me was, it said “bride of Chotu”, not younger daughter-in-law.

My husband at the village. We really shouldn’t have gone in May, it was even hotter than our city. The new house for Ammaji was being constructed at the time.

It referred to my husband’s pet name without making me a diminutive person in the household, because he was called by that name all day, by all the elders in the house: Chotu! (Which means Younger child!)

So essentially, just by calling me Bride of Chotu, she had me eating from her hands.

The grandma in law wanted a new kind of chutney

This time I wasn’t doing any cooking before I had nailed what the lady really wanted.

The pink-shirted man is a staffer with my father-in-law’s farm. The man in blue with white hair is Doodhnath ji, who is wrestling with the bulls in the previous frame. My grandma-in-law’s daughters are standing. I am holding the baby, and my mother-in-law is sitting. Ammaji is in center in pink. She’s very sad in this picture because we are all leaving, back to work and city.

So she wanted a different kind of chutney, the one my daughter had given her. Since I already spoke Tween, this was easy.

My daughter said that she had been eating a pack of nachos and salsa with mayonnaise, and when she offered her great-grandma some, Ammaji had loved the salsa but had hated the nachos and the mayonnaise.

Only, my daughter had been eating a pack of nachos somebody had bought from a foreign goods store in Bistupur, which had a tiny sachet of salsa and tub of mayonnaise in it, and a bottle of salsa was nowhere to be found in Tatanagar.

This is in 2011, well before Amazon had started delivering to us.

It took me over 20 root canal treatment cases before probability landed me a patient from Kolkata. Only then could I procure that bottle of salsa, but I got it.

Many thanks to Mr. Arup Mukherjee who got that bottle of salsa for her from the Spencer's Supermarket there, and refused to let me pay for it.

Blunt but cutting

She would say things very directly, as in, this (sweeping and mopping) maid wears a blouse made from very little cloth! Get rid of her!

You smell worse than the gardener! Go take a bath!

Upon which, my mother-in-law would try to mollify the comment, Did your clinic air conditioner break down today? (Actually, it was a traffic jam, and it was the car AC that was on the blink that day)

I wish she’d hung around and told my teenager off.

Me with my father-in-law’s sisters and their daughters-in-law in their Lucknow city house. This is 5 hours away from where the farming is done, shown in the photo of the house in the village on the right.

Maybe she’d say about my daughter’s friends,

“That girl who you brought in today, she didn’t say Namaste, she averted her eyes. What’s she hiding?”

The Ammaji Solutions

I vaguely miss her, though sometimes I don’t know what it is about her I miss. She’d cut straight to the point, when we wheedle about pussyfooting about being fat, or poor, or lazy or indulgent.

Arguments about money? “What do you expect when you order so much food? Cook at home”

This photo shows is the kind of harvesting she was so keen to get back to.

Arguments between husband and wife? “Make the kids sleep early! Of course you will feel frazzled if they’re awake when they should be asleep!” (And you should be getting busy as a couple, this was never said directly, even by her.)

Arguments about kids being rude to parents? “Why did you buy her that mobile? She never did a whit of work to earn it, she didn’t even put her plate in the sink!”

Arguments about the weather? “Take more baths! It isn’t that hot!”

Arguments about getting late in the morning? “How can you get late? You have three bathrooms but only two people leaving for work at the same time!”

She used to make our problems look so trivial, as if we had brought our problems upon ourselves.

My daughter enjoying a hand-pump in the village, as my grandma-in-law’s cook looks on.

She was right.

Good night, dear Ammaji. You were way wiser than I realized at the time. I am so honored to have been able to merely clip your toenails, I haven’t covered myself in glory serving you.