Of food and cooks

ONE NEVER ceases to marvel at the number of restaurants in Chennai. We, as a family, generally never ate at restaurants. Why did we have to, when we had an excellent cook?

Everything changed suddenly one day when father decided that I must be taught to treat food with respect. He told me the story of C. S. Venkatachari or CSV, as he was known to his friends.

CSV spent his childhood in abject penury in Salem. One of seven children, his mother served only one meal a day. The young Venkatachari was, therefore, perpetually hungry. But he was a good student and was determined to make the most of every opportunity that came his way. Every time he felt too weak to go to school, he would grit his teeth and tell himself, "I must do well in school. My family and I should never be hungry again". He did well in school and won a scholarship to study at the Presidency College in Madras. Since he had no money to buy a train ticket, he walked from Salem to Madras, where he was fed according to a system called vaara saapaadu. Venkatachari still had only one meal a day.

But this helped him to send home his scholarship money. He then joined the Madras Law College and on graduating, apprenticed to the lawyer, C. Sankaran Nair. After serving as his junior for four years, Venkatachari set up his own practice.

It was always Venkatachari's desire to eat sumptuously and partake of the delicacies which poverty had denied him. But sadly for him, when he was only 30, he was diagnosed as being dyspeptic and till he died at the age of 79, he only had a cup of black tea in the morning, a bowl of oats porridge and some greens for lunch, a cup of coffee in the afternoon and a bowl of oats porridge in the night.

C. S. Venkatachari was my great-grandfather and it was through food that I was introduced to the story of his life. In 1915, he fell in love with a house called Lady Napier Villa, which was built on 60 grounds. He bought it for a whopping Rs. 75,000. Soon after, the family moved into Lady Napier Villa. The family had always had a cook. Although several cooks served the family, the one who arrived the year my father was born, was a treasure. Sundaram was with us for the next 40 years. But whenever he went on leave, a substitute had to be found.

There was a hotel called Krishna Iyengar's Hotel, next to the present day Welcome Hotel on Purasawalkam High Road. It was on the eastern side of Welcome Hotel, which didn't exist then. The building in which Krishna Iyengar's hotel was housed still exists although in a dilapidated condition. Whenever Sundaram went on leave, the proprietor of the hotel would be asked to send a cook to Lady Napier Villa! Can anyone imagine walking up to the manager of a hotel today and asking him to loan a cook for a few days?

As a child, I tasted the cooking of several such substitutes, who sometimes were only known by the name of their villages. Thus there was a Neervaloor maama, a Mannargudi maama, a Olakkur maama. In fact, I learnt the names of several villages in Tamil Nadu only because our cooks. Even when Sundaram finally retired, he still continued to make bakshanams for Deepavali and Sri Jayanthi. Peria Paati would be very upset if he didn't come for Deepavali. Mother often used to say teasingly that she wasn't the eldest daughter-in-law of the family, Sundaram was. But then, no one could make mysore pak or laddu the way he did.

There was one cook whom we called Pulavar maama. He fancied himself a poet, and just when the saatramudhu was giving off the aroma of Paati's carefully ground powder, he would retire to his room to capture the Muse. Then there was the man everyone called Dorai, because he insisted on speaking in English all the time. He had passed his S.S.L.C. exam, and never let us forget that for a moment. He would ask Paati, "Would you like some pepper water?" by which he meant rasam or he would say, "Would you like your pancakes crisp?" pancakes meaning dosais. He had strange English equivalents for every dish. Thus mullu murukku (which we called manam kombu) was "thorn twist", tenkuzhal was "honey pipe" and thattai was "rice disc" and so on.

The most interesting was a cook who called himself Comedy King. He claimed to have acted in "Thillana Mohanambal". Since the family had seen the picture several times and hadn't seen him even in one scene, we pointed out to him that he was lying. But he said, "Remember that song `Maraindu irundu paarkum' of Padmini's? Well, while she danced to that song, I was in the audience. Of course, you couldn't have seen me cause I was seated behind a pillar!"

Comedy King was a great storyteller. His stories were full of goblins and ogres and rakshasas. Everyone was grateful to him because in his spare time, he regaled me with stories and kept me out of mischief. However, there was an ongoing feud between him and the servant and grandma had a tough job sorting out quarrels between them. This was like tight rope walking as she could not offend either of them. Life in Lady Napier Villa was wonderful and the cooks added spice to our lives. Every time I go to Purasawalkam, I walk up to where Lady Napier Villa stood and recall the past. I try to imagine my father as a child running to Krishna Iyengar's hotel to ask for a cook; I imagine him walking to D. K. Nathan's to buy Huntley and Palmer's biscuits or to Jagadeeswara Iyer's Thanneer Pandal to get a packet of ompodi. I ache for Sundaram Iyengar's adirasams and laddus. Is it really the sweets that I ache for, or a past that is irrevocably lost?

SUGANTHY KRISHNAMACHARI

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