Dazzling, Dizzying Diversity

Okra with Cumin and Ground Coriander

Mar 24, 2022

OK, so the title is a bit cutesy. But alliteration is fun. And I’m not above cutesy!

My parents got married in June 1969. They eloped.

My dad had been my mum’s English teacher at college in Bangalore, and had known her family. My grandmum (remember her from a few posts ago?) apparently liked him well enough in the capacity of a teacher. But when a different kind of relationship was broached, well, let’s just say that didn’t go down well. Two of my mum’s brothers were even sent to give my dad hell.

And after that, they decided to elope.

And why the negativity toward one who had been held in high regard thus far? Because they came from two different communities. Both south Indian, both Brahmin, but two different communities. My dad was raised in a Tamil, Shiva-worshipping family, while my mum was raised in a Kannadiga, Vishnu-worshipping household. And while we were young, we were often regaled with tales from their pasts, of uncles beating my dad up, and their ultimate elopement to Madras, to the warm embrace of my dad’s family who welcomed my mum into their folds with open arms; she had nothing but the clothes on her back. Now whether this welcoming was because they were more open-minded to the idea of their son marrying outside their community, or whether it was simply a result of their relief at their son finally getting married at the ripe old age of 33 - my dad said they’d feared that he’d convert to Catholicism and enter the priesthood - is something I’ll never know.

And get married, they did. And my mum’s family’s animosity toward my dad lasted three years, till yours truly came along.

And I know I’m being most terribly reductive in my description of their respective religious upbringings, but to me, that’s all the differences were, and still are. All throughout childhood, I could never understand the opposition to the marriage – given the similarities. Neither family was even particularly orthodox.

Fast forward a couple of decades. I’m now in Alabama, my first year there, and have made fast friends with one Paula, in one of my biology classes. She is a couple of years younger than me, and is dating Tony. Both are very sweet, and to my young years, perfectly well-suited. And we spend many moments with her agonizing over their religious differences – she is protestant (I can’t remember the exact denomination) and he is Catholic. And I cannot for the life of me understand why she thinks it is such a big deal.

But it was, because they broke things off because of said differences. And I remember thinking about my parents in the 1960s, and remember thinking about how silly it seemed to me that religion came in the way of so much. I mean, Hinduism was Hinduism, right? And Christianity, Christianity? Naïve me.

So what’s prompted these particular memories right now? News that two people in my family, one a cousin’s son, and the other, a cousin, are getting married. And both young men are marrying young women from states in the Northeastern part of the subcontinent; one from Meghalaya, and the other, from Assam. Both the young men in my family were raised in South Indian Brahmin households, one in the state of Andhra Pradesh, and the other, in Tamil Nadu.

And my first reaction upon hearing that my cousin was marrying a lady from Assam was this: Wow. He might as well be marrying a Norwegian. Why Norway? Well no particular reason other than geographical distance. And cultural distance. Because to me, the Northeastern states of India are as different from the Indian cultures with which I am familiar as is a country like Norway.

When I began this project, I wrote about wanting to explore the diversity that is India. And ironically, I haven’t done enough of that. Yet. So with this post, I’m going to attempt to make a start.

When pondering the direction I wanted to take this post in, the first thing that occurred to me was/is our wont to group all the states in the Northeast together. They are all the Northeastern states – this is what we learned in school, and this is still how we refer to the area. There are 8 states in all, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Tripura, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Sikkim. And with our use of the word Northeast to describe the region, we effectively have removed any diversity within the group, creating an image of a single regional ethnic identity. And this couldn’t be further from the truth. The diversity between states, let alone within each state, is dizzying: There are around 220 distinct ethnic communities, and more than 220 dialects spoken in the area, most of which are endangered. Of course. And having said this, I am guilty here of continuing to do just that. Because this is my first venture into the area. My first, I hope, of many more. But let me begin by giving you a glimpse into how diverse it is.

The region is ethnically diverse, linguistically diverse, culturally diverse, and, of course, culinarily diverse. Ethnically, the communities in the region include Mongols (the dominant group), Into-Aryans, Australoids, and a very small minority population of Dravidians. Linguistically, each state, of course, has its constitutionally-recognized languages, with (and this came as a huge surprise to me, even as I very vaguely remember learning about that at school), English being the official language of three of the states. The languages in the region come from 5 different language families: Indo-Aryan, Tibeto-Burman, Austro-Asiatic, Tai-Kadai, and Dravidian. And the linguistic nerd in me delighted this week at my first encounter of a velar fricative in an Indian language; one of the official languages of Assam, Axomia (or Asamiya), pronounced /ɒχɒmjɑ/ with a first consonant being a velar fricative. Like in Bach.

Culinarily, the region is very different from any other Indian region I know of, and is an area about whose food I know the least. Before the pandemic, when last we were in India, we met some of my college friends at one of their houses, for dinner. One of my friends is Assamese, and had brought along an Assamese pork curry to share. When I was helping myself, the host (not the provider of the pork) described it as a pork curry that is…different, he said. It has this vegetable, bamboo shoots, you might not like it, it has a strong smell. And yes, it was different. And delicious, with the distinctive taste of bamboo shoots. And to my palate, was similar to certain Chinese dishes I’d eaten - with bamboo shoots. And as I’ve started reading about the cuisine of the region, I have learned about the use of so many ingredients I’ve never heard of. Do you know what an elephant apple is? Or an angothini leaf? Yeah, me neither. For now.

And as I write this post, I realize how little I know. And how much more I want to know.

But for now, let me come back to the idea behind my starting this post the way I did - mixed marriages. There seems to be a much-increased tolerance, at least in urban India, for the stepping out of one’s immediate community for a partner. We have come far from the days of my parents’ elopement. (That our increased tolerance for mixed relationships extends much more to certain communities over others is..well…let’s say, the subject of many future posts. Let me leave it at this: when extended family learned about my choice of a Muslim name for my son…well…there were no tears of joy shed.)

So I mentioned what my first thought was on hearing of my cousin’s engagement to a lady from Assam. My second was a more practical (for me): I wonder what kind of food they’ll cook at home. Will my south Indian Tamil Brahmin cousin develop a taste for dished cooked with fermented soybean and bamboo shoots? For meat and fish cooked in bamboo? For smoked and fermented meat and fish dishes? For stir-fried silk worm cocoons? While my future cousin-in-law develops a taste for rasam and sambaar and vettakozambu and morkozhambu? Will their respective cuisines veer toward an interesting blend of elements from both cultures? I mean, the possibilities would be endless. Or will their cuisine of choice be generic “Indian” fare – the “curry” that the world thinks of as Indian - the lowest common denominator?

I mentioned the term local globalization several weeks ago, and this has, with this week’s post, come back to me. A rapidly changing urban demographic in India has resulted in a far greater appreciation for culinary diversity. Yes, diversity of an international nature, to be sure, but also an appreciation for the mind-boggling diversity within various Indian cuisines themselves. I read this week that Bangalore, for example, has two or three restaurants that specifically offer Assamese fare, and two others that serve food from Nagaland. And in the large, urban cities, there is no dearth of people eager to sample authentic cuisine from different parts of India. And as I said in that earlier post, this is nothing but good. And I hope my cousin and his future partner are among them.

So while in the future, I will offer you recipes from very different parts of India, cuisines I’m not familiar enough with yet, (like the pork curry with bamboo shoots), today, I give you something simple. I have mentioned many times earlier on that I was raised in a Tamil Brahmin household, and that the cuisine in our household, despite my mum’s wont for experimentation, was largely Tamil Brahmin. We used almost no garlic, onions in very few vegetable dishes, and our spices revolved around what is in the anjarai pottai I showed you earlier. Even ground cumin and coriander, while both commonly feature in various South Indian spice blends, were considered “North Indian” when used in vegetable curries.

So in my early years, my local globalization within my house entailed experimenting with “North Indian” spices – ground cumin and coriander – in vegetable dishes. And today, I give you what has become one of the favorite okra curries in my household. It’s an incredibly simple recipe I came up with a few months ago, and has quickly become my favorite way to eat okra. My dad would hate it. Sorry daddy.

Oh, and if you’re not a huge fan of okra, try the recipes I’ve given you - this is my third with the veggie; cooked properly, it really is incredible. And not slimy. But please do NOT use frozen okra. There’s just no getting over that slime!

Tip: There’s really nothing like good, fresh, tender okra. If you want to check if your okra is tender, try breaking off the tip; hold the okra in your hand and with your thumb, see if the tip breaks off. If it does, the okra is tender. If it doesn’t break, and just bends, the okra is woody and not tender.

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