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By Root 288 0

and the tastiest variety looks like thick, dirty brown leather). Even though our garden was full of fruit trees, the only ones that bore fruit were the mulberry and mango trees. We weren’t interested in the mulberries because they were sweet; we left those to the old folks. But the raw mangoes were attacked and seldom given a chance to ripen. The best time to steal the mangoes was midafternoon when the temperature was 110 degrees and most of the household napped in air-cooled comfort. Often we would climb the mango tree equipped with knife, salt, and pepper. We would then picnic on the boughs, along with the twittering sparrows.

My father and mother were both born in the heart of the old city of Delhi, where the streets are so narrow that a man and a cow can barely pass each other. Most of the old town houses there are three or four floors high and are built around an inner courtyard. They have many small rooms, niches for closets, and no view, except other houses, other courtyards, other floors. On all the floors are balconies, running around the courtyard. When my paternal grandfather had become a successful barrister and had returned from his travels abroad, being an adventurous and ambitious man, he decided to move out of the area and bought himself a garden estate on the banks of the Jumna. But my mother’s people stayed on in the old city. Every now and then my mother would take us to visit her family. Here I must rather shamefacedly admit that I felt, in those days, that I had very little in common with my old-city cousins. I loved to go there because of the food, which was superb—the best Kayasth (the name of my community) food one could ever hope to have. There were not many servants in this house, and all the cooking was done by the women, squatting on the kitchen floor. The odors would draw me to the kitchen door, where I would stand, first on one foot, then another, watching and sniffing. I wanted to go inside, but the kitchen was tiny and I would have had to take my shoes off—which was always difficult because of my mother’s tight, well-knotted shoe-lacing techniques. So I would stand, peering from the outside, until my aunt, a gentle woman with large teeth, would tell me to go play on the roof. I would do as she said, but eventually the odor of mushrooms cooking would draw me down again.

Sunset signaled the approach of dinner. A large cotton rug was unfolded in the courtyard. On this was spread a clean cotton sheet. Food was brought in on serving plates and placed in the center of the sheet. I always liked to carry in my favorite dishes, so I could look at them longer. Everyone sat around the food. Unfortunately, the men ate first and the women served them. I would watch my favorite dish of mushrooms, which I loved, being devoured by greedy males. As I took the empty plate to refil it for them, I would pray that at least some would be left for us. Finally our turn came. Fresh food was put on the serving plates and the women and girls would eat. We ate directly from the serving plate, breaking off a piece of bread from one plate and dipping it into another. My favorite mushrooms were obtainable only briefly during the rainy season. They were cooked with onions, garlic, tomatoes, cumin, coriander, turmeric, and a lot of hot red pepper. We ate them with pooris, an unleavened whole-wheat bread, round and puffed with hot air. We would also have potatoes, boiled first and then cooked with coriander, cumin, fenugreek, turmeric, onions, garlic, ginger, and yogurt. There would be lamb, prepared in the best Moghul tradition—with saffron, cardamoms, and nutmeg. And there were always pickles called water pickles because the pickling base is not oil or vinegar but water. To make them, green marrows (small summer squash), turnips, carrots, or watermelon rinds are blanched or put raw into a large earthenware container, together with crushed mustard seeds, salt, and, of course, water. The container is lightly covered, and the pickle is allowed to mature for one to two weeks. Even the liquid is totally irresistible.

Childhood