Of kadhi and friends!

Whenever I plan to make kadhi chawal, probably the commonest and most popular of North Indian dishes, I am deluged by memories. Memories sweet and spicy – memories of endless nights of chatting, gossips, that lets-take-on-the-world-attitude, midnight cooking, group studies with mandatory coffee breaks, hanging over the balcony for hours, quarrels and the patch ups… so much and more. And I get transported to a time some fifteen odd years back, memories still vibrant in their various colours.

Well you have every right to wonder what has that kadhi got to do with any of these and my answer is – everything.

I was just eighteen when I started from an innocuous little township called Gomia and reached the capital city of the country. Well I was not alone to undertake this journey; in fact we travelled in hordes as, in spite of an excellent schooling system, there was not any provision for further studies there. So we packed our bags and chugged into some bigger cities of the country. Yes chugged only because flying was or still is not an option in Gomia. But for each of us it was, I am sure, more than a journey. It was the first step out of that safe cocoon called Gomia, first step towards independence, first rendezvous with a world already moved far ahead than how we had known it to be and probably lot more.

 Gomia is an interesting place with representatives from almost all parts of the country. We had Kashmiris, Punjabis, Gujaratis, Marwaris, Kannads, Telugus, Malayalis, Tamils, Marathis and of course the neighbouring 3eBengalis, Biharis and Oriyas and more. So right from the beginning we had an exposure to the homemade specialities of various cuisines from our time to time forays into our friends’ house. As we dug our teeth into various delicacies, our mothers exchanged recipes and of course there often came out some interesting fusion cuisine at times.

I know you are still wondering about that special link between kadhi and friends and here I come to it. Now in spite of the culinary diversities of my childhood, somehow this kadhi kept eluding me for the first eighteen years of my life! Its only when I reached Delhi and found myself sharing my room in the PG with another girl from Bihar did I get a taste of it. Even at that time when we were just in the first year  of college, she was a wonderful cook and our ready reckoner for any Bihari recipe. With her I was re-introduced to the authentic Bihari cuisine and even learnt a lot… in fact, she was the one to teach me the very difficult art of making round chapattis.

And yes you guess it right; she was the one who introduced me to the sharp, tangy-smooth taste of kadhis!! Whenever she made kadhi, we had an extended lunch session with friends in PG often continuing for hours. We would talk of studies to politics to movies to our future to god knows what, all the while relishing and praising our own culinary skills. And so kadhi chawal became not just a meal but a pretext of long chatting sessions (not that we actually required any pretext for that).

Today, in a different place, time and scenario, and after a long time I once again thought of making kadhi and found my mind sifting through the pictures of past. It brought to my mind those days of carefree camaraderie, positive energy, small and simple pleasures and a lot more. But I also realized that though I could recall even the minutest details of those years,I had forgotten the recipe completely. My family not being the kadhi lover types, I did not try making this for a long time. And lo! It has got shifted to some irretrievable stack of my mind. That did not of course deter me from my plan. It just took a phone call and there she was – our madam ready-reckoner, ready with her recipe! So once again, I jumped back to my kadhi making mission, and once again abandoned myself to those years which had paved and cemented our bonds of friendship so strong that it still is intact across the deterring parameters of time and space.

And finally the kadhi was complete!!