The Case of Exploding Eggplants
My recent trip to the USA this spring was momentous in more ways than one. First, of course, was the birth of my granddaughter, who decided to be there before I was, impatient to manifest her precious self before her grandma showed up. At various points in my journey, as I progressed around the world, I learned that my daughter-in-law’s water had broken, that she had gone into labour, and then, just before the final leg of my journey, that the baby had arrived and mother and child were both doing well. A friend of theirs had been deputed to receive me at the airport. And he had his own story to tell. Having seen a photograph of me dressed in a salwar kameez, he approached a random stranger donning similar clothes, and asked her if she was X’s mother. Since I was wearing jeans, and had also stepped outside the terminal building, he couldn’t spot me and it took a little telephonic coordination via the son to get us together.
It was late in the evening when I arrived, way past the hospital’s visiting hours. The young man took me home, showed me the various plug points and light switches. He also taught me how to operate the infamous electric stove (which had a lovely old fashioned whistling kettle perched on one of the rings) and made sure I was safe and comfortable before he left. My son would come in the morning and take me to the hospital. I foraged in the fridge, ate some bread and cheese and fruit, found a good book, and settled down for the night. I had never cooked on an electric stove before, but since I felt pretty chuffed in my new role as Dadi, I did not allow a mere electric stove to dent my confidence, although I had no plans of tackling it before morning.
My granddaughter was, of course, exquisite. It was an indescribable feeling, holding her for the very first time, and then gazing at her perfection as she slept. I met her briefly, then went back home to sleep off my jet lag. The family would return from hospital the following day.
I had been issued a set of keys to the apartment. With the vaguest idea of a supermarket being in a particular direction, I marched off. The gently rolling hills were a bit of a challenge, coming from the entirely flat terrain I live in. Huffing and puffing up the hill, I saw a few shops, and then a large supermarket. Once again, I accosted the giant sized American vegetables and triumphantly marched downhill, armed with a couple of bags full of potential nourishment. The kitchen had most of the spices I use, and I was carrying a small sealed tube of asafoetida, for cooking but also as a traditional remedy for an infant’s gas problems. (Make a concentrated solution of asafoetida and water and heat it. Gently apply while warm to the area around the navel, and then foment with a heated dry cloth. You will be left with a rather smelly baby. Better smelly than howling, methinks). I made some gobhi alu and dal, and waited for the youngsters to come home with the baby. The first thing the son did when he got home was to open the living room windows and turn on the exhaust fan in the bathroom, as his nose was now averse to desi cooking smells inside his living quarters.
Digressions apart, as we learned to live with a newborn, (Even if I did not get up through the night, I would often wake up to her cries.) I decided to befriend the electric stove. I bought whole wheat flour, made chapatis and parathas, mostly remembering to turn on the bathroom exhaust and opening the living room windows when I did so. In the absence of a toaster, I would either serve underdone or scorched toast, made in the broiler. Toast apart, I seemed to be reasonably competent with the electric stove.
Little did I know that my best (worst) was yet to come.The eggplants available there were huge beauties, perfect for good old baingan ka bharta . But how does one roast them without an open flame? My daughter-in-law suggested that I broil them. There was a thick foil sheet on the oven shelf, and I set the eggplant upon it. I busied myself with other things. A few minutes later there was a huge bang from the kitchen. The oven door had flown open, and there were shreds of eggplant all over the place. In my ignorance I had forgotten to prick the eggplant, something you do not need to do when roasting it on a gas flame. I did manage to salvage enough eggplant for our dinner that evening, and it was delicious. Scrubbing out the oven was no fun, though.
The next eggplant was properly scored with a knife and roasted beautifully in the broiler. It was then turned into a delectable raita, from a new recipe I’d found on the internet. However, the juices dripped off the foil sheet, and got cooked onto the floor of the oven. Cleaning that was not fun either. And so, a few days later, I placed eggplant number three in a blue Pyrex dish that would catch all the drippings, and popped it in to broil. A few minutes later I remembered that I had not scored the eggplant, so I took out the hot dish and it broke apart in my hands, sending shards of blue glass across the kitchen floor. That particular eggplant was trashed, and my son told me to leave the eggplants alone, thank you very much, most relieved that I hadn’t got hurt.
I was, however, not one to give up easily. My daughter-in-law’s parents would be coming to see their new granddaughter, and I wanted to make baingan ka raita for them. On my next trip to the supermarket, I bought shallow foil baking dishes. I religiously scored all subsequent eggplants. I fortunately did not cause any more explosions, nor did I have a dripped-on oven.
As it so happens, gas stoves entered the Indian homes sometime in the mid-to-late sixties. Before that most cooking was done on traditional angeethis, (desi coal stoves), and eggplants and other vegetables were conveniently roasted in the embers. In many parts of India, eggplants are scored and garlic cloves, green chillis and/or spices like asafoetida are inserted into the slits before roasting. Many people prefer to roast eggplants in electric ovens so that the gas burners don’t get blocked by the dripping juices.So neither scoring nor baking are novel concepts re eggplants! Maybe it was just my brand new granny’s brain which couldn’t deal with the oven-eggplant combination!
I am waiting for my granddaughter to grow up enough for me to tell her how I will always think of exploding eggplants when I remember her earliest days.
Memories of my granddaughter’s tiny perfection, the softness of her skin and the fragrance of her silky black hair, soft beneath my chin, are inevitably combined with memories of the smoky fragrance of roasting as well as exploding eggplants. For a baby with more than her fair share of ridiculous pet names, I think I have a new one: Baingan.
Dipali Taneja has a post graduate degree in Child Development from Delhi University. She is grandmother to three dogs and one very young human. Her short stories have been published in the Onam special supplement of The Times of India in Kochi, and she has been blogging at dipalitaneja.blogspot.com since August 2007.