My Grandmother’s Chholar Dal

We lived far away from our native state, West Bengal, all through our growing years. Andhra Pradesh was our home state because my father got a job there as a coal mining engineer. While it was a wonderful place to grow up in because the coal mines were situated in jungle area where we were surrounded by trees and wilderness, which we kids revelled in, still, our annual visits to Calcutta – where the rest of the clan lived – during our school holidays were also something we looked forward to eagerly.

Because of all the excitement involved in the whole experience, travelling from Kothagudem/Bellampalli/Ramagundam (the small coal towns we lived in) to Calcutta was a thrilling event all by itself. Those were the days of steam engines and our coal town railway stations were insignificant blips on the map of the great Indian railways. Hence, this huge great black steam engine would come chuff-chuffing into our tiny station billowing huge black plumes of smoke from its chimney, in which sweating train drivers frenziedly shovelled coal into the huge orange belly of the furnace that powered those what seemed like great monsters to our childish eyes. These trains would usually have their halt at our station at some wee hour of the night.

The journey to Calcutta took three whole days and involved changes of trains en route – usually in the middle of the night. All of which involved meticulous planning and packing by my parents. My mother filled tiffin-carriers full of food and snacks, since she didn’t trust the food the railways provided, or that available at stations where the train halted. She also was in charge of packing our suitcases, the clothes we would need for a month’s (usually) stay there. My father was in charge of the bedding which was carried in a huge, unwieldy, brown hold-all – pillows, bed sheets, blankets and so on.

How my brother and I would fight for the window seat! What excitement there was in watching the huge landscape, right from down south to an eastern state – which involved a travelling distance of almost half the sub-continent – rolling by outside the train window. The train halting at stations with fascinating names. The vendors selling sweetmeats and toys and knick-knacks. My father getting off the train and frenziedly filling our water bottles at stations while I’d feel my heart thud anxiously until he’d come back into the compartment – I always felt he would be left behind. And then the thrill of the arrival at the crowded Howrah station itself – people milling about hurriedly, either rushing to catch a train, or disembarking and rushing out to grab taxies. People haggling with coolies, who would carry loads of luggage on their head, shoulders, hands.

And then driving through the great, hazy, grey streets of Calcutta in a rattly old taxi. The rows and rows of what looked to our young eyes as huge crumbling buildings lining the streets, the innumerable shops, the crowded roads and footpaths, until we reached the five storeyed house of my maternal grand-father’s, on a broad street called Vivekananda Road, where the rest of my mother’s family lived in a joint family.

I remember how the taxi would come to a halt by the house, and everyone on every floor upstairs would be looking down from the balconies, watching for us to arrive, smiling. And how my Badamama (my mother’s eldest brother), who sat with my grandfather in the Ayurvedic clinic which they ran on the ground floor of the house, would hurry out, his crisp white dhoti flowing, his eyes crinkled in a big twinkling smile, and swing me and my brother out of the taxi and carry us inside. My grandfather chuffing me on my chin, ruffling my hair, playfully. And then climbing up the stairs – stopping at each floor to greet the relatives – aunts, uncles, cousins – to the third floor which was my grandmother’s domain.

The instant I’d step on to the third floor I would smell it. The heavenly smell of chholar dal cooking in the kitchen. For, my grandmother knew that chholar dal and Ilish maach (Hilsa fish) were our absolute favourites, and she always made those for us whenever we went to Calcutta.

My grandmother, who stood at five foot nothing and had a head full of flowing thick salt and pepper waist length hair, and wore the crisp, red bordered, white Bengal handloom saris (tangail and thaath) Bengali women wear at home, was the greatest cook in the world, as far as I was concerned. She didn’t use much masalas and she didn’t have any kitchen gadgets, except for the traditional ones, such as the huge slab of stone on which fresh masalas were ground each day and the earthen chulas which were filled with coal and lit each morning for the day’s cooking. It was with these simple contraptions that she created magic in the kitchen, her realm where she was the queen.

She cooked for the whole family – it was a huge family of seven sisters and three brothers, their husbands and wives and children – (though the married sisters moved out they usually converged in with kids and husbands in tow during school holidays) – of course with the help of the other women of the house, and servants. I would often sit by my grandmother watching as she sat on her pidi (a flat wooden short stool) with her boti (a sharp sickle shaped knife held down by the foot which was used for cutting and chopping vegetables and fish) as she would begin her cooking chores.

When chholar dal was on the menu, she would measure out the dal in a big brass utensil from one of the huge storage bins in the store room (which I found a fascinating dark place where all kinds of food stuffs were stored away) and take it into the kitchen and wash it thoroughly, and put it aside for the water residue to soak into the dal. In the meantime one of the servants would grind ginger into a smooth paste, and separately, jeera and red chillies with water into a reddish brown paste.

My grandmother meanwhile would crack open a fresh coconut, expertly pouring out the sweet water into a glass which I drank in a gulp, into two even halves. She would then proceed to scrape on the round serrated end of her boti, fixed there just for this purpose, into little mounds of fresh, white scraped coconut – which she let me nibble at – milky sweet to taste. She would save some of the coconut as hard white wedges which she sliced into thin slivers.

Then would begin the actual cooking process. A big kadai would be placed on the chula, now burning with a hot orange glow, into which she would pour in some mustard oil. When the oil let off a bluish plume of smoke, she would toss in half a handful of whole jeera and a few bay leaves, once those roasted a little, she would toss in the thin slivers of coconut and brown them lightly. And then would go in the jeera/red chilli paste, which she would stir about a little with her heavy long brass spatula, and then add the ginger paste, which would get another stir or two. Then in would go the soaked chholar dal, and some water – enough to cover the dal, but not too much – and salt and turmeric powder. She would cover this and allow it to simmer and cook, lifting the lid occasionally to check the grains of dal, and give it a stir or two.

While cooking it, my grandmother would tell the women who happened to be in the kitchen, my mother and aunts, the servants, that the thing about chholar dal is that it should not be overcooked or undercooked. Overcooking makes it an unpalatable mash, undercooking leaves the water of the dal too watery and the dal grains distastefully hard. The grains should remain chewy, yet the dal should be a thickish consistency, not watery. Deciding just at what point the dal is done is the secret of making great chholar dal – which my grandmother intuitively knew. (Though I’ve sat beside her and watched her make it innumerable times, I’ve never ever been able to make chholar dal like my grandmother’s.)

Then the cooked dal would be taken off the chula and garnished with homemade ghee, a little sugar stirred in, sliced green chillies, and the scraped coconut. We kids would quickly sit in rows on pidis with big brass thalis in front and have the dal ladled, thick, rich, golden coloured and aromatic, over steaming hot rice. Slurrrrp!

-by Rita Putatunda