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  By now she had allowed the window to be opened. I peeped in and saw the tired but joyous face of Peerambi and a tiny, chubby version of Mohammed Saab, Hussain’s father, asleep on the cane tray. The neem leaves were hanging, the cactus was kept in a corner and the fragrance of the lobana had filled the entire room. Ajji also looked tired and there was sweat on her forehead. But she was cleaning her accessories vigorously in the hot water and wiping them before placing them carefully back in her wooden box.

  Just as we were about to leave, Hussain bent down and touched Ajji’s feet. In a choked voice he said, ‘Ambakka Aai, I do not know how to thank you. We are poor and cannot give you anything. But I can thank you sincerely from the bottom of my heart. You are a mother of a hundred children. You have blessed my son by bringing him into this world. He will never stray from the correct path.’

  Ajji touched him on his shoulder and pulled him up. There were tears in her eyes too. She wiped them and said, ‘Hussain, God only wants us to help each other in difficult times. Peerambi is after all like another Akkavva to me.’

  By now the sun was up and I followed Ajji back home without stumbling. Dyamappa was strolling lazily far behind us. One doubt was worrying me and I had to clear it. ‘Ajji, you have given birth only to ten children. Why did Hussain say you are a mother of hundred?’

  Ajji smiled and adjusting the pallu that was slipping off her head because of her brisk walk, she said, ‘Yes. I have given birth only to ten children but these hands have brought out a hundred children in our village. Akkavva, I will pray that you become the mother of a hundred children, irrespective of the number you yourself give birth to.’

  17

  Food for Thought

  Rekha is a very dear friend and our families have known each other for generations. Since I hadn’t seen her for a long time, I decided to visit her. I picked up the phone and dialled her number.

  Her father, Rao, who is like a father to me, picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’

  We exchanged greetings and I said, ‘Uncle, I am coming to your house for lunch tomorrow.’

  Her father, a botanist, was very happy. ‘Please do. Tomorrow is a Sunday and we can relax a little bit. Don’t run off quickly!’ he replied.

  In a city such as Bengaluru, going from Jayanagar to Malleswaram on a weekday usually takes a minimum of two hours. Travelling on a Sunday is much easier because it takes only half the time. When I reached her home the next day, I could smell that lunch was almost ready, and yet the aromas wafting in from the kitchen indicated to me that the day’s menu would somehow be different. None of the typical Karnataka dishes were laid out on the table, and the cuisine was, in fact, quite bland for my taste.

  ‘I may wear a simple sari but I am a foodie, Rekha! Is the lunch specially arranged so that I don’t come again?’ I joked, as one can with an old friend who will not misunderstand and take offence.

  Rekha’s father laughed heartily. ‘Well.’ He sighed. ‘Today is my mother’s shraddha or death anniversary. On this day, we always prepare a meal from indigenous vegetables.’

  ‘What do you mean by indigenous?’ I was perplexed. ‘Aren’t all the vegetables available in our country indigenous, except perhaps ones like cauliflower, cabbage and potato?’

  ‘Oh my God! You have just brought up the wrong topic on the wrong day with the wrong person!’ exclaimed Rekha in mock dismay. ‘After lunch, I think I should just leave you with my father and join you both later in the evening. This will take at least four hours of your time.’

  I knew that Rekha’s father was a botanist, but it was then that I realized that he was passionate about this subject. Though I had known him for a really long time, I had never seen this facet of his personality before. Probably, he had been too busy during his working years while we had been too busy playing and fooling around.

  ‘Is this really true, Uncle?’ I asked.

  He nodded.

  Since I come from a farmer’s family on my paternal side, I have always had a fascination for vegetables. I knew vaguely about the things we could grow, the seasons to grow them in and the ones that we could not grow, including the reasons why. However, whenever I broached the subject with friends interested in agriculture and farming, I never really received a proper answer. Finally, here was a man more than willing to share his knowledge with me! I couldn’t resist.

  ‘You know, Rekha,’ I said, ‘it is difficult to get knowledgeable people to spend time explaining their subject matter to others. Today, Google is like my grandmother. I log on to the website any time I require an explanation of something I don’t understand or want to learn about.’

  ‘Right now, you are logging on to an encyclopedia,’ Rekha smiled and glanced at her father affectionately.

  The conversation drifted to other subjects as we ate lunch. The meal constituted of rice, sambar without chillies, dal with black pepper and not chillies, gorikayi (cluster beans), methi saag, cucumber raita and rice payasam. It was accompanied by udin vada with black pepper. There was pickle and some plain yogurt on the side too. After we had eaten this lunch, well-suited for someone recovering in a hospital, Rekha’s father said, ‘Come, let’s go to the garden.’

  Rekha’s family owned an old house on the corner of a street. Her grandfather had been in the British railways and was lucky enough to buy the corner plot at a low price and had built a small home with a large garden there. In a city like Bengaluru, filled with apartments and small spaces, the garden was something of a privilege and a luxury.

  Uncle and I walked to the garden while Rekha took a nap. He settled himself on a bench, while I looked around. It was a miniature forest with a large kitchen garden of carrots, okra, fenugreek and spinach—each segregated neatly into sections. A few sugar-cane stalks shone brightly in front of us while a dwarf papaya tree heavy with fruit stood in a corner. On the other end was a line of maize as well as flowering trees such as the parijata (the Indian coral tree), and roses of varying colours.

  ‘Uncle and Aunty must be spending a lot of time here making this place beautiful,’ I thought. ‘All the trees and plants seem healthy—almost as if they are happy to be here!’

  ‘Do you think that all the vegetables we have around us are from India? Or are they from other countries?’ he asked out of the blue.

  I felt as if I was back in school in front of my teacher. But I wasn’t scared. Even if I gave him a wrong answer, it wasn’t going to affect my progress report. ‘Of course, Uncle! India has the largest population of vegetarians. So, in time, we have learnt to make different kinds of vegetarian dishes. Even people who eat meat avoid it during traditional events such as festivals, weddings, death anniversaries and the month of Shravana.’

  ‘I agree with your assessment of everything, except that most vegetables are grown in India. The truth is that the majority of our vegetables are not ours at all. They have come from different countries.’

  I stared at him in disbelief.

  He pointed to a tomato plant—a creeper with multiple fruits, tied to a firm bamboo stick. ‘Look at this! Is this an Indian vegetable?’

  I thought of tomato soup, tomato rasam, tomato bhat (tomato-flavoured rice), sandwiches and chutney. ‘Of course it is. We use it every single day. It is an integral part of Indian cuisine.’

  Uncle smiled. ‘Well, the tomato did not originate in India, but in Mexico. It made its way to Europe in 1554. Since nobody ate tomatoes over there at the time, they became ornamental plants because of the beautiful deep-red colour. At some point, there was a belief in Europe that it was good for curing infertility, while some thought that it was poisonous. The contradicting perspectives made it difficult for this fruit to be incorporated into the local diet for a long time. Its lack of value must have been a real push for initiating Spain’s tomato festival, where millions of tomatoes are used every year to this day. A story goes that one business-savvy European surrounded his tomato plants with a sturdy, thick fence to show his neighbours that the fruits were not poisono