Grandma’s recipe book

During my stay at my grandparents’ place, my seven-year-old self would climb up onto the kitchen slab in the evening, while my grandmother prepared snacks for me — Tiger biscuits sandwiched together with cream and a simple toast drenched in lots of butter. The air would smell of tea and sweets, perhaps from the four o’clock tea my grandparents never missed. As I sat on the kitchen slab, fascinated with the buttons on the kitchen chimney, my grandfather would say, “It’s too hot in there, come watch some TV”, which I politely ignored out of fear of missing out on those delicious sandwiched biscuits. Grandma would also make gudparas, a festive Punjabi snack made of jaggery, bathed in plenty of powdered sugar (never complained about that). All these snacks, accompanied by a new episode of Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah, was my recipe for a perfect summer evening in Chandigarh.

When it was time to leave, and my parents came to pick me up, grandma would always give me a few crystals of mishri, probably as good luck for my ride back home.

In the mornings, I would wake up to the smell of parathas being fried. I was mesmerized by the transforming of potatoes, radishes and cauliflower into stiff and flat circles of flour. Sour lassi with it was nothing less than icing on the cake. Still not satisfied, I would beg grandma to take me to “the place where they kept fryums in gunny bags”, and buy about a kilo of bhujias and other street food. There was no match for the afternoons I spent eating those fryums, unconcerned about my skin breaking out.

When it was time to leave, and my parents came to pick me up, grandma would always give me a few crystals of mishri, probably as good luck for my ride back home. Of all the things I ate, those foggy grains are the ones I remember exclusively, perhaps because they reflected the simplicity and sweetness of days gone by.