Growing Sacred Basil

“You  are nice folks but you don’t have a Tulsi plant in your home,” my maid Kailashben had said with some visible annoyance a few days after she stepped into my home to look after the toddlers, some fifteen years ago. Now, Tulsi or Sacred Basil is a must in every Hindu home. It is believed to be essential to a home to ensure happiness. Many legends are associated with the Tulsi in Indian mythology. Tulsi is Lakshmi, Lord Vishnu’s consort, or Radha, Krishna’s beloved. Tulsi means matchless and it is essential in the worship of Hindu dieties.

Tulsi grew wild at my parent’s place. No special care was needed to nurture it as such. However, at my home it was a different story. No matter how hard I tried  to nurture it in my clay pot, it just would not grow. It was at one such point of  time that Kailashben had walked into our lives. Peeved at her admonition, it was priority for  us to get a Tulsi plant, for our home. Off went I and my husband to the nearest nursery, on our way back from work, to choose a Tulsi plant which we hoped would flourish. We selected a healthy plant, ordered the ‘mali’ to repot it with good soil and manure, and zoomed off home with our prized possession. At home we fussed over it, watering it, putting the pot atop a wrought iron stand near the ledge of our little balcony. Enough sunlight and adequate water would do the trick with our sacred plant, we hoped. Alas that was not to be and the plant began to wilt a few days later. The same story was repeated over the years, with the Tulsi just refusing to bloom in the clay pots, which we then threw out in despair. Such was our pleasure to see a blooming Tulsi elsewhere that we felt like stealing it for  home!

Tulsi has many ‘gunas’. A couple of Tulsi leaves in one’s mouth can make one less thirsty. The leaves are medicinal too, giving relief in coughs and colds and taking care of digestive problems too. Tulsi oil also destroys bacteria and other insects.

According to the Padma Purana, even the soil around the Tulsi plant is considered holy. If  a Tulsi twig is used as a lamp for Vishnu it is equivalent to several million lamps. The soul of a dead person whose body has been cremated with Tulsi sticks attains a permanent place in Vishnu’s heaven and is not reborn, it is believed. 

Of ‘ Bangla ranna’ & Gujju friends

When  a friend  recently expressed his love for ‘Bangla ranna’  (Bengali cooking),  having stayed in Kolkata for a while,  I was transported back to my early days of getting familiar with and learning to cook traditional Bengali dishes. My introduction to any cooking at all was rather late. While at my parent’s place as a teenager and also as an adult, studies and other sundry things kept me busy, and my indulgent father found me excuses to slip away from chores to do with cooking, while my mother cried foul.  Having found a job later, I found even more excuses to slip away from it all!

Again, with me being an honorary Gujarati having stayed in Gujarat for long and having more Gujju friends than Bengali, my preferred palate was/is Gujarati, even though Bengali food was a staple fare at home.  However, once into my marital home, I realized that my in-laws recognized only Bangla fare, that food was their world and not being able to tell one ‘maach’ (fish) from the other, was a sin.

And here I was…my knowledge of anything to do with cooking being zilch (I actually couldn’t tell one ‘dal’ from the other leave alone fish!)…at the mercy of incorrigible foodies! Those days I was eternally petrified of being exposed and of putting my foot in the mouth once the discussion veered towards food and cooking. Mercifully, no one actually expected  me to cook a meal in the early days of marriage, so it was quite okay for a while.

A short while later having moved away from the joint family, I had to learn to cook, which I did through trial and error. Hubby of course dared not complain as I burst into a flood of tears once at being ‘told off’ for not having made a dish to his liking, but with in-laws being  in the same city, some kin or the other would spring a nasty surprise by arriving unannounced for dinner. Then it was my turn to dish out the traditional  Bangla fare. Those days the uniquely Bengali five spice mix called ‘panch phoron’  came to my rescue as I cooked every vegetable dish  with this mix and powdered spices! Cooking the ‘dal’ in an open pan on the horrible kerosene stove was a nightmare, and with me being asked about what ‘tadka I would use’  by my ‘guests’, it was even more horrible. Often times my ma-in-law would give me the incredulous look as I told her about what would go into my dish while my pa-in-law who demanded to taste the half cooked ‘dal’ or ‘subzi’ would insist that I was ‘almost there’.  As for the fish, I had to go by my instincts, and hubby’s ‘covert’ help!

To combat the in-laws’ onslaught I armed myself with a book on ‘how to cook traditional Bengali dishes’ to save my face. Much water has flown under the bridge hence and now I can at least cook some Bengali dishes, if not all, with comfort.

Strangely, I received a certificate of sorts from people when I cooked  a simple fish curry – shorshe bata maach (fish with mustard paste)- a great favourite with Bengalis, at a ceremony to mark the passing on of my pa-in-law two years ago. Even though many complex and difficult dishes that my pa-in-law loved were cooked by my kin from the in-laws side, it was my simple fish curry that stole everyone’s hearts that day! And I could almost hear my pa-in-law whisper to me ‘See, I told you, you were almost there, but now you truly are’.

And as for my dear vegetarian Gujju friend, I promise to treat him and his family to ‘luchi’, ‘alur dom’, ‘chholar dal’, ‘begun bhaja’, ‘ tok’  and ‘mishti’ very soon !