“Why do Sri Lankans celebrate Poya, the night of the full moon, with a holiday every month?” asks my granddaughter. It’s a family celebration. One branch of the family has come from Sri Lanka. We are staring at the full moon from the terraced parterre in the swimming pool area of the Park Hotel in Chennai. The moon hangs down from the clear sky like a ripe melon waiting to be plucked. Its reflection looks like undulating orange slices on the pool’s aquamarine surface.
“Because we are an island people, who love to celebrate our island life,” explains one of the guests.
“No,” says another. “It’s to remember the words of the Buddha who attained Nirvana on Buddha Purnima, which marks his birth, atonement and death. He said, ‘Thou shalt not kill. Thou shall respect all creatures of the earth as one.’”
“Maybe it’s just to remind us of how vast the universe is and how small we are when we stand here looking at the moon,” I explain in my best granny mode.
Once a year I marshal the various members of our family and organise an elaborate evening based on a theme. This time it’s on Gully Boy, a movie my granddaughter had taken me to watch. Due to the anti-Hindi stance of my street-fighting days, I have been reluctant to watch any of the grand Bollywood sagas. But Gully Boy is subtitled in English. I have become an instant convert. I can rock with the best of the gang.
The DJ is belting out the Mumbaiya beat for us sedate Chennai-ites, telling us “Yah, Southies, Northies, Northern-Easties, your time is Now! Now, Eepon! Eepon! Namma time wandutah!” Nevermind that I don’t speak Tamil either.
With chef Ashutosh we have created an amazing spread of Indian street food. Do we mention that we have scoured the gullies of Mumbai and Calcutta to come up with tiny dosais dubbed ‘Tacos’ and filled them with a spicy mixture? Fish fingers and prawn fries courtesy Colombo leap out of the pan. The desserts are worth the candle. One of them is a layered Aamras baked custard, as golden as the moon above us. The other looks like miniature mille-feuilles, the thousand-flaked French pastry. But this one is filled and layered with thick creamy rabdi and veiled with a filmy chador of icing like the ladies in Hira Mandi. Here I am channeling Kalank rather than Gully Boy. Do we add there is rose-petal kulfi also? More salaams in the direction of Hira Mandi, the atelier Rose in Kalank.