Childhood In A Pickle

Exams are over and children will be home full-time—hope that sounds as good to you as it sounds to the kids. Vacations are a wonderful time for exploring, not just museums and parks but our food wisdom too. That’s exactly what India has routinely done. Children went visiting grandparents and, amongst many other things, took part in making papad and pickles.

Yes, that’s learning food culture, isn’t it? And with that one also learns another inherent part of India’s culture—understanding and practising the fine art of cooking. Every grandchild irrespective of gender must have learnt how to pick fresh produce for pickles, knead the dough for papad, segregate spices and celebrate the coming together of the entire household and even neighbourhood over cooking/food.

I am not sure how to say it the right way but this will be the first generation of grandparents guilty of not transmitting this beautiful tradition to their grandkids. In the meanwhile, papad and pickle, the two therapeutic ingredients of Indian households, have been banished due to ‘too much salt’ and ‘too much oil’. Instant noodles, on the other hand, have advertisements where the mother’s eyes well up with tears because the daughter makes the instant noodles just like her. Really? And then ads of children eating biscuits and winning the race, eating chocolate cereal for nourishment and god knows what.

Papad works as a digestive; pickle works as a therapeutic culture of gut-friendly bacteria and both are super yummy. They are part of a wholesome meal and if you learnt the art of making them from your granny, you would also know the right way (proportion and quant­ity) to eat them.