Food made with love served with love can make life a grand celebration. The fragrance is always inviting and It can create millions of memories. For me, favorite food is the best way to uplift dampened spirits.
Food can spice up a literary meet too. Post-retirement, I joined “Abhivyakti” the oldest and the most respected literary group of Chandigarh, started by the doyenne of Hindi literature Dr. Virendra Mehandiratta, forty-six years ago. After teaching Chemistry for forty years, I am writing Hindi poetry and enjoying it too.
Cooking being a passion for me, I wrote a few poems around cooking. I was hesitant to recite these in our meeting as I felt that the literary mind would find them frivolous. One day I just gathered courage and recited a few. To my utter joy and surprise, everyone enjoyed and appreciated my writing. The appreciation peaked with a meeting at our place. I enjoyed cooking for my friends and together we celebrated life, literature, and poetry.
A member in the group is a Doctor by profession who writes wonderful stories and poetry. He is fond of cooking too. At our last meeting, he read out a story titled “Babru “. The name intrigued everyone. He read it in animation style. He kept his diary on the table with a casserole displayed alongside. The story was about Nimmo Bua who was an aunt to everyone in a small town. On a particular day, she wanted to make Babrus for her son. She asked a neighbour for a skillet, asked a boy to run to the small shop for some wheat flour and sugar, asked another neighbour for fennel seeds, asked the milk man to give a generous measure of milk that day, requested the priest to arrange some pure ghee. In the story, the lady was organising all this with excitement.
Our Doctor now removed the lid from the casserole. A red napkin covering something, was peeping out. Everyone is waiting for the lady to make Babrus so that they could enjoy their share. All of us were trying to have a glimpse of Babrus in the casserole. The Doctor now pulled out the red napkin and there was this empty casserole teasing us with a crisp white napkin lining it. No Babrus.
The story moved ahead. All ingredients ready, people ready to eat but Nimmo Bua refused to make Babrus as her son was already relishing the Babrus cooked by his wife. Now we forgot about the new dish and were sympathising with the lady. The Doctor dramatically pulled out a second casserole from underneath the table and removed the lid and low and behold, there were the Babrus! It is a popular dish from Kangra district in Himachal Pradesh. It can rightly be called Indian pancakes. A ladle full of smooth batter made from wheat flour, sugar and milk with some fennel seeds is poured on a ghee laden hot skillet and thin pancakes are cooked to make sweet and yummy Babrus. In district Sirmour it is known as patande. There’s a savory version of Babru which is just like a poori with a stuffing of ground channa daal. Traditional Himachali food like khoru, patore, babroo, chaa ghosht, and murgh anardana that have been long forgotten are now being offered by a chain of hotels in Himachal.
The excitement, the great memory that this Babru created has immortalized its taste in our mouths and enshrined Nimmo Bua in our hearts.
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