My Kitchen and me.

I have been dabbling in the kitchen ever since I remember growing up, but only at the time when I found a kitchen of my own that the cooking activity started in some sense, that happened when I got married. But few months, may be a year, before that I had obtained a gas connection, that was at a premium in those days and would take a couple of years waiting before you are allotted the same. Registration would need a ration card that was your identity in that era like what Aadhaar Card is now, if you didn't have one you don't exist. I had moved to Bombay (as it was called then, I prefer to call it that to this day) about 5-6 years back and was living in a dormitory where most fellow residents were engineers who had just arrived in the city with a secure job, like me, and stayed there till either they moved to US for higher education or for married and moved out. It was fun, almost like a hostel life that I never lived when it was time for that for the most (being a day scholar as it was called, meaning someone who stayed outside the college hostel either by renting a room in the city or living with parents, mine was later.) There were 8 rooms for 22 of us, a common entrance and a common house manager Ramappa, who would be half naked all the time with a green gamchha on his shoulders to cope with Bombay's searing heat who would often be found lying on a small green sofa in the passage and would spent night somewhere else I think at Suresh Bhai Asher's veranda. Suresh Bhai was a middle aged landlord who lived close by in Rajawadi in the Post Office complex, a building that he owned. He didn't do much besides collecting rent from people for several properties that he owned in the area. Post Office was also his tenant. Actually, he may not have been much older than me but his frugal life style and single point focus on money and lack of physical activity gave him a huge paunch and then he would walk slow and with slight hunch that made him look a lot older. Suresh Bhai would promptly show up every First Sunday of the month with a register in his hand and sit on the sofa that was Ramappa's "property", who would be quite reluctant to give that place to his "maalik". Ramappa would then start knocking from room number 1 to 8 in that order. Being Sunday, even by noon most people would be sleeping and will shout and abuse Ramappa for waking them up, but when they realised it was the first Sunday, they will promptly cover themselves to some decency and queue up one by one to pay rent, all in cash. If someone was away, his roommate/s would be asked to pay on his behalf and if that fails, he would have to pay a visit to Suresh Bhai's house when he returned to the room or give rent money to Ramappa, even when that fails Suresh Bhai would come following Sunday, fuming and warning the fellow and if they still fail there will be an eviction notice but that was a rare occasion.

Ramappa was a 24*7 employee of Suresh Bhai who prima facie looked a cruel employer but gradually when you got to know him, you found him a helpful, concerned and a person with heart. He sounded tough when it came to money but if you have no issues on that front and paid your rent timely, he would open his heart out and talked to you asking you to sit next to him on his precious possession, that green coloured torn rexine two seater sofa that had some springs coming out so when you sit you had to watch for the space that could fit your bums avoiding the springs. 

Ramappa would start his day early and often times spend him nights on that green sofa. He would fetch milk for us from the Aarey Milk scheme milk booth in the neighborhood. In those days you couldn't get milk just as a walk in customer. You need to have coupons bought in advance. There were three types of coupons depending upon which milk you want, a blue striped aluminum foil cap that would be full cream milk then a red striped which is standard and the cheapest one would be with the green striped, that was toned. You would have to pay a deposit of Rs 5.00 for the bottle that could take 500 ml of milk. Ramappa would get instructions before he slept and if you had a late night you would put a note on the sofa with the token and leave bottle/s for him to collect milk. Many of us had nothing to do with the milk as they hardly could fetch water for themselves leave aside making tea, so they would either depend on someone offering them tea when they woke up and roomy is making tea or they would simply walk to to the the nearest Udipi, one of which was Shetty's restaurant who had diversified his menu and included some tandoori dishes. Other Udipis only served "south Indian". In our neighborhood there were two Udipis on either side of the lane, one was called simply Udipi that was on the MG Road and other side was Shetty's Udipi on the Tilak Road. Shetty himself was quite a character, he was a jovial person and would often sit with you when there are not many customers and sometime when you arrive or leaving the place you would spent a long time chatting with him at the counter. He must have been in his late thirties and solidly build and looked a Shetty every inch.. if you have not lived in Bombay it is difficult for you to imagine how a typical Shetty looked.. remember the famous Shetty, the fighting villain of the movies of sixties and seventies.. like him. In those days cinema industry in Bombay didn't end with a name "wood".. Bollywood, Tollywood etc.. it was simply Film industry. The only Wood, we got to know and popular was Woodstock, the newly built fancy restaurant on the MG Road between the Rajawadi Post office and Ratan, the apartment block where we stayed, that offered continental and mughlai cuisine. It was fancy and they were the first occupants of the newly built seven storied Savani Apartments that had a lift. But since I didn't know anyone living there, I never went to see how the apartments looked or whether the lift was the new design automatic door shutting type of the regular grill door type.

I have been fond of drinking tea even from my college days, don't remember if during school time we were offered tea at home or at someone's house... I clearly remember at least not till we were in Betma, except when Damu offered sometimes at his brother's Murali Tea Stall at the bus stand when his brothers were not there and he didn't ask me to pay for it. During the college days in the second year of engineering when I used to make tea on the wick-stoves in the room that I had rented closer to home and shared by Narsing and my brother Praveen. It was fun and some times frustrating as I won't realise that the kerosene is over and the wicks will start burning and the whole room will be filled with the carbon residues of the wicks before you put the fire off. Sometimes we would have a pumped kerosene stove, that would give better flame due to air pressure but the problem with that was that its rubber gasket, where you pump, would often crack and you will never be able to build desired pressure for kerosene to evaporate and burn.

Anyway, at Ratan, we used electric sigri (stove) that had a thick filament that would provide desired heat that was discouraged or rather strictly not allowed by Suresh Bhai as each one of those would consume upwards of 1 kilowatt of power. So we used to hide that sigri under the bed or inside the trunk whenever Suresh Bhai was around. The problem with that sigri was that regularly its coil became hard with the use and used to break and needed a change that would cost Rs 2 or 3, an expensive proposition those days, we would often remove the coil from the groove, stretch it and rejoin it so that it would get fused/welded when current passed through it .. this way we would extend its life by several months without replacing.

Gradually, I started making daal-chaval over the my stove/sigri, whenever I got bored eating out at Shetty's or other restaurants. In those days Udipi Thaalis used to cost Rs 3.00 that was a sumptuous set meal but Shetty had a la carte menu and if you order one veg and a daal with a couple of tandoori rotis it would exceed Rs 3.50 or Rs 4.00. Sometimes when add doodhi halwa (a bottle gourd sweet) you had to shell out even Rs 5.00 or even more. So daily visit To Shetty's was not in practice.

But when I decided it's time for me to get married although no match was in sight, I planned to have a gas connection as that was more essential than even having a bed in the bedroom. If I was lucky to rent a house that had a bedroom, as in Bombay no one rented a house to you lest you (mis)use the rent laws and never leave the expensive property for which the landlord has invested his life's savings. So what I was expecting was either just a Hall (10'*10' or even 10'*8') and a small kitchen or if I was lucky to have a bedroom in addition to this hall and kitchen.. in Bombay terms, that has now become common everywhere, it was called 1BHK house. I then, tried to get a ration card without which it was impossible to proceed. So, when I was in Indore where I had my name in the family ration card, I went to the revenue authorities and applied for removal of my name. Several trips over several months, I managed to get that certificate that I submitted to ration card department in Ghatkopar area, several trips later and with great convincing and  cajoling with Suresh Bhai, assuring him that I will never use the ration card to out possess him from the apartment, he gave me a written document confirming I reside in  the building as his paying guest, I managed to get the ration card. It could have been earlier had I greased palms of the clerk by Rs 100 or so.. but I preferred to wait and used my charm of being a native Marathi.. my name always made people believe so and after staying in Bombay and Pune for several years I had learned and developed native skills. As in other places in Bombay too there is a feeling of brotherhood when you speak the local language and that had its own advantages. Once I was going on a scooter that belonged to my company Photophone's purchase department that I was allowed to use for official visits to vendors. When I shifted to Bombay in 1978 I was barely 20 and was not eligible for a driver's license but visiting vendors and ancillaries on scooter would save money and time (for the company) so I used to take Scooter, an API Lambretta,  whenever there was an urgency to get some component that ran short on the assembly line. One day during one such visit I didn't see a No-Entry lane sign and entered.. soon there was a whistle and I had to stop, the cop asked लेसन (license)?  I replied अहो साहेब चूक झाली, मी बोर्ड नाही पहायला (sorry sir, I didn't see the sign), he then asked what was my name and when I said प्रदीप जोशी, he said नंतर लक्ष्य ध्यावे जोशी साहेब( in future, be careful, Joshi saheb). I am sure, if my name was not Joshi and if I didn't speak Marathi I would have been down by at least Rs 10. 

So I got my Ration Card and that was like a celebration time as now I was officially a Bombay resident. Well, I soon applied for a gas connection and after a year or so got one from Bharat Gas... and that is when I set up my small kitchen in the room that was barely 10*8 occupied by Me and Ashwin. This must have been 1984. I was still a few years away from finalising a bride for myself, but now "equipped" to have one.

I had started writing this post to describe how I made Daal Kachori yesterday but as always happens while writing you often go tangent.. well I will soon be writing the Kachori making process.. standby.