My grandmother’s best friend
This May my grandmother’s best friend Vimla aunty passed away. A loving, jolly and garrulous lady, with paan stained teeth. She and her husband were both Kashmiri, Hindu Pandits. With the same last name as Rushdie’s, character Boonyi Kaul, in Shalimar the Clown. We went up a couple of summers when we were young.
The Kauls had a beautiful house, made of wood, painted in green, in a village called Brain in the Srinagar valley. We used to eat traditional Kashmiri Pandit food in their house, which according to Agha Shahid Ali was the best in the whole of Kashmir. (See Amitav Ghosh’s obit for Agha Shahid Ali, in Incendiary circumstances). I remember eating Haak, which was meat curry with saag in it, and Rogan Josh which was succulent mutton curry. Pandit food is cooked in mustard oil with hing(asafoetida), sonth (dried ginger powder), saunf (fennel), red chillies and spices like cloves, cardamoms, cinnamon and saffron. More about Pandit cuisine here.
The house was atop a mountain, and the climb was quite steep, surrounded with orchards of apples, peaches and plums. When you looked down from their house, one could see the valley with rice fields and the Nagin lake with houseboats and shikaras floating by.
During the Kashmiri insurgency, the house had been burnt down. It was burnt down since it belonged to Pandits, who are Hindus. But then they rebuilt the house from scratch. Later, I heard, she had sold it. Since neither daughter had married a Kashmiri, they were not eligible to inherit it. This is a law that attempts to keep property in Kashmir with Kashmiri's.
I remember when we were young, we used to spend a lot of time with my grandmother and grandfather in their house, since my parents both worked. When Vimla aunty came over it was always fun, she knew all the interesting gossip, who was with who, who had left who, who was going broke, who had come into a lot of money, who had kids and who didnt. After lunch, in the hot summer holidays, we used to go up into my grandmother’s air conditioned room, and Vimla aunty used to take out her silver hexagonal pan ka daba. The daba had two levels. The first one had fresh betel leaves, washed and dried. The next layer was divided into compartments with katha, chuna, supari and elaichi. More details on Paans here.
She spent the whole afternoon rolling the betel leaf and with a gold long rounded object rubbing some chuna, katha and adding supari to it and then popping it into her mouth. Then she chewed while talking continuously, my grandmother constantly trying to get a word in edge ways. Within five minutes she had begun to roll another one. In the evening her husband came to pick her up, and he always held her paan box, as though it was her purse.
Later in life her health was bad and she had became quite weak, but her sense of humor remained. She and my grandmother still went out to eat at Sagar or something else that took their fancy. They were both supportive of each other, and we got to know her family, her children and her grandchildren well. I spoke to my grandmother, when I heard of Vimla Aunty’s passing, and she said in a crackling voice, “she was my only best friend” sounding broken and sad.
The Kauls had a beautiful house, made of wood, painted in green, in a village called Brain in the Srinagar valley. We used to eat traditional Kashmiri Pandit food in their house, which according to Agha Shahid Ali was the best in the whole of Kashmir. (See Amitav Ghosh’s obit for Agha Shahid Ali, in Incendiary circumstances). I remember eating Haak, which was meat curry with saag in it, and Rogan Josh which was succulent mutton curry. Pandit food is cooked in mustard oil with hing(asafoetida), sonth (dried ginger powder), saunf (fennel), red chillies and spices like cloves, cardamoms, cinnamon and saffron. More about Pandit cuisine here.
The house was atop a mountain, and the climb was quite steep, surrounded with orchards of apples, peaches and plums. When you looked down from their house, one could see the valley with rice fields and the Nagin lake with houseboats and shikaras floating by.
During the Kashmiri insurgency, the house had been burnt down. It was burnt down since it belonged to Pandits, who are Hindus. But then they rebuilt the house from scratch. Later, I heard, she had sold it. Since neither daughter had married a Kashmiri, they were not eligible to inherit it. This is a law that attempts to keep property in Kashmir with Kashmiri's.
I remember when we were young, we used to spend a lot of time with my grandmother and grandfather in their house, since my parents both worked. When Vimla aunty came over it was always fun, she knew all the interesting gossip, who was with who, who had left who, who was going broke, who had come into a lot of money, who had kids and who didnt. After lunch, in the hot summer holidays, we used to go up into my grandmother’s air conditioned room, and Vimla aunty used to take out her silver hexagonal pan ka daba. The daba had two levels. The first one had fresh betel leaves, washed and dried. The next layer was divided into compartments with katha, chuna, supari and elaichi. More details on Paans here.
She spent the whole afternoon rolling the betel leaf and with a gold long rounded object rubbing some chuna, katha and adding supari to it and then popping it into her mouth. Then she chewed while talking continuously, my grandmother constantly trying to get a word in edge ways. Within five minutes she had begun to roll another one. In the evening her husband came to pick her up, and he always held her paan box, as though it was her purse.
Later in life her health was bad and she had became quite weak, but her sense of humor remained. She and my grandmother still went out to eat at Sagar or something else that took their fancy. They were both supportive of each other, and we got to know her family, her children and her grandchildren well. I spoke to my grandmother, when I heard of Vimla Aunty’s passing, and she said in a crackling voice, “she was my only best friend” sounding broken and sad.
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