Leaf it all behind

The food I should traditionally eat, as a good Tam-Bram, tastes best when eaten off a banana leaf. Even I, with my extensively westernised upbringing and global-villager values, know that. Of course, the fact that it is far easier and convenient to eat off a regular glass, ceramic, pottery, stainless steel or even (I hesitate to mention it, but I did do this for many years in Delhi, but that was someone else’s kitchen equipment, I add hastily) melamine plate is undoubtedly true, but there is a special charm in going native. I revel in it, as long as ‘it’ is not a frequent occurrence.

I have no real objection to a banana leaf, per se. In fact, I quite enjoy the whole experience of eating off one. What defeats me is two simple and easily cured aspects of the whole exercise: sitting on the floor and that darned leaf midrib. The first is very, very personal, all about cranky knees and not being used to a very hard surface for a very soft bottom to spend an unwonted length of time resting on. The last time I sat on the floor, I eschewed the prescribed cross-legged position and chose to sit with my legs folded sideways on. I was frowned at ferociously by no less than seven and a half people – Mum stopped halfway to the desired effect as soon as she found someone else was looking meanly at her only daughter. Less elegant, more ungainly but far more comfortable and much easier to get up from. Folded cross-ways, I need the help of at least two people to rise – one to pull me up and another to unfold my unfortunately cramped knees and fast-asleep feet. Agony, thy name is a cold granite floor.

The midrib is another nightmare altogether, but one that involves me less than it does other people sitting adjacent or even opposite me. It is also a matter of some considerable embarrassment to me when I deal with the problem – the liquid content of my banana leaf tends to run furiously down the hollow half-tube that is the midrib, and impinges in to the eating space of those around me. A long time ago, when I was very young, I was at dinner at a very traditional wedding, where we all had to sit down on the floor for a meal (my knees were more kind to me then). Dressed up in my pavadai-chokka and pretty jewellery, with lots of flowers pinned firmly on to my scalp ( a short hairdo may have been chic, but was not conducive to the whole floral adornment scenario), I sat with the men (it was pre-pubertal, so the sex divide did not apply to me), next to my father, and was given a considerable amount of help from his marvellously scientific logic to help dam the tide of rasam that crept inexorably along, slowly and then gradually torrentially down that benighted midrib. Father showed me how to create a small weir from a mound of tightly squeezed rice, the gluey carbohydrate absorbing the liquid at a pace that kept up with my eating.

I trued to use that technique some years later, when at a friend’s wedding, where the dinner was traditional style. I sat with Mother this time, dressed in a carefully pinned sari and even more carefully pinned hair, now long enough for flowers to be woven in rather than stapled to my head. My knees were still benevolent and I was able to lean over the swathe of silk and bend by head to my food. But the midrib problem persisted, and I could see Father a few rows down, with the other men, signalling me to do the dam thing. I smiled and worked the trick as successfully as before.

The more recent instances of eating off a banana leaf have been when I was nicely arranged in a chair at a table. Somehow it is not the same; food even tastes different, never mind that it is all the same and has been for generations now. But my knees are now and for the more western seating arrangement, I thank the powers that be…and the catering arrangers, of course.