DIFFERENT REGISTERS
The many uses of a ladle
C.S. LAKSHMI
IT is strange how things connected with food become a part of your house with their utilities changing over the years. When I first left for a small village-town to be a schoolteacher, my mother thought that the most important thing I would need would be an aattukkal, the traditional stone-grinder, to grind the dough for idli and dosai as I was very fond of both. So I landed there equipped with an aattukkal and three volumes of Samaiththup Paar by Meenakshi Ammal and a small pressure cooker, prepared to face the world. I did not use the grinder even once, for it meant regular soaking of rice and urad dal and grinding it in the perfect way so that your idlis would be soft as jasmine and your dosais would spread with thousands of little holes which made them tastier. It was easier to buy idlis from the idli kadai nearby where, from six in the morning, a lady prepared the most delicious idlis, dosais, idiyappams and uthappams. From her mouth also emerged the most interesting swear words which I never knew existed in Tamil. The aattukkal became a good seat for the young school kids to sit on while I gave them tuitions. The house I stayed in did not have a bathroom and I used to bathe in the kitchen in the wash area. The aattukkal was placed close to it and became a useful stand to keep soap, towel etc. When I left the place my mother specially came down to gift the aattukkal to a neighbour because she said that she had specially ordered this small-sized one for my purpose, "small as a baby", according to her. The neighbour promised to carry the baby to her home. I am sure she put it to its proper use although she had a large family. Or maybe her little grandchild sat on it while she cooked.
In our Bangalore home we had a sevai-maker (a rice noodle press). It was a nicely carved wooden stool with a hole in the centre where the brass press would be placed and the steaming hot rice balls would be put inside that to be pressed. The brass press had a wooden handle. Normally when sevai was made in the house my mother would bring out the iron-pounder and my father would press the handle and the sevai would fall into the large basin below. The wooden stool also doubled as the oil bath stool. Every Tuesday and Friday throughout my growing years I would sit on it, for my mother to apply oil on my hair and wash my hair. In the 1980s when my mother had to finally vacate the Bangalore home after my father's demise, she brought everything that she valued. Included in the list were the sevai-maker, a copper pot, a number of iron deep frying pans ("I got the big one for eight annas when your elder brother was born and the smaller one was bought for a song when your elder sister was small" was how she justified not leaving them behind) and many other items including a heavy uruli vessel made of bell metal in the traditional Kerala style for preparing payasam and for roasting raw banana and root vegetables.
The Mumbai homes she shared with her sons had no place for these extra items and so she made a call to me one day and asked me if I would like to have some of the family heirloom. Living in a one bedroom flat myself, I hesitated. She misunderstood my hesitation and assured me that she would be able to pay me the to and fro auto fare. I agreed to take what she described as "priceless items". They were kept ready for me. A long round thing wrapped in a paper stood next to the sevai-maker. "What is that, Amma?" I asked her. "Oh, that!" she said, "That is the iron-pounder. You will need it to force the wooden handle of the press." I loaded the auto with four heavy iron pans, one copper pot, some brass vessels, a big uruli, the sevai-maker and the iron-pounder and returned home. Vishnu, my partner, opened the door and surveyed the heritage items. His eyes fell on the paper-wrapped iron-pounder and he asked me "What exactly is that?" I lifted it up like a heavyweight champion and told him, "This is for self-defence!" The iron-pounder, still wrapped in a newspaper, lies behind my bedroom door. If any thief enters my home thinking he can steal anything other than my books, the iron-pounder will come handy. I put away the brass press. The wooden stool with a hole in the centre is in the hall and little kids or others who want to tie their shoes sit on it. Sometime back some foreigners had come home and very hesitantly they asked if that was a traditional toilet seat for children!
All these thoughts about food and things connected with it came to mind when I recently read an old poem written by Madhangini (another pseudonym of Rajam Krishnan) on an iron seasoning ladle. There was a time when a girl, being selected to be the daughter-in-law of a family was put to various tests by the prospective groom's family when they came to "see" the girl. One of the tests was to ask her to do the seasoning with an iron ladle. The test was basically to find out whether the oil spilled out in the process or whether the mustard, urad dal and red chillies, which were the seasoning ingredients, got burnt or spilled out of the ladle when she gently shook the ladle by the handle to fry them evenly. Failure in the test meant that the girl was not thrifty and was also inefficient. Such a girl would be rejected straightaway. Madhangini's great grandmother could not pass this test at all and her marriage became a problem for the family. One day her father came back with a specially ordered iron ladle which had a long flat handle and the cup-shaped bowl was made deep with a narrow mouth so that nothing can spill out of it. And that is how her great grandmother managed to get married at last. Later it lay unused and Madhangini, her great grand daughter found it in the attic and began to use it for the purpose it was meant for and also for other purposes. It could be used to measure, to pour out, to gather grain, to mash and also for hitting a nail on the head, for digging the garden with its stem, or for stirring hot broth, or for prising the coconut out of the shell and sometimes it even acted as a lock when placed firmly inside the loop of the door latch.
The iron ladle was put to an altogether different use by Mini, the young girl of the family. Mini was going to participate in a Women's March for women's rights. Mini used the iron ladle as a pen. She dipped it in ink and wrote out in huge letters, slogans on the placards they carried. "Let's burn the ignorance that degrades women!", "Women's rights are human rights!", "If woman is destroyed, the world would be destroyed!" read the slogans. The iron ladle which had served the purpose of getting a girl married had now taken a new incarnation in the great-great grand daughter's generation and had become one of the tools to proclaim the rights of women. The transformation of that iron ladle is what women's history is all about.
C.S. Lakshmi is an independent researcher and a writer. She writes in Tamil under the pseudonym Ambai. She is the founder-trustee and director of SPARROW (Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women).
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