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Ellu with élan
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Sankranti is no sweat with the market in place
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Part with cash and you get tradition in pretty packs.
NOTHING LIKE a festival to send all thirtysomethings on a nostalgia trip. Come Sankranti, and you are besieged by sepia-tinted images — of li'l ol' you gorging on sugarcane, messing up your new jari langa in the process, of the enthu with which you went from house to house with a plate laden with ellu and all the colourful knick-knacks with it... You vividly remember even mother's blue-and-white crochet doily that covered the plate!
But then, memory comes with a curious filter. So, what does not flash before your eyes as "naturally" are pictures of your fastidious mother ending up with lacerated palms in her effort to cut the tough mould of jaggery into tiny, identical cubes for the ellu. Unless you summon all your reason (not easy in the sepia mode!) you may not even remember that the jari langa felt a little too cumbersome after an hour or so of wearing it. With this amazingly effective filter in place, you often start on a guilt trip even as you land back into the present from your nostalgia trip. Look at me now, you fret, tomorrow is the festival and I haven't even begun making ellu. At this rate, will my little daughter ever know what tradition is?
No sweat. There is a market in place to take care of everything: nostalgia, guilt, tradition, and whatever else. Walk along Gandhi Bazaar main road, and you know how well oiled this market is. There are shops after shops selling readymade ellu. Satish Stores, an otherwise grandige shop, has a special counter for just Sankranti. This shop, more than 50 years old, has in recent times acquired a name and a nameplate. "This readymade trend has caught up in the last eight or 10 years," says B.C. Vijay Kumar, the owner. "People have become lazy," he reasons. On second thoughts, he decides to be kinder to his customers, "Maybe too busy even." He also sells ready-to-mix ingredients (dehusked groundnuts, diced jaggery, and so on) for those who like the minimal satisfaction doing something themselves. Ramanath, who runs a juice centre, has pushed back the mixers and fruits to make room for the Sankranti paraphernalia — ellu, sakkare acchu, little plastic boxes to fill the smelly elchi berries with, and so on. The season is, anyway, not ripe for his usual business. What's special at his shop are the soft sakkare acchus made of milk, "just like at home". And at Subbammana angadi (the shop world famous in South Bangalore for its chatni pudi, kodubale, and chakli!), there is a near stampede. You will have to wait a good half an hour to get your ellu packed.
If you have climbed the social ladder a little too high to shop in Gandhi Bazaar, but the pull of nostalgia still makes you yearn for some ellu and some tradition, you can gift a stylish thali of Sankranti goodies this season. A company that specialises in gifting ideas has come up with a package deal. Part of the thali is even a moisture-free polythene cover that makes sure that the betel leaves inside stay fresh longer.
Options, as you can see, are plenty. So, if you have just woken up bleary-eyed (poor you may work in a call centre and may have got home only at 6 a.m.), and don't know how to confront a bright Sankranti morning staring you in the face, just hop across to the neighbourhood shop and buy a kilo or two of ellu and some sakkare acchu too. The shopkeeper will probably recommend the slightly whiter variety of acchu. When you express your shock at its price, he'll protest: "But it's homemade, ma'm!"
BAGESHREE S.
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Bangalore
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