From Heaven, With Love

"Wait till you hear the oil bubbling gently, looking like the bells of your silver anklets!" advised my grandma, as she gently guided me when I fried my very first murukku, the crispy fried discs of crunchy goodness that were a staple of every Deepavali.

We were in her kitchen, where she had been cooking up a storm, making varieties of goodies for the upcoming festival. A staunch proponent of 'why make 1 when 50 would do?' Gran would single-handedly fill myriad stainless steel containers as tall as a small child with a variety of sweet and savoury dishes. By Deepavali we would be hard pressed to find floor space for a spoon.

Gran's love language was food and she loved to feed us all. Her kitchen always smelled so delectable, so homey I never wanted to go elsewhere. Even when money was tight and treats were few and far between, she made fun foods out of the simplest ingredients, things that brought us so much mirth and joy. She knew the favourite dishes of all her grandkids and was always ready to whip them up at the drop of a hat.

It has been slightly over 18 months since she passed and our first festival after the year of mourning. Enthusiasm for food and the fried goodies - always the main draw of any Indian festival, never mind the big daddy of them all - was at an all-time low. Conversations between the mother and aunts has resulted in them deciding that no sweet and savoury fried goodies, the delectable bakshanam Gran was famous for, will be made at home this year.

This meant braving the festival crowds and jostling for elbow space with half the city at Grand Sweets, queuing for what seemed like hours and picking out the oily murukku and adirasam. They sure looked big and even colourful but somehow the aroma didn't match that of the ones in my memory.

"Why do they look so greasy and yucky?" grumbled my little cousin, eyeing the wares on the other side of the glass shelves with distrust. The child had only known homemade stuff - welcome to the new normal, kid. "Do you want to try anything? How about this one, it looks quite unusual eh?" I tried, only to be met with a blank, disbelieving stare.

I quickly paid for the items on the list Mum shoved in my hand to ensure I didn't forget anything - a strict ration of one packet of each variety for each of her siblings' families, plus one or two added extra, per request. The total haul barely filled two small totes and I struggled to forget the images of a kitchen packed to the rafters.

Deepavali morning started off on a weird note. For the first time ever, there wasn't any special oil perfumed with herbs to oil my hair with. Gran used to lovingly roast fenugreek and caraway seeds, toss in handfuls of fresh coriander from the tree in her backyard and warm it all in cold pressed coconut oil from the mill. When I was younger she used to liberally apply it all over my thick black hair - the only reason behind my lustrous locks. As if to prove me right, my hair started falling the minute I moved out to college and started washing my hair with shampoo.

Freshly clad in new clothes, the whole lot of us trooped to Uncle's - though it still remained Gran's in all our minds. The menu for the lunch spread was decided last week after much discussion between Mum and the aunts, the lot of them divvying up the task of feeding the horde between the three of them. A task Gran handled single-handedly, I jokingly pointed out and was relegated to peeling potatoes by the sackful for my sass.

I was mindful of the casseroles filled to the brim with food - food I did NOT want to end up on the carpet of my car - as I swerved to avoid the potholes and fireworks on the streets.

Even as I parked the car, it felt to me like the house seemed rather flat without my grandmother's presence. For a tiny lady, Gran sure left behind a big hole!

The profusion of old newspapers in front of the apartment gates hinted at a busy morning. While my mother walked into the lift with the bags of shop bought goodies in, the rest of us carted in our lunch. I fully blame the two ginormous casseroles I carried in my hands for obstructing my field of vision and my near-face plant.

"Urk!" I exclaimed, my foot tripping over something large and unexpected.

"Let me take this off you before you end up wearing it!" chuckled my uncle, even as I thanked my stars for the near-miss.

"Ha ha, very funny! What have you left in the way to trip innocent passersby and unsuspecting nieces?" I grumbled.

"Why don't you take a look?" he quipped, comically wiggling towards his wife inside the kitchen.

For a minute, I was poleaxed. Stainless steel containers in all shapes and sizes, some with their lids open to display their contents, sat there on the kitchen floor with nary a floor tile free.

I have never experienced deja vu before but it must be what this is. The sight every festival in my house was made of - but it is not possible! The person that made the scenario possible wasn't here! Wha-?

Even as Mum and I looked at my aunt utterly devoid of speech, she sheepishly spoke up from her spot in front of the frying pan: "I know, I know - but what do I do? Amma came in my dream couple of nights back and was most upset that we hadn't made any sweets or savoury dishes for Deepavali. What is a festival without homemade murukku, thattai and adirasam, she asked. She was most distraught that we were going with shop-bought stuff.

"So yesterday I went out, got the ingredients and made them all, just the way she would like it!"