but also a search for the essence of this wonderful avatar loved by so many. I explore in these pages, for example, the many ways Ganesh, familiar to some, exotic to others, inhabits a vital part of the houses I visit and how I attempt to pay tribute to him on my own. Offerings to Ganesh are expected at any creative venture, and as I write this book, I find my relationship with this deity beginning. I am not a Hindu or particularly a Christian, preferring to call myself a seeker, yet Ganesh touched my heart.
This book of spices is more than a journey into the female psyche through the sensuality of our palates. It is a journey of my own personal trials, seeking solace, love, and connection in this world I live in. Unexpectedly along the way, tasting exotic curries in stranger’s homes, I found more than just cooking on Craigslist: I found love, in the most unexpected way: a man, from India, too young for comfort, too handsome for words, difficult and tempestuous, kind and giving.
More than anything, this is a journey into myself, but it is also about all modern American women—all Desbys—living in this country, who find themselves divorced, alone, seeking. We are women who struggle to identify where the feminine lies. Somehow cooking resonates with that search. Even though men dominate the professional world of cooking, the home and hearth have been traditionally ruled by the woman. American women have come so far in our independence and freedom, and yet I feel, given the popularity of Martha Stewart, The Food Network, and cooking classes nationwide, we need to reclaim this territory again, in our own terms. We need to understand this nurturing side of ourselves without the classic shackles that it once represented.
THIS STORY HAS only begun.
As I finish this book, my next journey is India herself.
But in the meantime, this book is an examination of my yearlong saga of love and spices, found on Craigslist. And what is more modern than that? Years back we had to take an airplane or boat to connect with another culture. These days, we need only have computer access.
And the responses flood my email and I am always packing up to enter another house, perched in the suburbs; to open a strange door, eyes smarting from the rush of the hot steam of roasted chilies; and to find a new friend.
Another response just came from my ad, from a woman named Padma. I am quite eager to get to know her. I send her this email:
Dear Padma—
Yes, My name is Nani and I am interested. Where are you from and what do you like to cook?
Thanks—
Nani
I don’t hear back from her for a couple of days. And then, this:
Hi Nani,
My husband doesn’t want me to pursue this. There goes one of the
lessons in Indian culture.
Padma
And thus ends the story of Padma, so brief, and yet so illuminating.
I read it with curiosity. I have no husband to tell me what to do. Nor do I have a husband to care about what I do. Wistfulness ensues, yet with confusion. The Desby dilemma.
Read on, and let’s eat some good food.
Waiting for Ganesh
A girl looks for spices. A woman finds them, and meets an Elephant God
I’VE BEEN PASSIONATELY in love with Indian cooking for thirty years—ever since I was in my teens and an older gentleman, a friend of the family, a world raconteur, took me to Georgetown to a white tablecloth affair in a raj-like atmosphere, with sitar-playing musicians and turbaned waiters. Of course, I was enchanted by this, but it was the arrival of a swamp-green bowl of coriander chutney that blew me away (back then, in the ’70s, we called it “coriander,” which of course I had never seen as this was the pre-cilantro era). Oh, try this, said my friend who had been many times to India. The spicy yet soapy taste intoxicated and mystified me. I was hooked. A large elephant-headed deity stood at the doorway, festooned with flowers, sprinkled with turmeric, surrounded by burning incense. What is that? I asked innocently.
That, my friend said, is Lord Ganesh. You don’t know Ganesh?
I was eighteen. No, I didn’t know Ganesh. I knew a small, stone Episcopal Church in my tiny town of Delaplane, Virginia, that had a large simple brass cross on the altar, where we attended after my mother remarried. I knew my deeply Catholic grandfather on my father’s side and the velvet-cloaked altar in his house, with a carved crucifix inside of Jesus in thorns. I knew a golden Buddha my mother kept in a small altar in our house, with a flower tucked inside, being the daughter in a foreign service family and having lived for years in Thailand. All these cross-cultural connections led to a mishmash of thoughts, but no clear direction. But this? His wise-appearing eyes shone out. He had the body of a man, with a large stomach. It was sensual, and assaulting—half man, half elephant, yet strangely comforting.
Thank him, my friend suggested.
I did.
He is the remover of obstacles, he said. Very important.
I FORGOT ABOUT Ganesh for some time, but not about Indian food: a suburban foray into the strip malls of Virginia found Indian Spices and Appliances, where I stocked up on all sorts of cookbooks (usually self-published paperbacks with bad, blurry color reproductions, written by Mrs. So-and-So), jumbo bags of spices (apparently one couldn’t buy simply a small jar of turmeric, one had to buy a crate of the stuff, which lasts forever), and various implements, of which I knew not how to use. Compare this to the spice department in your local grocery store: tiny jars containing a few tablespoons of curry powder, usually old and stale, selling for exorbitant prices.
During this time, I studied cookbooks and tried to re-create the dark, fairly unctuous-tasting, mysterious stews I found in Indian restaurants. I hadn’t tried Indian home-cooking—I thought what I was eating in restaurants was the norm. Little did I know!
I puttered around for years, trying all forms of vindaloos, curries, puffs, chutneys, but nothing tasted really good. My curries were watery, full of raw spice. My chutneys, overly gingered or bland. But a quest for wondrous food by reading cookbooks only goes so far: life is an experiential teacher. I remembered the smell of the incense and the statue of Ganesh: as a young woman, I was deeply attracted to the idea of God and spirituality, yet I had been subjected only to church, which I found insufferably boring, tedious, fake, and worst of all, it always smelled bad. I realize now the aura of ritual was missing, which even at my young age, spoke little of joy or ceremony. Hymns seemed heavy and ponderous to me. Still, I sensed that truth lay in all the religious texts, so I read them, anything I could get my hands on. I found the true teachings of Christ beautiful, love-filled, and thoughtful—I just didn’t like the vehicle. For years, I attended a Unitarian church in New York to get my spiritual fix, but found it had the same pared down lack of wonder as the others.
I went to Brazil and was intrigued by the Candomblé rituals I saw on the beaches, where followers left burning candles. One walked out the door at a fashionable restaurant at the heavily trafficked crossroads in Ipanema, only to almost walk into sacrificed chickens. Walking on the beach late one night, I witnessed such a ritual. A woman was possessed by Oxum, Goddess of love, beauty, fertility, and wealth. As the others drummed, the woman danced in a frenzy, laughing around a fire built on the sand. She cackled and sang. And then she saw me, and came forward, a jar of honey in her hand, enticing me to eat it, as she scooped up a spoonful. I was about to go to her—I was enchanted—when I was stopped by a harsh No from the priest, who pulled her away. You are not ready for this, he said. Of course not, I was in formation. My friends explained that I hadn’t been protected, that I needed to know the essence of the Candomblé to accept the gift, that it could be dangerous to my spirit. Nevertheless, it probably was dangerous to my spirit anyway: it left me hungry and searching for more. The thought that somewhere, beyond these soft and gentle suburban hills, there existed something alive and pulsing: in the food, in the rituals. Be it Brazil or Africa, Costa Rica or Nepal, it existed. And India seemed to call to me personally.
JUMP AHEAD FIFTEEN