By Raka Banerjee
Not being a fan of spices and sourness, the only pickle I liked while growing up was my maternal grandmother’s oil-free lemon pickle. It used to be a staple at her house. I took special pleasure in fishing out entire globes of fleshy, marinated lemons out of the glass jar. Others would use the steel spoon to cut out smaller pieces, while I struggled to bite into the whole lemons, fearing such an attempt would ruin the appeal of the perfectly pickled, fading yellow lemon globules. One could have it with any meal. It would liven up the simplest dal-bhaat [1]as easily as it would ensure the swift return of lost appetite. The jar would sit on my grandparents’ dining table by the window, from which the afternoon sun would regularly macerate the tangy mix. It was probably the most faithful witness to all our conversations. Looking back, I feel the pickle jar was never not full. Did didun[2] stash away secret batches to quickly replace the empty jars?
It was not until I was in university, having gone back to my grandparents’ house in my hometown to do fieldwork for my master’s dissertation, that I fully acknowledged the existence of the pickle that I so loved and had come to associate with my grandmother, as something that required making! This visit was my only solo stay with my grandparents and I felt the need to ask my grandmother for the pickle recipe. I had little experience with cooking back then, but even so the recipe sounded fairly easy.
She asked me to pick out blemish-free lemons, preferably thin-skinned ones, and make an x incision from the crown to the bottom, but not all the way. A bit of skin and flesh would hold the sliced-open lemon together. The gashes needed to be stuffed with salt. Then, the lemons had to be crammed into a dry glass jar – however many together as tightly as possible. Then one needed to sprinkle more salt on top and generously shower the lemons with lemon juice till they would be fully immersed in the solution. Then the jar needed to be placed in a sunny spot for a week or so, by which time the lemon rind should have taken on a paler, translucent complexion. The salt would have dissolved entirely, leaving a sticky, viscous marinade in its place. You could keep this for years, my grandmother told me. And that made sense; no wonder she always had some at home. I promised myself that I would make it as soon as I got back home.
I didn’t make the pickle for years. Didun passed away only three months later. Life took over and I forgot about the pickle. When I visited my grandfather after didun‘s passing, he still had the pickle jar sitting on the dining table. It was oddly shocking to see this. I felt like I had transgressed into an unspoken private understanding that my grandfather shared with his late wife. In retaining a jar of pickles prepared by her, he had in a small way kept a part of her with him. She would have had sterilised this very jar with scalding water, wiped it with a dry cloth and kept it in the sun to dry it completely. She must have picked out the lemons that would make for the perfect pickle – thin-skinned or else it could become bitter. Before stuffing them into the jar, she would have pushed back her gold bangles further into her arms, and held her breathe to keep any moisture from getting into the ingredients. Once done with the stuffing and juicing, she would have wiped the outside of the jar and placed it on the choicest spot meant to get the most sun. That afternoon when dadubhai and I sat for lunch, he gestured me to take out some pickle for him. It felt wrong to ingest something that had been prepared by someone who didn’t exist anymore. And so, I came to associate the pickle with loss, not of my grandmother but loss in general – of childhood mates, cousins I couldn’t speak to anymore, relatives that had passed on, and worst of all, the knowledge of impending, eventual, inevitable loss.
The years went on and I didn’t find myself wanting to taste the pickle. The jar, too, had disappeared from its usual place of prominence on the dining table. It was replaced by my ailing grandfather’s many medical supplements. Then he too passed on and the difficult task of sifting through his belongings fell on my mother and me. As we tackled one room after another, we found many curious items: books from her childhood which had clearly been the cause of fights between her and her elder sister; an old camera with which I had clicked photos of my new-born brother; animal hide from a time when it wasn’t illegal to possess one. Then came the most sparsely stocked room of all, the puja room, which had come to be used as a small larder of sorts, apart from its designated purpose of worship. I found sitting on a shelf here, a pickle jar, still containing some bit of the pickle prepared by didun. The mixture had turned a dark brown colour and was probably inedible. At least ten years had passed since it had been made. Maa pointed out that it was indeed the same jar, I nodded in acknowledgement. I didn’t know what to make of any of it. As if it wasn’t difficult enough to rifle through the mundane intimacy that is a couple’s possessions – shongshar[3], a universe unto itself – and deciding on what to retain for sentimental value, what to give away, and what to deem apt for the municipal garbage bin. Now this! I knew what I had to do with a jar of spoilt pickle. There was no point in pondering when we had each taken a designated number of days off from our jobs to be here to declutter the house.
For the rest of the stay our emotions plateaued and peaked, but we went ahead with what had to be done. Dadubhai had been gone for one year at this point and I could feel the final severing of my ties with what felt like the first act of my life.
I returned back to Delhi. The rhythm of my routine took over for good. A month later, while completely immersed in writing up chapters for my research project, I found myself on a hunt for the perfect glass jar to make pickles in. Unlike what I had imagined, it was no great coming to when I decided to make my grandmother’s famous lemon pickle at what it now my temporary home away from every person that feels like home. I couldn’t manage to find a jar I liked. The lemons I had ordered online had already been delivered and was sitting in my refrigerator. Sensing I was going to pass on the plan yet again, I started going through my cupboard in search of a suitable substitute. I had a small glass jar with a red plastic lid, which had been the receptacle of some delicious chutney from my husband’s colleague at work. I decided that would have to do. The lemons that were delivered to me were neither thin-skinned, nor uniformly sized, and worst of all they weren’t even chosen by me! But they would have to do. I processed the lemons, filled the gashes with salt, stuffed them into the small container, and filled it to the brim with salt and lemon juice.
It’s been a week since I made the mix and I tasted it with a bit of simple khichdi [4]and aloo bhaja[5]. The rinds were a bit bitter and not quite translucent yet, but this would have to do. Next month, when I meet my mother in my hometown for the housewarming of our new home, I want her to taste it. Does it make her remember things she could have sworn she had forgotten?
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[1] Lentils and rice
[2] An affectionate name for her maternal grandmother
[3] Household
[4] A porridge of lentils and rice
[5] Potato fritters
Raka Banerjee is an academic by training. She enjoys gardening, long walks and a good cup of Darjeeling tea.
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