A Love Like Theirs

The Lemon Pickles

I am convinced that all grandmothers have a superpowers to cook food that will never fully fill your soul. No matter how much you eat, you will always be left wanting more and if you belong to an Indian family, our grandmothers have an added talent to these superpowers, the talent of making heavenly pickles.

Every household in India have secret family recipes, passed on from one generation to another for pickles. My grandmother, Dadi, I called her, loved making pickles from lemons. Her recipe for it was the most delectable one and we all would finish jars of it as soon as they were ready to eat.

Pickle making is a very tedious process but a process loved by all grandparents. Both of them together would pluck the seasons finest vegetables and prepare them for hours before dipping them in all the spices and oils that were to give pickles it's gorgeous flavours. The mixture would then be kept for few weeks to mature before it was ready for eating. All the vegetables would be usually grown by grandfathers in their beloved kitchen gardens. Grandmothers would sit in the backyard and spend the whole day preparing it for their children.

My dadi would send these big jars filled with pickles that would last for minimum two to three years but in my cousin's house, they would last for five to six years. How they would go on to keep it for that long has still been a mystery to me. In my house, we would keep only the smallest amount on the dinning table and yet finish it way before our dadi would expect us.

Dadi would bring us 3-4 jars of pickles everytime she would visit us but for my cousins living in the USA, she could barely take two jars across the continent.

One time when she was visiting them, the regulations for the air travel had changed and she couldn't take any pickle jar that she had prepared for them. Upon reaching their house, she saw how carefully they were rationing the leftover pickle during dinner.

It broke her heart to see them eat like that and she decided to make some fresh pickle for them.

So the whole family went to the local grocery market looking for the lemons but the lemons she used to make pickles were nowhere to be found. They spent hours, going from one store to another, one farmer's market to another but didn't succeed.

Disheartened everyone decided to return home. While everyone felt defeated, my dadi was still not ready to give up. She looked outside the window wondering how she could salvage the situation when she noticed few trees in the neighborhood which looked like lemon trees. She showed them to my grandfather who sitting beside her and he confirmed they were in fact lemons trees growing the same kind of lemons they were looking for.

Next morning both of them told everyone they were going out for a walk, which everyone found odd for it was a very hot day but didn't say much about it.
They both were wearing thick cotton clothes, dadi in her saree and grandfather in his shirts. They stepped out in the hot sun and walked around the entire neighborhood.

They had already shortlisted the houses they had seen with lemon trees and went there, politely asking if they could borrow some lemons.

After an hour, they had carried all lemons in the loose end of the saree and shirt, just like dadi's mother used to carry when she was a child.

They came back to house and carefully looked inside the house if their grandchildren were sitting anywhere near the kitchen. Once they found the coast clear, they snuck in and dadi sat down on the kitchen floor. She carefully kept all the ingredients near her and started to prepare the pickle mix.

My uncle and aunt sat down with them and helped her. Dadi told them stories of her mother and how she would sit on the floor while preparing food. She remembered how her mother taught her all recipes while cooking them and till date she doesn't have it written down. 

By three o clock in afternoon, they finished and kept the jars on the dinning table as little surprise for the kids. There four jars in total.

When my cousins came out their rooms asking for their evening snacks, they were shocked to see the jars filled with their favourite pickle.

They leaped with joy and my dadi smiled seeing them happy.

They gave her the tightest hug and went on and on about how much they will now enjoy the dinner. Later at night, they finished the previous jar and ate a generous helping of the pickle without worrying to save it.

My dadi quietly pulled out a handkerchief and wiped few stray tears from cheeks. Nothing made her happy than seeing her children eat happily.