Achamma’s Nilava Pachadi Recipe Bhavana Kunnath, 2021 1. Wash tomatoes and leave them in the sun for 3 days. When I first went back to India I had forgotten most of my Telugu. My Ammamma’s1 house was tiny —no bigger than two classrooms— and hanging from its kitchen door frame was a swing made out of an old sari for my baby cousin. When the baby was in it, it was untouchable, but when it was empty it was open for conquest and the source of many a battle between me and my fouryear-old cousins. I eventually established my dominance over the swing by threatening to grind them all into tomato pachadi; it was an empty threat and one met with many giggles but they backed off nonetheless. I spent many days holding on tightly to one uncle or another from the backseat of their motorcycles and drinking Horlicks milk with Nithin annaya and “S.S. Winnie” (I only found out many years later that her name was actually Yashasvini). When we left my Ammamma’s house to visit the holy city of Shirdi we stayed in a hotel with a large grassy courtyard where I ran around with Nithin annaya2. Our mothers, tired of chasing us, would point up to the moon and spin stories of a great snake that came out at night and ate the moon away bit by bit… a snake that would eat little children too if they weren’t inside and fast asleep. 2. Cut tomatoes into pieces. Add salt and tamarind powder. Set aside for 3 days.
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Every visit after that (there have only been a few) started out the same way: we spent a few weeks in my Achamma’s3 house with my dad’s side of the family, with aging aunts and uncles in the tight and dusty rooms. The only children on their side lived far away in Bhandar, so my afternoons were spent being dragged through the streets of the lively city of Hyderabad visiting temples, offices, and distant relatives always asking the same questions. The air always smelled of exhaust in the city and the streets were never safe to step on with the wandering cows, the strays, the poor, the dung, the potholes, and the puddles, but I always felt that Alwal, that little corner of the grand home of the Charminar, was one of the only places on the planet where you could find a mosque, a temple, and a church at the same intersection. Every time I visited, my Achamma’s and aunties’ eyes always looked at me the same way. With us, youth returned to their stuffy, fading apartment and for a moment my Achamma didn’t have to watch as her own children grew old and grey. After those few weeks, I was whisked away to Vijayawada where my mom’s side lived with twenty people squeezed into one tiny house. There were cousins, aunts, uncles, wives, husbands, and a kitchen that was always alive with noise and movement. My Peddamma4 had brought my cousins down to visit me there and she pulled Ammu (Yashasvini) and I aside.
