Tadka Dhal, or What Goes into The Goop
by Sreedhevi Iyer
Serves 3 -4 people
Ingredients:
1 cup dried lentils of your choice (toor, masoor)
½ tsp turmeric powder
½ tsp chilli powder
2 tsp salt
1 dried chilli
2 cloves of garlic, whole
1 bay leaf
Fill pressure cooker with lentils of your choice. Add 3 cups of water. Add rest of ingredients – garlic is optional. Ensure lid is fastened properly. Let the dhal boil for about 30 minutes, or about 3 whistles, whichever comes first. Turn off stove, and rest for 10 minutes, before opening. The lentils should be completely mashed. Check for salt. Add water if mixture is too thick – it should be the consistency of a stew. Choose your tempering options from below.
I bought a pressure cooker because it was cheap. It stared out from the ethnic grocery shop. My grandmother owned one, used it daily. Rice, potatoes, lentils. It was always part of lunch-making.
The lady at the counter had to instruct me on how to shut the cover on top – slide and click. No click, no cooking – the metal had to squeeze the rubber. “Lock the air in,” she said. “Nothing should escape.”
It is dhal, not dahl. Lentils, not author.
Technically, any kind of lentils can be used to make dhal. Toor, masoor, channa, rajma. Even combinations of several. Add about a cup to the pressure cooker, add twice or thrice the amount of water. Then add salt and turmeric. Cover the cooker – airtight. Get your stove going – now you must wait for the whistles.
Dhal keeps well frozen, but not if you use potatoes. Heat it in a microwave and serve with rice or rotis and vegetables. Ideal for a quick meal between online classes and meetings and events. You can add dishes. Chicken curry, or peas and carrots. Both could work, depending on your mood. Dhal adapts to your lifestyle, taste, preferences. It is almost a pet, and one that does not misbehave.
***
Do yoga, the pamphlet advised. Googling cases brings up a general advice before search results – breathe. Meditate. Exercise. Talk to someone.
Saluting the sun in Melbourne is tricky – usually it’s the gray clouds you address. Palms together. Mountain pose. Palms above head, arch your back. Come forward, push your back ahead, come down till your forehead touches your knees. Remember to breathe the whole time. In, out, in, out, in, out.
The ambulance rings out in the street. There are cases in your suburb. Someone cannot breathe right now. In, out, in, out.
***
No flights, no tickets, no family visit, no finances.
Bland talk in online meetings.
A neighbor thinks they can sing.
***
When a pressure cooker whistles, it is urgent. Like an orgasm. I’m ready! Now! Shut me off before I overcook! It also thinks it can sing.
After this point, what you do is entirely your choice. There are infinite variations and permutations of decisions that can influence and determine the final outcome. Tadka – tempering–is from everywhere, from anything.
Tempering options:
- Black mustard seeds and curry leaves, popping and splattering in hot oil, with ginger and fenugreek.
- Onions and tomatoes sizzling in oil, with peanuts and a splash of tamarind water and palm sugar.
- Asafoetida, dry red chillies, cumin.
- Garlic, onion, curry leaves, turmeric, chilli powder, chopped tomatoes.
And so on.
You could come up with your own, once you get the hang of it.
The idea is contrast, and the reason for contrast is balance. Seeds and leaves are opposites in texture, but the combination increases complexity of flavor, and makes sense within mushy lentil goop. Tamarind and sugar meet at the hip, like conjunctions. They’re the backbones of the tempering hypotenuse.
The tempering is poured into the blandness, stirred. Allowing for enmeshment. Then garnished – coriander, maybe mint.
Take your permutation. Permutate some more.
***
Diplomacy could be more transparent. Leaders could agree to set aside differences. Someone could stop blaming China. China could stop sulking in response. An agreement could be made to reform the WHO immediately. An insight that health in the public sector be boosted and not deregulated could reach critical mass. Capitalism could play second fiddle to good governance. Vaccines could be distributed evenly across all nations, for free, regardless of GDP. Wealthy countries could sponsor supplies for poorer ones. Drug companies could seek sponsors themselves. Media could wait on broadcasting research before peer reviews come in.
Those who lose an election can acknowledge it and make reasonable plans. Those who construct narratives in their heads through the data points they have can stop and check if there are other data points missing, and if theirs is right in the first place. Someone could reevaluate the criteria for objectivity.
What we put in the goop needs to work.
***
Child’s pose is about surrender, although it can be a journey of pain to get there. Clean mat. Knees to mat, bend, forehead to mat. The hands can help you get there, but then you release them, let the arms drop and rest, elbows down, palm up. When you exhale it sounds like you’re in a cavern, waiting for directions. Inhale and think of the air filling your lungs. What is holding at the solar plexus? What news drains from your forehead? Is that you sobbing, or that other girl who thought this was one chore out of many in these fake beliefs of productivity?
***
When we temper on masks because of masculinity, on vaccines because of theories, on lockdowns because of hoaxes, when we temper into houses of Parliament, into governments declaring emergencies and coups after, when we temper on vaccine access, what goes into the goop?
***
The Death Pose is a mimicking of the body after Death has been, not while it is there. It is the serenity of non-breathing. Laid down, face up, arms and legs to side, splayed out. No holding in. No core. Air locked out, no escape. Breathe as if you aren’t. Live as if you aren’t.
Sreedhevi Iyer is the author of Jungle Without Water and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for the Penang Monthly Book Award in 2017. She has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize in the US. Her work has appeared around the world, including Hotel Amerika, Drunken Boat, The Writer’s Chronicle, Bellingham Review, Asian American Literary Review, and Ginosko Literary Journal in the U.S., Two Thirds North in Sweden, Free Word Centre in the UK, and Asia Literary Review in Hong Kong. She has also guest edited Drunken Boat’s Hong Kong Special Folio and special issues of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. She currently lives in Melbourne.