Desert dal

Writing about dal reminded me of one of the most spectacular versions of the dish I have ever eaten. Sand entangled in my hair, hot desert wind in my face, thighs turned to jelly by an enthusiastic camel ride.

No, it wasn’t romantic at all.

I was deep in the Thar desert, one of the border outposts manned by the Indian border security force. It was nothing like the pretty comfort of Jaisalmer or Jaipur, and there weren’t any ‘royals’ lurking about either, ready to help you sample the delights of their erstwhile palaces converted into ‘heritage hotels’. Just tough, leather-faced men, their skin stroked into deep ravines by the hot desert wind. And bright-smiled, multi-bangled village women who so generously offered to feed the strange woman with short, men’s hair and her gracious, graceful mother.

What they turned out was a traditional meal – dalbatichurma – actually dal, bati and churma, but often spoken all together, unpunctuated, with no breaks for breath. Dal was hot, as in chilly-hot, a kind of level of chilly until then I imagined foreigners falsely accused Indian food of having. Bati were flour dumplings, insanely tasty, and churma was a kind of flour cooked in ghee. Ghee. Loads of it. The entire meal was a feast of ghee. No wonder the dal tastes so great, my mother remarked. Even lauki will taste awesome if you put so much ghee in it, she continued, forgetting that I no longer detested the watery gourd. And had travelled quite far from the childhood dislike.

We stuffed ourselves with enough dalbatichurma that would have stood a camel in good stead for at least a month, I wildly hoping I wouldn’t store the ghee in unfortunate bulges. Later, as we lay with the wind quietening around us and the stars glittering cold and hard, reflecting on life I suddenly hit upon the reason for all the ghee – all the chillies! Of course, it is believed that the ghee helps the chillies go down smoothly, and the chillies wouldn’t taste so good without the ghee. Having worked out this vicious circle, I went to sleep with satisfaction, the sand creeping into the crevices of my eyes and tinting my dreams golden.

No dal, no love

Two days in a row, I cooked two dals most Indians cannot buy any longer. Arhar or tur, and moong. Simple, easy to cook, nutritious, and delicious, these dals now sell at more than Rs 100/kg in my city.

This morning, it was reported that the finance minister flew into a rage in parliament when some members alleged that the government is not serious about the rise in food prices. How does he suppose the homemaker feels, with steadily diminishing options of what she could put on the table for her family, that would not just fill their stomachs but nourish them as well?

Dals are the most easily available source of proteins for millions of Indians. In a diet that is usually richer in carbs than anything else, dals provide a crucial balance. Those of us who can afford it, liven it up with a tempering of ghee in which we fry some simple spices, like cumin and asafoetida, that help digestion. Even without this tempering, or tadka, just plain salted, dals are often quite tasty. The split moong dal is part of another staple — khichdi — the one dish wonder that combines dal with rice that I have cooked on many a lean day when nothing else stocked my fridge.

If there are no dals in the market, what can I do? Or something to that effect the beleagured finance minister is reported to have said.

Where are the dals? Where did they go? And please don’t give us the b-s about hoarders or blackmarketeers — that ’70s lore won’t work any more. In any case, things become lucrative for hoarders to hoard if they are in short supply to begin with.