Ammamma is a safe house, she is the matriarch who encompasses the wrath and warmth within her. She protects fiercely and softens at the hint of the discomfort of her little rascals. We- grandkids seek her out for an extra glass of rasna or to bail us out from our impending punishments from parents or to hide from thunders that jostle our little minds. She has seen the world thrice the time that I have existed, she has the wisdom to polish our mistakes and mishaps, yet she lets me build my own relationship with failure and its sisters. She could easily continue to coddle me into eating right and run behind me to do my homework, eat healthily, and drink enough water, occasionally threatening to burn my phone up. She doesn’t, not often she observes in her stealth mode when I try to fool myself into working beyond my hours when convincing myself that my experience with ill people is just fate and not my mistake. She sharpens her look to make a point that I must go beyond and reflect. No words. Just a look and it's over n’ out. I always taunt her she could be an asset to MOSSAD or RAW. She’s seen her kids point fingers at everything but themselves and questioned her parenting for the slightest inconveniences. It’s like a silent promise to myself to never let her face that alone. She doesn’t bargain for pity or sympathy, she despises these two with her whole chest. Through it all, she still chooses actions of kindness over words. Be it her kids – my mother cursing the world and its aunt for certain trials of life, she always patiently listens and serves up a tall glass of sweet ragi aambli. It’s like the key to subduing the blasting lava. The spew of complaints and if not is all watered down by her quick fix of aambli. Now it’s no magic of age of recipe passed down the generations, not at all.

Aambli itself is the simplest detonator of summer heat and is easier for a heavy mind. Growing up I hated it. I cannot recall exactly why. Was it the color of ragi? Was it the onions used for garnishing? Was it that everyone liked it, a staple and an assumed commoner? Was it just my underdeveloped sense of savory dishes? Maybe a combination of all these. I was always admonished for being a “swaadgedi” literally meaning “tasteless”. I have scoffed all those years when I passed on the aambli for a packet of mazaa, how I stand corrected, and rightly so!

Ammamma has a knack to smell bullshit out of anyone and everyone and yet acting complacent. She is like a producer on an episode of real housewives of colony aunties. She’d set the environment equally charged for everyone to spill tea, especially the aunts, daughters, and co-sisters as they gathered on a hot afternoon as the kids napped in the bedrooms and they could finally settle in the drawing room with cooler all to themselves. She didn’t need to say or do much. A platter full of aambli glasses served as the ignition for ladies to start. Just sit on the rocking chair listening. Collect all these vices of data and store up for timely use. I always thought she was "paapam" (naive) for being subjected to listening to all these woes and nit-picks. With my social senses taking fine tuning I have realized it isn’t so. My paapam ammamma (poor ammamma) actually loves drama and enjoys every bit of gossip unabashedly and unapologetically. Never the center of it, but rather the chef of it. She decides when to set the pot of water on the stove, too slow-paced invites to her gathering of ragi flour, salt, finely chopped onions and coriander, a bit of jaggery, and a wooden spoon. How she calls up on her gang of women. She precisely lights the stove after her Ammos are gathered, and keeps switching the flame from high and low to bring the water to boil. When she sees the bubbles, she picks the ragi flour and ever so delinquently keeps adding gradually from her left hand and her right wrist works overtime to avoid lumps, mirroring the ladies who get into word wars yet stop before anyone goes below the belt. Under who? Under the watchful eyes of ammamma who else, just like ragi flour goes into water and ladies gear up to be diving into the boiling pots? While a smooth pot stirrer multitasks both dishes. She keeps stirring the aambli until it reaches a milkshake consistency, subduing it with water every now and then. Once she sees the texture bordering a flat line, she quickly at the speed of light tempers up a fenugreek and cumin and splashes the popping hot concocted oil over the aambli to reignite it. The stirring gets back into full swing, as she again perks up her ears to make sure the ladies and the ragi are blending well with new entrants. As the voices simmer down with the ladle spanking over the brim of the pot. She lets the flame go off, and takes her designated seat on the rocking teak wood chair. As she eyes the ladies for their spat that took place, she takes on the role of the lawmaker, the justice provider, the sane cool matriarch who would bind all of them just until the aambli cooled off. She lectures on patience and compassion after her fill of gossip to guilt trip the ladies. Now all are not so naïve they know their ladle head is notorious like that. As she gets those sly smiles of a select few, ammamma takes that as a cue to pause her ted talk and get the aambli transferred into a bigger bowl, add thick curd and give good churn copying her knowledge transfer session. She tops it off by serving the thick cool, spiced to the T aambli with her gold standard onion and coriander chops. As she passes on the glasses to subdue the short wrath she started, moderated, and concluded all for her cheap thrills to enjoy a timely drink with her clique. This is well known to the summer crickets as well that ammamma is self-entertained. She always has been. The crowd of her amusements keeps changing that’s all.

As a kid, it was her siblings with whom she’d instigate fights and offer up the not-so-simpleton drink to up all of them as a young wife to coddle her husband to let her watch the first-day first show of Silsila in tent theatres of the village. As a mother who’d bribe her dozen kids that aambli was the endgame on the pre-requisite of finishing their lunch. As a home minister to her house help and staff, to hypnotize them with a ready glass of aambli of their work. As a quick whip for guests when times tested her tight money. Aambli remained her go-to vice. It was simple just as her cotton sarees and neatly pleated hair adorned with mogras, roses, or nothing as times changed. Aambli took the same stirring sometimes sweetened with jaggery or salted with tempered spices or sometimes plain as times tried them, devoid of any toppings and tempering. Aambli is known to be filling and a farmer’s quick fix for protein, fiber, and calcium. Ammamma has seen days where she could feed the whole village with ghee-dripping sweets and rationing ragi to make sure everyone got their fill of healthy nutritious meals. Aambli is versatile. Now that I think ammamma in many forms in the aambli for us.

She has been the mother hen who made sure every chick of hers had enough grain and brain. She strived hard to make sure they were disciplined. She made them aware of the bad days and what stood by them. One of them being aambli. She emphasized every time I picked a can of Pepsi to sip while studying how it will rot my brain, had no qualms about my tantrums as she threw the full can away, and replaced it with aambli. After all, I gave her the toughest time as I hated aambli. Something she had not faced until her late 50s. She almost tripped through all 5 phases of grief as I consistently rejected her favorite, underdog, age-old, foolproof porridge which I just spat as a toddler, threw in the fern pot as a kid, passed over to my cousin to finish as a teen and finally accepted as an adult. Possessing 25% of her DNA I gave a good fight to dispose of aambli and stick to buttermilk. I was quickly humbled by the parent DNA whose extension I was, ammamma proved to be four times more persistent and stubborn. She didn’t give up serving me aambli. She tried convincing me of the facts of how nutritious it is, she gave an emotional edge on how this pseudo hot chocolate-looking drink helped her and pappa get strong, how she had long hair because of it and I’d have the same if I just drank it. Well, I just took a liking to boy cut. Undeterred she switched to using my frequent periods of growth sprouts to gulp down the drink to keep body heat at bay. Emotional blackmailed me into thinking I was missing out on something, not so easy I said to her. I secretly celebrated her annoyance as it was a rare sight on her. It was her secret thrill to rejoice by getting on others' nerves. Her progeny’s progeny doing the same to her did call for some serious lectures to my mother. Again, I enjoyed it thoroughly. Probably the most treasured memory of this process of love-hate between aambli and me. Teenage as one can say was a tough time for my parents as I went from being a silent rebellion, cute monster to a full-blown news reporter in the present-day prime time. I had a phase of shouting, screaming, and fighting for everything. Almost a world against me, I was rarely reasonable if I recall when clouded by anger and rage. Through this I was being schooled at home and parented by teachers, amplifying my distaste towards adults. Surprisingly, my ammamma came to live with us for a few months. This was the turning point of our bond; she saw my shortcomings and offered the patience I sought which was a miss from any parent figure at that point. She recognized my need without any words, without me being unaware of that was what I needed. She gave me the same ear with which she listed to her kids, house staff, guests, husband, and the world. As a foggy teenager, I observed that it was out of her character to leave the village without coercion. While everyone was convinced, she came by her own will, for a change of scenery. It was too good to be true. My rigid ammamma was not so easy in such matters. She loved and thrived in her home i.e., village. She stood as a valiant night guard to always protect and tend to the home she married, bred, and grew into. So, when I probed her, every chance given, she was like a vault. Ammamma and being expressive are two opposites poles. I was warned by pappa mummy to even leave her be. Let her rest. She never rested even if you bribed her. She was helping me tend to my anger as she tended her backyard for years. She was talking and mingling what appeared to be normal with our neighbors. She adapted well. No one could detect there was more to her presence in the city, which she vehemently despises. My curiosity got the better of me; I had made my mind up to even steel up for a scolding. I had my boards in a week, as a night owl I was studying. My ammamma hated that stayed up late, yet she’d make me a cup of warm milk and sit with me. She was akin to giving company and as a single child, I loved my solitude. If it was anyone else, I’d ask them to sleep but what I realized was that during all this time, the eldest of the family sitting with the youngest, we shared the same troubles. As a teen, I had experiences that isolated me in school and drifted apart from my cousins in the family. I adapted to enjoy my company. As for ammamma, she always was needed. First by her husband, then her kids, then the growing family, then the society, and now that everyone who anchored by her had grown big enough to stand by themselves. She felt she had no one to tend to. Not even herself. It was never an option as she never saw that as a priority. She recognized my isolation to avoid her own. Solitude is a simpleton. It only requires you shed expectations of any and all kinds, just be. After a lifetime of joy, sorrow, enormous losses, and times of toil my ammamma had always found people and served as her constants. Solitude was never in the picture, it was alien. It was the slow cold winds after summer creeping on her. She distracted herself with me and I was happy to be of use to her. Because after all, she chose to stick to her likings. However, old school and simpleton it always worked for her, or should I say she made it work for everyone. Fitting to that I forged a relationship with my ammamma which is solid as the iron in ragi, she guided me through tough times and still does. She hasn’t lost her spark for mischief. Through all this, she sat through my night crams, interviews, and video calls, and adapted to every life change I had. Be known to me she switched the milk to ragi aambli several times, sometimes I let it be, and at times I pointed it out. She played innocent and made me drink nevertheless amidst my studying.

She secretly celebrates making me drink aambli by whispering to everyone at home that “Ritu drinks aambli because who? Me who else”. Little does she know that aambli has grown on me, not for its taste or rich nutrients & antioxidants, but the fact that aambli is the love letter that my ammamma writes to everyone. She sees it as a conquered quest to win over hearts, laughs, and memories.

Now that I have reached a quarter-life, I tease her that I’m fit and healthy. She replies with a tightening grip on my wrist saying you are all blood; I am the bone. She’s got a mean grip, not just in her hands but over the whole family. She knows I am conceding well aware of her need to be needed by others. She’s aware that aambli is something I drink in her remembrance. It’s not ragi’s strength but my ammamma’s strength in her fragility that makes it special. Aambli has bared itself to life’s all shades with my ammamma. Aambli has grown to adjust and adapt itself for the sake of those who savor it. People’s preference has not altered the base of aambli, just like my ammamma. It continues to be simpleton, easy, slow, stirred yet firm, strongly valued, forged into tradition and sustainability. Ragi grows everywhere and is versatile in its form as aambli. Ammamma’s summary could not be far from that of aambli as whether we like it or not, she derives enough lessons, love, and longevity by serving aambli and its many versions with love. 

.     .     .