Playing and some Portuguese history
Dear all,
After last time’s super intense newsletter, I am keeping this light, free and short. But before that, here’s how you can subscribe to the paid newsletter if you are in India: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/induviduality/e/129633. It is at $12 / Rs 900 for a month. If you are in India and are looking for a UPI option, you can use the buy Indu Harikumar a book option https://www.buymeacoffee.com/induviduality and ask me to add you to the newsletter and I’ll do that.
This time I have a book recommendation, a little bit of Portuguese history and some stuff you can try this summer.
A few months ago, I saw Vaishali Shroff’s Batata, Pao & All Things Portuguese (illustrated by Suha R. Khopatkar) in a bookstore.
I have a friend who is a big Portuguese history buff and I picked it for him. Even though I have lived in this city that the English got as dowry from the Portuguese, I had read little about Portuguese history and this was a great start. I started looking up forts and churches built by the Portuguese in this city and visiting some. It was in the book I read about how they planted baobabs that they got from Africa near their churches and forts and stated to look up the baobabs in Mumbai and found out about John the Baptist church and the 7 baobab sisters in the complex. So I went on the only day it opens to public, the second Sunday of May. If you look up the Internet, you will see that this church happens to be one of the most haunted places in Mumbai. Our experience was somewhat different.
It was fascinating that in this ever changing city, in Andheri East exits this wild untamed place. There were folks who had come for service and others who had come to draw despite the heat and people like us who had come to look at the baobabs.
While there, I learned about an East Indian spice blend called Bottle Masala. It apparently gets its name from the dark recycled beer bottles it was stored in to protect it from the sun. They said it goes well with all sorts of meat, I am yet to try it.
Looking up Portuguese history has taken me down all sorts of rabbit holes and this one on a tripod site about Marol fascinated me. You may look it up here: https://pgeorge.tripod.com/hist1.htm
At home too people used earthen vessels. Every home had a mud tava on which they baked appas (the Portuguese word for bread). Malayalis will be interested in the similarity that the word bears to appam (a rice dish that may be fried or steamed). Pimenta recalls his parents talking to each other in broken Portuguese when they wanted to conceal something from the children. But otherwise Marathi was the language used by everyone in the village.
I am off to the land of Appams, not to Portugal but to Kerala and before I send you updates from there, here’s what I have been playing with. If you try something similar, please send me pictures.
<3
Indu