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I don't recall seeing a tomato during my first ten years here on earth.
And my long-term memory is unfailing as my cousin, Kittappa, would testify. He visited us at Muthukur when I was in my second form (Class VII) with his two elder brothers. All the three are great story-tellers and their stories went on till late into the starry night. I still recall the hilarious story of Midathambhotlu & the Grasshopper told by his second brother, Late Dr Ravi Babu, the founder of Electronics culture in AP. He was an early student of B.I.T. Pilani. His eldest brother, Late Sri G. V. Subba Rao, rolled out a comic version of the first line of the Sanskrit Dictionary-cum-Thesaurus, Amara Kosham, that I still remember fondly.
Kittappa's next and last visit to us at Muthukur was 4 years later when I was in my sixth form (Class XI). By then we had shifted to our pucca new school building built with the funds brought by my HM Father...I visited it sixty years later...the neem sapling we planted in the Vanamahotsav Festival has grown into a sprawling shady tree with a cement roundabout on which I sat for a few minutes, reminiscing.
On this surprise second visit, Kittappa came with his younger cousin, Dr G. Bhanu Murthy, the renowned Modern Telugu Poet who followed Ravi Babu to B.I.T. for his Electronics degree. It was in the evening and the two youngsters walked by our open classroom peeping in and withdrawing.
It was our Algebra class held by our young Asst HM, Hari Hara Sarma, who noticed the two town-bred Nellorians and asked me if they were my friends. I replied they were my brothers. And Sarma Sir offered to let me go but I demurred (algebra first and everything else next for me...it scared me stiff).
This brother-cousin difference was not much in vogue in our childhood...most our paternal and maternal cousins were called brothers and sisters by us. I heard of 'cousin' only after landing up at my university. And we, in our Indian way, as exemplified hilariously by Anurag Mathur, used to distinguish between cousin-brother and cousin-sister, a laughable diction for the Englishman but important for us. For, we could marry a distant cousin-sister on the maternal uncle's side but not on our father's side. This incongruity led to the famous 'Convenient Cousin' jokes much like the Raakhi Brothers and Raakhi Sisters at IIT KGP.
Anyway, there was this real-life story when one of my nephews went to Australia in his school days to be hosted there by his paternal uncle who had a son of the same age. When an Aussie friend of this boy asked who this new chap was, my nephew blurted out:
"I am his brother"
Upon which his uncle's son corrected him:
"No, he is not my brother...I have no brothers...he is my cousin"
This rankled so badly in my nephew's young mind that he was hurt enough to remember it and narrate it to me after a whole decade...call it culture-divide...
Anyway, I am delighted that Americans thought tomato was poisonous and avoided it till 1835.
This recalls a bias we had against mushrooms (toadstools?) that were growing like sin under every neem tree in the copious November rainy season in Muthukur in our childhood. We used to play with them but somehow Father was led to believe that all mushrooms were poisonous and akin to non-veg. So they never entered our kitchen.
Such childhood imprinting is long-lasting. When my son takes us to the Papa Johns outlet in the Hitec city here for a weekend dinner, he orders mushroom pizzas. He, Sailaja and little Ishani devour them. But I don't dare touch anything that has mushrooms in it...I make do with dozens of bread starters dipped in cheese.
Don't wish to die of food-poisoning...want to go in a trice...
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...Countries across the world use tomatoes
as a key ingredient in their dishes, but this wasn’t always the case. For
instance, the people of Florence, Italy, used tomatoes as mere tabletop
decoration until the late 17th century. Americans didn’t harvest
tomatoes until 1835 because of the belief they were poisonous. Despite their
lukewarm, wary reception in some countries, they’re grown throughout the world
today and are a pantry staple....
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
I don't recall seeing a tomato during my first ten years here on earth.
And my long-term memory is unfailing as my cousin, Kittappa, would testify. He visited us at Muthukur when I was in my second form (Class VII) with his two elder brothers. All the three are great story-tellers and their stories went on till late into the starry night. I still recall the hilarious story of Midathambhotlu & the Grasshopper told by his second brother, Late Dr Ravi Babu, the founder of Electronics culture in AP. He was an early student of B.I.T. Pilani. His eldest brother, Late Sri G. V. Subba Rao, rolled out a comic version of the first line of the Sanskrit Dictionary-cum-Thesaurus, Amara Kosham, that I still remember fondly.
Kittappa's next and last visit to us at Muthukur was 4 years later when I was in my sixth form (Class XI). By then we had shifted to our pucca new school building built with the funds brought by my HM Father...I visited it sixty years later...the neem sapling we planted in the Vanamahotsav Festival has grown into a sprawling shady tree with a cement roundabout on which I sat for a few minutes, reminiscing.
On this surprise second visit, Kittappa came with his younger cousin, Dr G. Bhanu Murthy, the renowned Modern Telugu Poet who followed Ravi Babu to B.I.T. for his Electronics degree. It was in the evening and the two youngsters walked by our open classroom peeping in and withdrawing.
It was our Algebra class held by our young Asst HM, Hari Hara Sarma, who noticed the two town-bred Nellorians and asked me if they were my friends. I replied they were my brothers. And Sarma Sir offered to let me go but I demurred (algebra first and everything else next for me...it scared me stiff).
This brother-cousin difference was not much in vogue in our childhood...most our paternal and maternal cousins were called brothers and sisters by us. I heard of 'cousin' only after landing up at my university. And we, in our Indian way, as exemplified hilariously by Anurag Mathur, used to distinguish between cousin-brother and cousin-sister, a laughable diction for the Englishman but important for us. For, we could marry a distant cousin-sister on the maternal uncle's side but not on our father's side. This incongruity led to the famous 'Convenient Cousin' jokes much like the Raakhi Brothers and Raakhi Sisters at IIT KGP.
Anyway, there was this real-life story when one of my nephews went to Australia in his school days to be hosted there by his paternal uncle who had a son of the same age. When an Aussie friend of this boy asked who this new chap was, my nephew blurted out:
"I am his brother"
Upon which his uncle's son corrected him:
"No, he is not my brother...I have no brothers...he is my cousin"
This rankled so badly in my nephew's young mind that he was hurt enough to remember it and narrate it to me after a whole decade...call it culture-divide...
Anyway, I am delighted that Americans thought tomato was poisonous and avoided it till 1835.
This recalls a bias we had against mushrooms (toadstools?) that were growing like sin under every neem tree in the copious November rainy season in Muthukur in our childhood. We used to play with them but somehow Father was led to believe that all mushrooms were poisonous and akin to non-veg. So they never entered our kitchen.
Such childhood imprinting is long-lasting. When my son takes us to the Papa Johns outlet in the Hitec city here for a weekend dinner, he orders mushroom pizzas. He, Sailaja and little Ishani devour them. But I don't dare touch anything that has mushrooms in it...I make do with dozens of bread starters dipped in cheese.
Don't wish to die of food-poisoning...want to go in a trice...
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Dr. G. Bhanumurthy is a Retired Professor in electronics but is more famous for his telugu poetic works under pseudonym, Rasik.
ReplyDeleteDr. GPS is a Retired Professor in Physics and is more known now for his famous blogs.
Me, Kittappa is just an Agastya Bhrata, twice over !! And I don't mind it at all !!!