Eashwaramma's gift of sambar podi

 

The many faces of love.

Eashwaramma running to the Varadappanaidupeta shop a km away after her day’s work to buy groundnuts, lighting a fire with twigs and roasting them, and pounding them with garlic and salt and coriander seeds and red chillies into a powder of the right coarseness. And giving us a kg of that to take so that we could add it to all our curries till we came back to the village. . She says, ‘What you can grind in a mixie cannot taste that good at all. It will be too fine.’. She is right.

And she checks up by calling my daughter to ask if that was added, and tells her that only if the food is tasty can she eat well.