Comfort Food for Caregivers - Kozhukattas

The aftermath of the visits to the hospitals every month is numbing exhaustion. The two hour trip, waiting for the doctor, the chatter in the waiting room, the groans of the patients, listening to mothers and wives voice their anguish add to my sorrow and weariness.

Eating home cooked meals, being physically active, managing stress levels through prayer and getting enough sleep is crucial to maintain an even keel when giving care. Unfortunately hospital cafeterias are minefields of junk food. Piled, crispy, brown samosas beckoning from the top of the counters, gulab jamuns glistening invitingly from its sugar syrup... Eating junk food is immensely comforting. The pounds that I have piled on are not.

Eating Kozhukattas are comforting and have to some extent reduced the craving for junk food . Kozhukattas are steamed rice dumplings, made in Kerala for breakfast. There are two varieties - sweet and salty. 

             Salty delicately spiced Kozhukattas nestling after steaming - ready to be eaten

For those interested here is the recipe. 
Ingredients:
Rice - two cups
Freshly grated coconut - one cup
Cumin seeds - one teaspoon
Asafoetida powder - a pinch
Green chillies - four coarsely chopped
Dry red chillies - two broken into halves
Urad dal split white lentils (Vigna mungo)- one tablespoon
Mustard seeds - one teaspoon
Curry leaves - a sprig
Cooking oil – one tablespoon
Salt – half a teaspoon
Water –whenever required.

Procedure:
1. Wash rice and soak it in water overnight.
2. Drain the rice. Grind it coarsely in a blender with half a cup of water, cumin seeds and asafoetida.
3. Heat a thick- bottomed pan.
4. When the pan is hot, add the oil. Add mustard seeds to the oil.
5. When the seeds splutter add the urd dal, red chillies, green chillies and curry leaves. Stir with  thick spatula/ladle with a strong handle.
6. When the aroma of the lentils are released which happens when the urd dal turns light brown add the coarsely ground mixture of rice, cumin and asafoetida. Stir quickly to avoid the mixture sticking to the pan and getting burnt.
7. Reduce the flame of the cooking gas. Add grated coconut to the mixture. Keep stirring till the mixture thickens and leaves the sides of the pan.
8. Switch off flame. Leave it to cool for not more than ten minutes.
9. Make round balls using hand.
10. Place it on an oiled colander and steam for ten minutes with a lid. They are then ready to eat.
11. Kozhukuttas can be refrigerated in a container with a lid, reheated in a microwave or carried in snack boxes for trips to hospitals.

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NEW LAWS IN INDIA MUST MANDATE ACCESS TO TREATMENT AND REHABILITATION CENTRES FOR PEOPLE LIVING WITH MENTAL ILLNESS

I had met them in different places - Manisha, Elizabeth and Shivnath. 

Manisha , one of the triplets in the house next door at Gandhinagar in the state of Gujarat, during  the nineteen seventies when my husband serving in the Indian Air Force was installing a radar with other personnel in Wadsar  which was a village then. We would both go cycling to the market together to the corner shop which opened in the evening. It was run by the local school teacher who made money by lending out his books for a small amount.  We both loved reading.  My daughter was three years old then. She would curl into the shopping basket which was tied firmly to the handlebar of my bicycle, her gamine face peeping out, her hair streaming with the wind while I pedalled fast. After getting our books we would lie on the mats and read. Those were quiet times not knowing what the future would bring.

Elizabeth is a fighter pilot’s wife. I met her in one of the towns in Punjab where both our husbands were stationed. I loved the Easter lunches at Elizabeth’s place. Hot cross buns, mutton stew, aapams... Kerala cooking at its best spread out on the table from coconuts brought from home in Kuttanad. Elizabeth was from Kuttanad and I knew how much she missed her birthplace. She would sigh deeply when she talked about her home. 

Shivnath is a taxi driver living in Delhi whose family stays in Joginder Nagar a small town located in Himachal Pradesh. He was happy when he knew that I had spent time at his native place several years ago. His daughter struggled with a severe mental illness too. So there was much in common to talk about besides the asparagus soup made from the shoots which grew abundantly in the mountains. 

I had lost touch with Manisha and Elizabeth during the initial period of my daughter’s illness. It was much later that I knew that Manisha had moved to their ancestral home near the Rann of Kutch, Elizabeth to Kuttanad and both had severe mental illness. With the good times we had shared together we are now intertwined with the anguish and the struggle. 

Like most families In India who were not aware of the nature of these illnesses the treatment had begun late. 

And as for rehabilitation centres in India the few that exist are for the privileged and the rich. 

‘Easy access to treatment and rehabilitation centres for people with mental illness living even in inhospitable terrains like deserts, mountains and islands. People living in Kuttanad (wetlands) in Kerala, Joginder Nagar (Himalayas) in Himachal Pradesh and Rann of Kutch (desert) must be able to access these centres.’ – was one of the recommendations made to the committee constituted by the Ministry of Social Justice, Government of India in June 2010, for the purpose of drafting a new legislation for people with disabilities to replace the Persons with Disabilities Act 1995 (PWD ACT 1995). As one of the members of this new committee, this recommendation was based on the experiences of people living in these areas, these three people, their families, who had to run around for two years for procuring a disability certificate. Basic health services are still distantly located from their homes.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported Licens