Living alone is testing. I have only recently gone off on my own, and I can attest to that. But I do manage to find small joys amidst the chaos. Unexpectedly, at the heart of this respite is rice. I say unexpected because my love for rice isn’t something new.
You see, I grew up with rice, quite literally. My first ever meal wasn’t mashed vegetables or porridge, but kheer. Once a baby starts teething, they are introduced to solid food for the first time in a ceremony called Annaprasana, with rice at the core of this ceremony, typically served in the form of kheer. So for me, rice is where it all began. In many ways, I owe my love for food to this precious carb.
Rice is deeply enmeshed in my identity. In my Assamese household, it is both a staple and a celebration. On a daily basis, we have the usual surti kolam, but a trip to Assam changes this completely. Picture a huge suitcase filled with fresh, colourful produce; from saag like dhekia (fiddlehead ferns) and mosondori (heart leaf), to the bright kaji nemu (Assam lemon), whose aroma instantly fills the room with citrusy goodness, my mouth waters just thinking about it. Peel away at this dense layer of vegetables, and tucked underneath would be a sheer polythene bag filled with rice. This is no ordinary rice; it would either be the glutinous bora saul or the fragrant joha saul, with an aroma that rivals even Jasmine rice. The bag often tips the scales at 5 kilos—risky business at airport check-in, but the rich and luscious flavour makes it well worth the risk.
After all that trouble, one would assume that these special grains would be hidden away, only to be savoured on an equally special occasion–not in my house. We don’t ascribe to delayed gratification. We would have this prized joha saul with aloo pitika (mashed potatoes) and dal for the very next meal after returning from Assam.
Food with simple preparation and minimal spice is paired with this rice to bring out its inherent flavour. I remember my mother preparing a bora saul pulao with peanuts for some crunch, paired with dal to cut through the stickiness, although I never minded it. If I could, I would have bora saul every day. The only thing holding me back is my digestive tract, as the glutinous variety can do quite a number on the stomach.
But of course, those translucent grains remedy that as well! By donning a fermented avatar as the traditional poita bhat, it becomes a potent tool for digestion and gut health. Just soak cooked rice in water and leave it overnight, it’s that easy. The next morning, you can enjoy this tangy dish with a piece of fried fish or simply with some mustard oil and onion. You can also be counterintuitive like me and load it with chilli oil. I usually go for bhoot jolokia asar (ghost chilli pickle).
Rice truly is everything, and it’s celebrated as such. While you may have heard about Bihu, there is one such feast that is entirely dedicated to rice, Na Khuwa. Na means new, and Khuwa means to eat. Celebrated at the end of the rice harvest season in the winter months, it is a feast where the entire community comes together to relish the newly cultivated rice. While it is definitely a ritualistic ceremony, deep down it is an expression of a profound connection between the community and those pearly grains.
With roots in such a community, rice for me is both ordinary and omnipresent in the same breath. After a long day of reckoning with an intense commute, would it be easier to have food already prepared and stored away? Yes. Do I still insist on having fresh rice? Absolutely. I own a rice cooker that eases the process, but my impatience often gets the better of me; thirty minutes can feel like eternity. Strangely, though, not when rice is involved. In these thirty minutes, I consciously slow myself down. With the smell of fresh rice wafting through the air, it almost feels meditative. Things take a languid pace, and as I am slipping into slumber, the thirty minutes are over, and I am reinvigorated with excitement.
When I start plating, I always take a beat to admire the bloomed grains of rice, still steaming. It’s grounding and exhilarating at the same time. It is at this moment that I realise that rice has become my anchor. Honestly, it has always been my anchor.
