Chronicles – Bisi Bele Bath

This is a actual story as told, heard and described by yours truely at the ripe age of 10 years.

Gopal mama was a bachelor. He was working for Accounts General Auditors Office at Bangalore. The era was 1970’s and many modern inventions which could have castrophic changes werent allowed into India yet. Not yet!

Gopal mama being my mothers younger brother was living in a rented room as a bachelor and wanted to cook his own food (This food stickeness runs down our family line).

He was a decent cook as described by the neigbours based on the pungent smells that originated from his room periodically and seconded by venki the neighbourhood maid who doubled up as a maid and gossip station.

Life was quite serence and good but one day mama confessed to my mother that cooking has been taking too much of his time and wanted to some how speed it up.

Mother dutyfully introduced him to the pleasures of pressure cooking. She explained the science of dipping once finger till 4 inches of water and 1 Inch of Rice proportion.

Just like balancing his Ledgers, mama nodded his head and with Mothers Introduction, Thamboo Cheetty and Sons was rich by 85 Rupees while Mama was smiling away to a 5 Liter cooker.

When some body gets to know about computers, the first things thought about is Hardware and Software.

Mama discovered that hardware is useless unless proper software ( reciepes) are procured and products dished out. Mother again rescued him and invited him to witness the making of Bisi bele bath so that he could take notes and learn the art as byhearted by grand mother and passed on down generation.

Thanks to him we had a good , stomach full of BBB on sunday. Mama took me on a big ride on his sports cycle that evening, brought me the big rasa bale (bannana). He was too happy.

2 weeks passed and we had all forgotten about the coaching classes and my aunt who lived a stones throw away happened to visit mama as she had to pass on some letters of mama.

Since there was no telephone those days, data travelled slowly. We got it delayed and relayed on next sunday when aunt visited us.

Mama according to mothers wishes put the mix of bele, rice , veggies and even did a pradakshina namaskara to the cooker. He poured water as taught and put it on the kerosene stove. After 25 minutes of Hamam soap bath he was back to see the water vapour and put on the weight.

Mama than reportedly proceeded to wash his cloths. After 30 minutes of washing,rinning (applying Rin bar soap to cloth), rinsing ( last step of washing machine) and drying he heard a hissing sound.

Holding his panche in one hand, the empty bucket containing RIN bar soap in other he ran double quick to his room upstairs. He saw the cooker wobbling a little and doing barthanatyam on the stove.

Fear grips men when it comes to cooking stuff containing vegetables it seems. Mama was no exclusion to that. He immideatly put the kerosene stove off, safely got the pressure cooker down and with great effort removed the weight on the cooker.

Venki till we met her last time used to have tears in eyes to describe that great event. Mama had removed the pressure cooker and under pressure the entire hot bele and Rice mixture had spurted out at high speed missing mama’s head by inches, hit the roof, rebounded to walls and at end ; ended up on mamas head.

So mama had a real good bisi bele bath.

He has just left to USA to visit his son but dont think he had this kind of bath anymore! Now, are there any takers for me making bisi bele bath?