Rich Bounty on the Ides of March

My voyage to the East (of London; East Ham, in truth)

Caesar famously ignored the injunction to stay at home on the Ides of March: it did not turn out well for him. I have done the same but, for me, it could not have gone better (yes, I realise the Ides have come but not yet gone).

My day started not in the vein of Caesar’s but very much in that of, say, a 17^th Century East India Company factor, heading out east from an office in the City of London to spice-bearing Malabar, save that for me it was a PT studio by St. Paul’s rather than an office on Leadenhall Street, and my vehicle was not a clipper putting in at St. Helena en route for the Indies, but the eastbound Hammersmith and City via Bow Road to East Ham.

Sumptuous Southern Surprises

East Ham, you see, is a little corner of South India under a mackerel London sky. It’s where you need to go if you want proper spices in abundance, not rip-off beige and orange dust from Sainsbury’s for a tenner a teaspoon. It was not, unlike the Jacboean companymen of old, the Zamarin of Travancore or the Mughal Emperor on his Peacock Throne with whom I had to figure but, rather, jovial Tamil traders (one, explicably, in a WHSmith staff jacket) delighted but a little surprised to have a white English person rummaging around for black cardamom and - what I know through Nav’s Keralan family as - chukka vellam (an ayurvedic tea of herbs, roots, barks and seeds which is bright pinky-purple and good for the stomach). Like Indian rulers of old, made wary through the pilfering Portuguese purloining peppercorns without permission, these Tamil grocers keep the good stuff – saffron in particular – behind the counter. You don’t ask you don’t get.

Passing the Sri Mahalakshmi temple on the high road, I could well have been in Madurai or another temple town of the south. As I was wandering down to a food shop to pick up some snacks we had ordered ahead for tonight’s dinner (mutton rolls, samosas and fish cutlets if you’re interested), I passed on the other side of the road a lady shuffling out from under the rising shutters of her jewellery shop in a red and gold sari. At first look, I thought she had taken to violent, diffuse vomiting: in fact she was throwing all over her doorstep a pan of what I think was turmeric-infused water. Dissatsfied, it would seem, with close proximity to the threshold of the Great Goddess of Bounty’s temple, I think she had alighted upon a further and better method of attracting wealth (turmeric is, after all, gold): my in-laws are not sure what was going on, but this page certainly advises throwing turmeric all over your front porch as a “remedy” to “attract money” so…

Golden (beige) offerings at Sambal Express

It was all so jovial I really did feel like a tourist. And what trip to Kerala would be complete without stopping in for a dosa? It was an enormous dunce’s hat ghee roast for me (a reflection, perhaps, of my woeful Malayalam abilities), with all the life-changing chutneys, sambar and a little veg kurma. A young scamp a few tables over could not resist the natural urge to pick it up and use it as a trumpet and received the inevitable Indian-parent scolding: I wonder if I would have got away with it…?

Ghee Roast Masala Dosa - Nav’s head for scale

Heading home, ladened with good fortune, I did wonder about all the other corners of London that I might not think to go to, thus denying myself the fun and riches that abound. I am, in any event, very happy not to have been wary of the Ides of March: et tu?