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| Paddy field out in front |
The late afternoon was easing into a perfect November evening at my parental home in Thrissur. The steady westerly breeze had blown away the last vestiges of the midday heat. The slanting sun shone through the swaying mango canopies, casting dancing shadows on the courtyard below. The parakeets were busy running their seasonal racket stealing maturing rice ears from the paddy field out in front. Any moment they can expect to hear from grandma who would hurriedly come banging an aluminum pot with a ladle to shoo them off. The green birds, with their hooked beaks honed to perfection for the craft, have grown wiser about this noisy distraction. They would hastily retreat to their perches on the coconut palms, only to resume their pilferage with renewed vigor the moment grandma went out of sight.
I leaned forward from the wicker chair and refilled my glass. It felt cool as I clasped my hands tightly around the drink. I lay back, stretched my legs on the ottoman and took another sip. The taste was just right—bold but not burning, strong, not pungent. A whiff of lime rounded out the pleasing organic aroma. I emptied the glass in one eager gulp and poured another glassful of la boisson fraîche, er, sambharam.
OK, I admit it—sambharam has lost some of its glamor. And slapping on a fancy French name isn’t likely to rescue it from its present lowly status. Time was when road-weary guests longed for and were graciously offered a tumbler full of the wholesome drink upon arrival. The salted solution lightened with mineral-rich well water would provide just the right shot of electrolytes to ward off any hint of dehydration. This experiential knowledge ensured that sambharam was a popular drink wherever thirst met tropical heat—as in Thrissur municipal bus stand on a sultry summer day. As a child ambling behind my mother to board the bus to my ancestral home near Varandarappilly, I remember eyeing vendors selling ready-made sambharam from large aluminum vessels—10 naya paisa a pop. Though the price was attractive, my mother declined. She noticed that the drinking cups were reused after a quick rinse in a bucket of cloudy water that the vendor seemed in no hurry to replace.
But such food safety concerns never really made a dent in sambharam’s popularity as an on-the-go replenishment in erstwhile Kerala. People lined up to drink the quenching potion wherever they gathered for an event: at weddings, religious festivals, and that Malayalee specialty, political protest marches. Sambharam flowed freely to anyone and everyone without regard to caste or creed. To accommodate the demand, organizers commandeered any large container they could lay their hands on. One particularly clever solution dreamed up by the temple committee of Kunnath Ambalam near my ancestral home comes to memory. They mixed sambharam and served it out in cupfuls to the thirsty folks attending the annual Shashti festival—in a boat.
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| Nilakavadis arrayed at a Shashti (Courtesy: poonilarkavudevaswom.com) |
But then the residents around the Kunnath Ambalam (a Hindu temple) have always had a reputation for creative solutions to local problems. The Kunnath Ambalam, as the name suggests, sits atop a hill, with panoramic views of the Western Ghats to the east and the lowland plains stretching out to the Arabian Sea in the west. The enchanting Kurumali Puzha meanders southward through the valley below on its way to Pudukkadu. Large granite formations shore up the hillsides, offering perfect spots to take in the views unhindered. Legend has it that the villagers, all of them Hindus, once noticed a church delegation led by a white-robed priest visiting the hilltop. What happened that night remains a mystery but the next day they were awakened by a commotion. An oracle in the throes of his trance led a group of villagers up the hill. At the top, he pointed his sickle sword down to the ground and threw a fistful of red hibiscus petals. There amidst the grass was a Shivalingam. Thus was consecrated the Kunnath Ambalam. To such creative folks, dispensing large quantities of sambharam to the festival attendees by using a boat as temporary container must have come as second nature. The attendees, having to rely on a boat to cross the river for their provisions, must have felt reassured that at least one boat in the region was leak-proof.
What made sambharam a great drink for the masses is its simplicity. No need to store its formula behind steel vaults under the threat of incarceration for recipe divulgence. My maternal uncle, Raviammaman makes the best sambharam I have tasted. Sambharam and other authentic old-time cuisine are his forte. After his retirement from the KSRTC1, a career for unfathomable reasons he much enjoyed, he has quietly settled into a dairy and condiment business, making a decent living. I offer you his recipe, with a caution. While having been fortunate to savor his sambharam on many occasions, not being blessed with even basic culinary skills, I have never prepared and served a glass of sambharam myself.
Mix freshly prepared moderately sour yogurt with copious amounts of water. Gently crush raw ginger and green chilly with a grinding stone and stir in thoroughly. Slice up a couple of
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| Sambharam (Courtesy: goldensecretrecipes.com) |
lime leaves and let their essence blend in. Add salt to taste and there you have your sambharam. The amount of water is the key. Less of it means you get the fattier and likely more acidic, moru. While moru has its merits, it is best taken as an accompaniment to a meal, rather than as a stand-alone drink as sambharam. You may be tempted to substitute curry leaves for lime. Don’t. Stick with lime and you will be rewarded with a perfect nose that only the subtle combination of ginger and lime flavonoids can offer.
To be sure, there are a great many variations to this basic recipe. One particularly bold concoction preferred by my cousin Haridas comes to mind. His current position as a senior bank manager belies his leisurely college life. His passions included smoking beedis, weekend movies at the Pallikunnu Davis, and bathing twice a day in the Kurumali Puzha. After a busy day spent chiefly on various non-educational pursuits at the college in Thrissur, he would alight in Varandarapilly town, such as it was, and head straight to Subramanian’s peedika2. There he would hold court on matters ranging from religious symbolism in Hindu rituals to the impending implosion of communist party rule in the Soviet Union, easily handling any of listener’s questions, all with an unblemished record of not having read a book or newspaper account on the matters under discussion. Yes, you see life is unfair.
Coming to the point, aside from his daily order of two packets of Kaja beedi, and an occasional side of a murukkan (a chewing pack consisting betel leaves, slaked lime, and crushed areca nut), he would gesture with his hand:
“Oru sambharam edukkam. Soda tto.” (“I will have a sambharam. Use soda.”)
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| Soda bottles (Courtesy: thehindu.com) |
The soda he was talking about is the plain carbonated water sold in special glass bottles. These bottles came with a constricted neck that trapped a marble which acted as a valve holding the carbon dioxide dissolved in water under pressure. A swift jab with the thumb dislodged the marble releasing the dissolved gas and the frothing water was gurgled down straight out of the bottle. People drank this as an alternative to plain water for the fizz it delivered. I don’t know whether plain soda is sold in this type of bottles anymore. Occasionally, an over-pressurized bottle would explode and cause havoc in the market.
Haridas had made a simple discovery. By using soda instead of water, he could add some fizz to the sambharam. I am hopeful that in capable hands, this formulation could be a viable rival to the bevy of sugar-laden beverages that have usurped sambharam’s supremacy as the drink of choice these days.
Fizzy or not, few summer drinks can match the superlative taste and flavor of properly blended sambharam; fewer still possess comparable nutritive properties. Sambharam’s yoghurt base provides protein, vitamins, and a rich array of minerals such as calcium, potassium, phosphorus, and selenium. The ginger, capsicum, and lime extracts aid digestion. The dilution with water abates a more modern concern, the caloric load.
Contrast that with the carbonated soft drinks in vogue today. Their attributes—well, there aren’t any of value really. Glitzy marketing has convinced today’s youngsters to shell out rupees for these vapid drinks in many multiples of what it would cost to make an equivalent amount of sambharam. With no commercial interests to back it up against the marketing onslaught, sambharam has been relegated to an occasional drink ordered up by nostalgic old-timers.
“Do you want more sambharam?” my mother asked from the kitchen.
She is privy to my appreciation for the drink and it is the first thing she makes on the afternoon of my visit after serving up a delicious breakfast of dosa with sambar, chutney, and onion chammanthi in the morning.
“No, that’s enough for now” I said, as I poured that last glassful.
Across the paddy fields, the sun was descending behind thick puffs of reddening clouds. The westerly breeze had grown noticeably cooler. The temple loudspeaker came alive with the soothing rendition of devotional songs. The parakeets were nowhere to be found, having happily retreated to their hideaways with the day’s haul. I looked at the pale white drink in my hand. It felt good acknowledging the worth of this unpretentious drink, the strengths of its character, its village simplicity.
It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when I shunned any association with sambharam. This shameful era started during my school days, on account of a textbook story about an astute villager. This gentleman could throw up a handful of shells and count them before they fell to the ground. The story illustrated how he acquired this neat mathematical ability through practice and persistence. Instead of focusing on that though, an opportunistic friend noticed some minor details about the protagonist: that he was of my caste; that he wore a thin single-ply cotton towel that was too transparent to hide his loincloth; and most embarrassingly, that he asked for sambharam as he walked into the neighbor’s yard where he demonstrated his counting skill. Sensing weakness, my friend went for the jugular:
“Is that what you wear at home?” he teased. “I guess you serve sambharam to guests at your house?”
It took time to get over this humiliation. So here’s, unreservedly, to sambharam! It may not better your lifestyle, but it will certainly better your life. Drink up.
Cheers!
1 Kerala State Road Transport Corporation, the state-run bus system that once had a reputation for, among other things, studiously avoiding passengers at crowded bus stops.↩
2 A small shop, often with a bench outside for the regular visitors to sit and converse with the proprietor.↩
