When I say rice, I don't mean the noodle-like pearly white kind. When I say rice, I mean the burly kind. Brown and par-boiled. Stored in sacks and mounted in the store room to feed generations in famine. When I was a young girl, that rice I couldn't swallow. It had a strong stench of the husk which had been boiled into it. And the grains were huge. That rice had no business being the center piece of my lunch plate. I loved visiting other people's homes, people who lived in towns and ate rice that came out of store bought pockets. Whiter, thinner, easier to chew. But within a few days I would have to go back to my family's staple.
People I assume, ate rice twice. The women particularly. Water-rice for breakfast and fresh rice for lunch. The water-rice would be fermented rice of the day before, covered and kept in the kitchen corner, to gather tastes, overnight. A lemon would be squeezed into it and a chilly smashed. To be had with a side of mashed potato or a roasted brinjal. The fermented water was to be slurped right out of the bowl at the end.
Women of the house would wind up the morning chores and sit together on the floor, chatty, with their bowls separate but the mashed potato in one common plate in the middle. For women who were in no way related by blood, daughters-in-law, married to brothers by accident, now spending their entire lives under the same roof and sharing mashed potato, every morning.
When I was a kid in my ancestral house and the women sat down to have their breakfast this way, I slipped out into the neighbor's. The neighbors were of course, a relative, cousins once removed or so. And they expected me, almost always. An aunt by relation, who was closer to my age and was more like a sister, taught me how to eat water-rice. She didn't care for mashed potatoes, one bit. The women in their home would start their meal and aunt and I would start gathering ours.
They would give us a massive bowl of water-rice, of course. One bowl for the two of us. And we would roast a bunch of lady's fingers in the earthen stove. And char a tomato on the tawa, spluttering in mustard oil. I would fetch the tiniest of green chillies from their kitchen garden, as tiny as a grain of rice but so hot that it could blow your head off, hah. And we would sometimes, if we felt like roast a potato and a brinjal. All of it would be mashed in another gigantic plate. With chopped onions and a load of garlic. And eaten along with the water-rice. In big swallows and gulps.
Sometimes, when we were in a mood, we would get the fishing rod and head to the pond. Sit there on the steps and wait for a catch. A fish or two would get hooked. Have I ever told you, how nice freshly caught pan friend fish tastes? Just with a splash of turmeric and chilly powder. Fish is the ultimate side-dish for water-rice, say what you may.
After such a breakfast, we would lay on our backs on the courtyard and chat. We would forget lunch and its rice and wake up long past afternoon.