Confessions of a Secret Pazham Pori Lover
Nikhita Thomas writes about the evolution of her feelings for that iconic Malayali favourite, pazham pori.
I was eleven years old when Barack Obama first visited India. In schoolyards in Kochi, where I grew up, children rendered parody songs about the American President oblivious to the candidly racist connotations of their lyrics. My primary school circles were rife with rumours about the man. One classmate had heard, with their “own two ears,” Obama profess a soft spot for kappa and meen curry in an interview. Refuting this claim, another insisted that the only pair accomplished enough to lure in the President was, no doubt, parotta and beef roast. So determined were we to establish a meaningful gastronomical connection with the most famous President of our times that it did not occur to any of us that neither the man nor his Michelle had ever set foot in Kerala. Later that day I asked my father, a reliable source, what Obama’s dish of choice was. He replied with conviction, “Why, pazham pori, of course!” And the matter was settled.
We didn’t always have the rosiest of relationships, pazham pori and I. All through my childhood, I regarded it with utter suspicion because pazham pori seemed to me a ploy to get children who disliked bananas to eat them. In my ammachi’s kitchen, a burly bunch of bananas hanging still from the low ceiling silently monitored the inhabitants of the house. Summers spent with her meant that we were duty-bound to work our way up the tower of bananas until all that was left swinging in the air was a malnourished trunk, minus the elephant. On some evenings, ammachi would gather all the nendran pazham (plantain) threatening to go overripe in some dark corner of her kitchen. Then she would prepare her batter and set it aside; maida, sugar, a pinch of salt, and a smattering of turmeric powder for a mellow yellow colour. She’d peel the bananas and slice them lengthwise into the most haphazard looking strips. Then she’d dip them into the batter, not unlike how Achilles was dipped by the heel into the river Styx. Now fortified with batter, the slivers of banana were gently released into hot oil. Deep-fried and suitably browned, they were soon skimmed out in a brand new avatar. Pazham pori.
I could never match my family’s fanfare over pazham pori. A rather lazy preparation by nature, it is very dear to my mother since it doesn’t keep her in the kitchen any longer than she wants. When evening arrives, amma carefully lines an old steel plate with a bed of tissue paper for her pazham pori. This beaten-up steel plate has accompanied her through many hostels and PGs. It certainly does not possess the charm people look for in old belongings and is almost always the ugliest thing in the room. But when it’s just the four of us, amma whips out her “vintage” plate ready to receive hot hot pazham pori. I never could admit to enjoying something so entirely made up of a fruit I publicly disliked. Even when they gave it a fancy name like banana fritters. On catching the warm whiff of pazham pori, I’d venture out of my room taking care not to betray my eagerness and hover over my feasting family. My mother, who never has had any time for my theatricality, is sometimes a kind woman. She’d keep aside for me bite-sized pieces of fried batter bearing faint flavours of banana. And I would pretend I liked it more than the actual thing.
Kothi (കൊതി) is a petite Malayalam word describing the urgent appetite we have for some food. For my mother and her sisters, pazham pori was the source of this kothi. On the Thursdays of their youth, the midi skirt-wearing trio would make a grand show of parading off to some faraway church only to surface at a certain Gopiettan’s chayakkada (tea stall). Here the pazham pori was proudly showcased within glass cases, all lined horizontally in crisp attention. If you went early, you snagged a fresh batch. The first bite would leave you huffing and puffing like an old-timey train while little lumps of banana danced upon your tongue. A little late and flies would have settled upon the pazham pori, now a little droopy, but just as inviting.
Pazham Pori and Pop Culture
When I was thirteen, a scrawny Sreenath Bhasi sang about finding love at the chayakkada in the film Da Thadiya. It went something like this:
My lou, you’re my panjasara x2
Saw you in a chayakkada, having pazham pori
My lou
My lou, you’re my thanga kudam x2
Saw you in a bakery kada, having paal peda
I have only one thing to say
I don’t know what to say
I love you x4
My lou
Parents everywhere unanimously hated Bhasi’s heartfelt rendition. But in my world, it had suddenly become fashionable to park yourself at the nearest chayakkada and revive some limp pazham pori in earnest efforts to live out the fantasy.
An unprecedented side-effect of growing up, it appears, is a rising interest in pazham pori. Despite my near negligible interactions with it, pazham pori grew familiar to me in the stories of others. One such storyteller was an old man named Thankan. Given to singing in the face of awkward silence, Thankan had been a permanent fixture in my grandmother’s household for as long as I could remember. When noon arrived and the kitchen began smelling like lunch, us two latecomers could be found at the dining table just about making headway with breakfast. And here we fought over his stories. Thankan told me that Pelé loved kappa. He also told me that beef and pazham pori went together like bread and jam. Later rewriting my prim imagination he taught me the expression kandi kashnam (literally translating to doo-doo pieces), a nickname bestowed upon the unfortunately shaped puttu by some wildly inappropriate Malayali humour. Years later when hostel mates told me they were ordering beef and pazham pori for dinner I began slowly unearthing all the facts buried in Thankan’s fiction.
Beef and pazham pori
Finding Home Away From Home
I finally fell in love with pazham pori in the unlikeliest of cities — Hyderabad. Pursuing a Master’s during the pandemic meant that I had to come to grips with the idea of graduating having never set foot on campus. Come third semester, a sample size of students did find themselves at the gates of English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU). The campus that received us was empty and reluctant. But some weeks into our university stint, a little hole-in-the-wall place with an admirably self-explanatory name cropped up in Sitaphalmandi — The Chayakkada. Run by a group of friends from Malappuram and Wayanad with the help of students from surrounding universities, The Chayakkada came to us with that tried-and-tested antidotal pair — chaya and pazham pori. And then it did a little more than that.
When I first walked in, Azeez was quick to offer us each a pazham pori. Accompanied by friends unaware of my tormented relationship with it I could abandon my principles for one, two, and even three pazham poris at The Chayakkada. Faces seemed familiar here even when not. Once I spotted a Malayali classmate seated at the table opposite ours with her Bihari boyfriend. With fists clenched and eyes shut like tense asterisks, the young man appeared to be reciting something to himself. It took a while but when he got there, he puffed his chest, turned to the counter and said, “Chetta, randu pazham pori!/Brother, two pazham pori!” As requested, two plates of pazham pori appeared before the lovers. “Pazham pori like mazha, puzha and puzhu” — the various corners of The Chayakkada also make for excellent lessons in Malayalam. Old men with immaculate beards wander in here and point to the canary yellow preparation at the counter, “What’s that? Get me one of those.” One captivated patron even invited himself right into the kitchen to witness the magic first-hand. It might not yet be world famous but this little endeavour has managed to endear the pazham pori to scores of students living in Sitaphalmandi. Where universities failed to make space for their students, the purveyor of pazham pori was successful in that it allowed for the simple act of gathering.
Sitting here with a pazham pori in one hand and a glass of chaya in the other, some are already in lou. Some are seeking lou. But the best of us have found lou in the humble pazham pori.
Nikhita Thomas is an MA English student at English and Foreign Languages University (Hyderabad). Follow her work here.
Illustration by Arshiya Fazal.
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