By Benjamin Jesudian McLoughlin

Ajji’s spice cabinet.

If you want to know what my childhood smelled like, throw raw black peppercorns into a dry frying pan over a stove. A hot, pungent, distinctive aroma will rise into the air, and my mind’s eye will see a Saturday morning with my grandmother cooking, multitasking, maybe cutting tomatoes or onions while her spices heat up. For years, I knew the deeply nostalgic smell, but it was only recently that I realized where it came from.

Roasting pepper is one of the first steps in making many South Indian curries, my maternal grandmother’s specialty. Dr. Alice Nalini Jesudian, whom I call Ajji (“grandmother” in her native tongue, Kannada, spoken in the South Indian state of Karnataka. Pronounced “UH-jee”), was born in Bengaluru, in the south of India. It was in this massive, tropical city where Ajji learned to cook, mostly from her maternal aunt, affectionately referred to as Papakka (an oxymoronic portmanteau of Kannada words for “baby” and “older sister”). Papakka was unmarried and helped raise Ajji, as well as her younger sister and cousins. “She prepared all the family meals despite working, and all the meals were freshly made every day,” Ajji told me one night in her sunroom, which is filled with plants and metal Indian statues. 

Sharing a meal out with Ajji.

For the last five years, my family has lived with Ajji, sharing with her the house where she raised her family and has lived for the past 40 years. Ajji’s cooking has been a constant my whole life, something I used to take for granted. On a recent Wednesday night after dinner, Ajji told me about cooking in her life, starting from the start. “My parents were away working in some rural parts of India. They wanted us to stay in the bigger city, so my sister and I had to live with an extended family.” The first thing that all little girls were taught to make back then was tea, she said. “When I was eight or so, the first thing we learned to make was tea, and tea was not with a teabag like you do here, but it’s actually brewing, with tea leaves.” Ajji explained that tea was essential for entertaining company, so children were taught how to make it early.

Ajji learned a little more about cooking as a child. Rice is the second thing that little girls prepare. After rice, however, Ajji had to focus on schoolwork more. After getting high marks in her school, Ajji left for college at the young age of 15, as was common at the time. She entered medical school at 18, attending Christian Medical College, Vellore. There, she met and married her husband, Dr. Manoranjan Christian Jesudian, my grandfather, who passed away in 1988.

After marrying in 1973, the two moved to Calcutta (also known as Kolkata) in the north of India, working at a leprosy hospital. Here is where Ajji first needed to cook. “At age 24, I got married, and we had to move far away from where we were. Thousands of miles away!” Although they remained in India, Calcutta is an incredibly different place than Bangalore. Along with different languages, climates, and cultures, the cuisine differs greatly from the South. “Both my husband and I were raised in South India. We longed for south Indian food.”

Ajji recalled of her early times in the North: “That’s where I started cooking. I don’t think at first I was very successful. It wasn’t, like, what I wanted it to taste like or look like, but much later, after we moved to America, the need was even greater, because certainly there was not much Indian food available in the 70s when we came to Richmond!” The couple moved to Virginia, originally to Gordonsville, where Ajji’s parents and sister had moved some years earlier. Her husband eventually found work at VCU as an anesthesiologist, and Ajji kept the house, raising my mother and uncle. After my grandfather’s untimely death from cancer, Ajji began working as a psychiatrist, first at VCU. In her long career in the field, Ajji proudly told me that she attained the title of Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Throughout her time working, Ajji continued to cook Indian almost nightly for her family and herself. 

Two of Ajji’s meals are my personal favorites for different reasons. Pulao is a dish made especially for Christmas Day. My family represents a portion of the 2% of India that is Christian, and we continue to celebrate Christmas with a large Indian lunch. “Every Christmas, it takes a lot of time, but I make that,” Ajji said of Pulao. The day before, chicken pieces must be seasoned and put in a marinade consisting of onions, garlic, ginger, cilantro, green chilis, and spices all blended together into a puree. After the breasts absorb the flavor overnight, the chicken is baked in the oven with rice, creating a deep flavor and crisping the flavor-filled, brown rice. Sweet buttermilk, onion-tomato-yogurt salad, special Christmas eggplant, and a cold Coke accompany this holiday lunch at my house every year. It’s hard for me to even write about this experience objectively, because it is consistently so wonderful and special to me. The cold, sweet buttermilk is the perfect companion to the rich, umami flavor of the rice. The fresh, ice-cold yogurt creates a breathtaking contrast against the hot, heavy feeling and flavor of the chicken and eggplant. It only comes once a year, and I make sure to savor it. The experience and atmosphere are as distinctively wonderful as the flavor of the meal. 

Fish curry made by Ajji.

The second dish is Ajji’s special fish curry. This one has been my favorite since childhood; every year that Ajji has been with us for my birthday, I have requested it for dinner. A thick, sour, aromatic, oniony curry completely covers pieces of fresh blue catfish, cooked to melt-in-your-mouth perfection. The deep brown liquid is spooned on top of white basmati rice and eaten with spinach, yogurt, and fresh cucumber. The flavor is light and delicate, but not subtle. The spice level varies by batch, swinging from mild to tear-and-sweat-inducing, depending on the relative randomness of Ajji’s magical process. No matter how much soap I use to scrub my hands, they will smell of the pungent spices in this curry for a few hours after (Indian food is traditionally eaten with the right hand, instead of utensils). Ajji often uses an upcoming test or exam as an excuse to make me this curry, which she knows is my favorite. Fish is “brain food,” Ajji will tell me with a grin, and will help me remember my facts and formulas. 

This dish is special additionally because it is a unique meal, combining secret family recipes with some American ingredients. Ajji told me about her tiny recipe book: “When we got married and had to move away thousands of miles, and I was not the greatest of cooks, and I was so anxious, so I got a little book, like a bound notebook, and I was frantically writing down recipes. Asking my grandmother, my aunt, just the simple everyday family things how they cooked, because I had no idea at one time. I still have that book, and I still use it, even now!” Ajji told me, proud of her story. “And along the way I, I learned some more, like once I had traveled through Malaysia and Singapore during my medical school days, and the cuisine there is so very fantastic! So I wrote down some of those recipes.” 

A page of Ajji’s famous recipe book.

Due to the distinctive recipes, combining flavors and techniques generations old and brand new, these dishes that I am so emotionally connected to cannot be made anywhere else. I have only recently begun to truly appreciate this food that I had previously taken for granted. Recently, I have decided that it is my responsibility to learn Ajji’s recipes. I have promised Ajji that I would carry them on, though it has not been easy so far. Part of the wonder and individuality of the recipes is the seeming lack of measurement. “This much,” coupled with a rough handful, is a common amount of onions or spice added to the blender before making a curry. The aforementioned recipe book is yellowed with age and handwritten, and much of it is in Kannada, leaving it unusable without a translation. Nevertheless, I have attempted to document her recipes with photos on my phone and detailed transcripted descriptions in my Notes app. With time spent with her in the kitchen, I hope that I can pick up her techniques and gain enough knowledge to at least attempt to recreate my favorite foods, for my own children and grandchildren one day.

Ajji, I love you so much, and I will miss your food every day in college next year!

All photos by Benjamin McLoughlin.