Faith in Flour, Memory in Ghee

In my memory, Pann Puza is impossibly large. It was never just a festival but a precise and demanding enterprise, the sort of undertaking that required foresight. My mother approached it like a General preparing for battle, her lists drafted with military gravity; flour (five pavs, because that was the reeth, though she always added ‘two extra lots’ for sharing naveed), sugar, ghee and most crucial of all, the vessels.

The vessels lived in the kani, the attic. All year they slumbered in the shadows until they were summoned: brought down, scrubbed, polished to a glea and readied for their one true purpose.

On the morning of Vinayak Chorum (give or take a day, depending on saath), my mother was awake before the sparrows dared stir. As a child, I often suspected, that the birds knew better. That they sensed what the day demanded and wisely stayed out of the way. She drew water from the well while the rest of the world still pressed its head into the pillow. By dawn, the choka had transformed into theatre: stoves spitting on cue, Bobji, kneading flour with forearms straining as though wrestling a stubborn animal into obedience.

Some years, Masi would come to help too. Sleeves rolled up, laughter ready to spill, their sibling shorthand stitching the rhythm of the day, My sister and I knew our place in the order of the things: roaming the garden in search of dramun, plucking flowers with the solemnity of jewel thieves, rinsing puza grains and arranging them as though arranging entire worlds. 

Then came the roths. Once rolled, they became our canvas. My sister and I carved wholly unnecessary patterns into the dough, stabbing at the surface with khos, kawel, chamcha, even knife, believing every jagged line mattered, The artistry was spectacular in its unpredictability. Of course, once the roth met the ghee, ghee met the pan, the designs melted obligingly into anonymity, vanishing under generous sprinkle of khus khus. But still, we had done our part.