“The first time I gave a class to two British women, I was so scared that my arms and legs were shaking,” says Shashi as she introduces her cooking class to the world.
Shashi runs cooking classes out of her humble two roomed home, her fame has spread across the city of Udaipur spawning many a copy cat class but no one could come close to Shashi ji, her brand of humour and her tragic life story delivered in matter of fact terms and without any pathos. The murder of her husband left her a widow at an early age with two boys to raise. When her brother in law refuses to help support his brothers widow as would be required by their caste, Shashi takes in washing earning one rupee a piece and working in secret lest the shame of a woman of her caste doing such menial labour cause even more of a shadow on her family.
Shashi is a story of a good woman who could not be held down. Somehow through some fortuituous meeting with a foreign traveler, she was encouraged to hold cooking classes in her home. She very quickly learned to read and write in English just as she had adapted on marriage from her village language of Marwai to her husbands language of Hindi. “I was never alone in this kitchen,” she said. “My husband always liked to cook for us, most of the time I only cooked chapati.”
The kitchen is redolent in spices and memory, it’s not the tang of the onion that is making my eyes water but the simplicity of Shashi and her acceptance the trials and tribulations that life has dealt to her. On the wall a poster stating that Life is a Gift and the many reasons listed below. Out on the balcony, two turtles munch on a tomato. Inside we are gathered for a lesson on Indian cooking mixed with Shashi ji’s dry dose of fatalism and humour.
Shashi is a machine in the kitchen although the only machine she employs is a blender, she encourages the class to invest in one. Between stories and orders to “Make more flat”,”flour”, “flip”, “you stir” a veritable feast is prepared. There is chai and pakora, aloo gobi, korma, biryani and three different types of paratha as well as chapatti. The table groans and we eat our fill while Shashi talks some more of how lucky her life has been.
“My family has been a disappointment to me, my brother in law has a small heart, my friends got jealous and I have felt very much alone, but now through my cooking classes I have a brand new family, as big as the whole world.” Having said so, she tied each of us with a red thread signifying our new relationship as soul sisters.