Monsoon Diary: A Memoir With Recipes (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "THE FIRST FOODS that I ate were rice and ghee..." (more)
Key Phrases: vatral kuzhambu, teaspoon black mustard seeds, urad dal, Mount Holyoke, South Indian, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Narayan, who grew up in Chennai, India, writes in humorous, tender prose about her family and their love of food. Rituals surrounding food are central to every aspect of life, such as the choru-unnal ceremony of a child's first meal of rice and ghee. When her mother is pregnant with her brother and the women gather to feed her and chew betel, Narayan writes, "As they chewed and their lips and tongue became stained red, their jokes became more risque, their gossip more personal, their bodies more horizontal." Food is intimacy and comfort, and Narayan's book neatly transitions between descriptions of her family's life and the meals that punctuated it. Recipes for staples such as rasam (a bean and rice comfort food) a wonderful recipe for upma (a semolina vegetable stew)-which she serves to a grumpy group of Americans-complement more festive recipes for snacks and meals such as inji curry (a pickle with ginger and tamarind). When Narayan comes to America for a year at Mount Holyoke, she misses her native food but, in a hilarious sequence of events involving two dead goldfish, chances upon a taxi driver from Kerala whose wife feeds her olan, made with pumpkin, black-eyed peas and coconut milk. Narayan's sparkling, insightful narrative makes for a delightful cultural and culinary read.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Weaving together stories from her remarkable life with tasty Indian vegetarian recipes, Narayan offers insights into Hindu culture and custom and contrasts her upbringing with life in her adopted America. Born and raised near Madras as a Brahmin in caste-conscious south India, she was part of an extended family of wonderful eccentrics. Her portraits of small-town life include the "iron man": no body builder, he went from house to house ironing clothes with the aid of a coal-fired iron. Shunning bottled milk, Narayan drank hers squirted straight from the udder to her mouth. Food and the enjoyment of it were central to her family, so when Narayan won a fellowship to study in America, the only way the family would let her travel was for her to prepare a proper banquet for them. Reaching New England, she immersed herself in American life without giving up her vegetarianism. Following tradition, her family arranged for their daughter to marry an appropriate mate, and to her surprise, her family chose well. This is a delightful, stereotype-shattering memoir. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Villard; 1st edition (April 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375507566
• ISBN-13: 978-0375507564
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #941,519 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "Ghee...the vegetarians caviar, slightly sinful, excessive", May 9, 2003

By	Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

In all cultures, traditional foods shared with family become so integral to our inner lives that certain occasions are associated with certain foods forevermore. From her childhood though her arranged marriage twenty-five years later, author Narayan shares her own memories, recalling the foods which made them rich and vivid.

Filled with sense impressions, her earliest years are characterized by memories of Raju, the milkman who milked Tiger, his cow, on demand; Chinnapan, who set up his iron and ironing board under one of their trees and kept the iron hot by loading it with coals he picked up in his bare hands; and Jaya, his wife, whose face was bright yellow from the turmeric paste she habitually applied. In school Narayan and her friends would barter their lunches, trading back and forth in the currency of their mothers' specialties. Holidays and vacations were filled with memories of pungent family feasts.

During her college years in India, she applied surreptitiously to Mount Holyoke College for a fellowship and won it, only to run into significant opposition from her family. Her uncle suggested that if she, who had never cooked a full meal, could cook a vegetarian feast like those her mother cooked for the extended family, and have them like it, she might go. She did, and she went. Two years later, she won a scholarship to graduate school at Memphis State, this time cooking up a feast for potential donors in the U.S. in order to raise some of the extra money she needed. Later she would learn to cook traditional foods for her husband in the traditional ways.

Narayan's memoir is charming and sensitive, both to the cultural differences between South Asia and the United States, and to the realities of family life in both places. Through food she bridges the differences between our cultures and makes day-to-day life in each place understandable and accessible to people of other backgrounds. Mothers, with their desire to provide familiar foods for their families at year-round celebrations, are similar the world over, and Narayan uses them as the common denominator in our lives. As she shows us, everyone understands the universal maternal command, "Eat, eat." Mary Whipple

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read, Eat, Read, Eat..., April 22, 2003

By	"patsys461" (Houston, Tx United States) - See all my reviews

Reading Monsoon Diary is like having its author, Shoba Narayan, show up at your door with an Indian meal. I dare any reader to finish the book without trying at least one recipe.
The stories surrounding the recipes are a delight. The writing so clear, so real, an orgy for the senses. And you will want a
'maami' of your very own.
Memoir writing at its best!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Does for Madras what Calvin Trillin does for New York City, May 3, 2003

By	Anand B. Karnad (Johnson City, TN USA) - See all my reviews

Shoba Narayan's "Monsoon Diary" is about her memories of growing up in Madras, South India, before immigrating to this country, and, about South Indian food: "A Memoir with Recipes". She delivers on both counts. (You know the author is going to stick to her roots, a true writer from Madras, when she starts by thanking her neighbors: "Prabha-mami, Nagarajan-Mama, Sumathi-ka, Babu-anna, Vijaya-aunty, and Nithya-uncle").
As memoir, it is for me, an immigrant from Madras, what "Midnight's Children" is for immigrants from Bombay: stories of growing up there, scenes of life in the city, and intimate portraits of family and friends. She transported me to familiar events and landmarks in Madras: Mardi Gras at IIT, Pondy Bazaar, Alsa Mall, WCC, Music Academy, Grand Sweets, Adyar Woodlands, Ambika Appalam Depot, Hotel Saravana Bhavan and yes, even Naidu Hall ("famous for its bras and "nighties," airy nightgowns made from the softest cotton").
Narayan, a recipient of the M.F.K. Fisher award for distinguished writing, writes well about idli-sambar and rasam, but when she writes about the art of eating off a banana leaf at South Indian weddings, and riffs on the real soul of South Indian food (largely still unfamiliar to most foodies), she does for Madras what Calvin Trillin does for New York City -you want to go there right now and eat it all: puli-kaachal, vatral kuzhambu, agathi keerai, murunga kai keerai, sojji-bajji, bonda-burfi, thaiyru saadam, narthangai uruga, upma, venn-pongal, murukkus, and cheedai. But don't be intimidated by this list; according to the author's mother-in-law, only "Three things are dear to a South Indian's heart: Hot Coffee, good yogurt, and pickles."
Narayan gives an engaging account of her new life in the USA, which takes her to college at Mount Holyoke, Massachusetts; then Delton, Michigan; Boston; Taos, New Mexico; Memphis, Tennessee; Connecticut; and New York City.
Her book includes 21 recipes including some of the items mentioned above. Portions of this book first appeared, in part, as pieces published in "Gourmet," "House Beautiful," "Saveur," "The New York Times," and in "Beliefnet" on the web.
"Monsoon Diary" will fit in well on my shelf right next to my favorite memoir about Madras and writing: "My Days," by R.K. Narayan (no kin to the author).