Troubled by tamarind

Come Ram Navami, I am reminded of my experiments in the kitchen. For me, all know there can be no Ram Navami without kosambari (salad) and panaka (juice). As a young bride from Bengaluru married to a family in Tamil Nadu, I had a lot to learn; traditions and rituals were different, as were culinary practices. I was still struggling with all of that, when my mother-in-law joined my father-in-law on his official tour during Ram Navami, leaving me to hold the fort. As the daughter-in-law, it was for me to keep up the tradition and take care of the festivities.

I promised my brother-in-law that I would prepare his favourite panaka. I knew the panakam here was not the same as my mother’s panaka. While I hadn’t written down the recipe, I knew jaggery replaced sugar and a few other ingredients like elaichi and dry ginger powders were added for flavour. But what else? I wasn’t sure but decided the tangy taste and the light brown colour were from tamarind juice and decided to use it in place of lemon.

With this available knowledge, I prepared panakam. As we excitedly tasted the beverage, we were totally shocked that it tasted not a bit like panakam but was a sour liquid due to the generous use of tamarind. My brother-in-law and I were the only two adults, but we were too inexperienced to handle the situation. He had no clue about cooking but was determined to help me in some way.

During those days, there was no Google to give us the recipe, nor was there WhatsApp to get it from the touring mother-in-law. To make it better, we kept adding more and more jaggery and water alternately. We had exhausted the entire stock of jaggery at home, yet we had not arrived at the correct taste. Totally dejected and disappointed, we drank some of it to justify our effort, refrigerated the rest, and waited for my mother-in-law to return and give her expert opinion.

On her return, she listened to our saga patiently and had a hearty laugh at our expertise. She didn’t even dare to taste it, but she made us a fresh dose of delightful panakam! Later, she taught me the correct recipe with the correct proportions.

Now I am an expert at making it and I send the recipe on WhatsApp to my daughters, every year during Ramanavami, on request! But I don’t fail to recall the panaka joint venture I pulled off with my brother-in-law!