From South India to New Orleans
Alec Devaprasad explores family and identity in making his Ajji’s signature curry.
This work is part of a series of essays written by the Lede New Orleans’ Fall 2021 Community Reporting Fellows exploring the intersection of food, family and identity.
By Alec Devaprasad
Two years ago, I asked my Ajji to teach me how to cook shrimp curry, a recipe passed down to her from her mother. It was a breezy September afternoon in Port Jervis, New York. The instant I opened the door to Ajji’s home I knew to brace for an onslaught of wonderful smells. The lingering traces of popped mustard seed, coriander, roasted curry leaves and simmering coconut milk. One breath and I’m instantly connected to my people, to my Ajji.
I enter her cramped kitchen and I can tell she has prepared for my visit. All the essential spices and ingredients are carefully laid out on the laminate countertop. The deep dish pan that has churned out hundreds of curries over its lifetime is waiting on the stove top. Outside the kitchen window, a lone curry leaf plant shivers in the fall breeze, far removed from its native soil. We take turns swapping family gossip about the length of my brothers’ hair, my cousin’s partying and a distant auntie’s latest accomplishment. Then it’s time to get cooking.
Ajji and Thatha, my father’s parents, first came to New York City in search of opportunity in 1965, leaving behind the lush, coastal lands of South India. I’m a second-generation American raised in the predominantly white suburbs of Albany, New York.
I do not speak Tamil or Kannada. I am unfamiliar with the South Indian villages and towns my ancestors called home. Many of my family’s ancestral ways have faded away, pushed aside by the demands of the American Dream. Food is a way that I can pay my respects, celebrate their legacy and hold onto that past.
Today, whenever I make Ajji’s curry, I see her wrinkled, brown hand drizzling coconut oil in the heated pan and sprinkling in a spoonful of mustard seeds. Then it’s a frenzy of ingredients: fenugreek seeds, fresh curry leaves, ginger-garlic paste, Thai green chilies and dried red chilies. Thinly sliced onions cook down in a thick coat of coriander, cayenne, turmeric, black pepper and cumin. As I watch it all melt together in a rich blanket of coconut milk, I’m reminded of all the people who played a part in me being here now.
Like all good chefs, Ajji brought all those elements together and shared them with me. Before me, Ajji learned from her mother, my Pijji. Pijji was known for her cooking and her food was the center of family gatherings when my father was growing up. Pijji died this spring, returning to the soil to be with the ancestors. She was 103. I keep a photo of Pijji on my desk in my New Orleans apartment. She’s sitting on the couch in my childhood home and holding me as a chubby, brown baby. I am grateful to have known her.
I feel proud when I walk into my own kitchen and the smell of Ajji’s kitchen is lingering there. It’s not just about eating well. For me, it’s about preserving Ajji and Pijji and their stories for future generations who will never meet them. Family recipes, like stories, fade away without someone to write them down. I pick up a pen. I watch and I listen.
Alec Devaprasad is a Fall 2021 Community Reporting Fellow with Lede New Orleans. Devaprasad is a Tulane University graduate and a storyteller based in New Orleans.
Lede New Orleans is a nonprofit that trains emerging BIPOC and LGBTQ storytellers and equips them with skills and tools to tell the stories of communities in and around New Orleans that are often overlooked by the media. For more info on our mission and programs, visit www.ledenola.org.
The Lost Year stories are available to republish under a Creative Commons license. Read Lede New Orleans’ publishing guidelines here.
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