Keep your inner goddess alive with red chilli
As the profile of Kashmiri red chilli was raised in my pans, I matched its softly sexual character in my life.
All spice subscribes to gender — ground cumin is grit and cranky Grandpa; kalonji is a smile of the woman behind the veil; sumac, the sassy, forthright thirteen-year-old-girl in us all; cassia, the paternal pejorative demand.
Red chilli is a woman fully expressed.
The essence of womanhood is tempered heat and controlled flame.
Dad always said my Ammi, his mother, was the hidden steel of the family: a wife and mother in a Kashmiri household in the time when a woman’s strength need be wrapped in the softness of a silk sari, Ammi was a powerhouse; grandmotherly sweetness itself to her ‘rani betis’ and ‘raja babus’, but a fork-tongued force when her adult sons stepped out of line.
Like all women of her generation, Ammi knew how to manipulate the external expression of her inner heat. Culture didn’t allow her an alternate option.
Society has changed — but not that much. To be a woman of overt strength is still an unsafe space for many, in the West as in the East.
I began gently. Kashmiri red chilli was a soft start when it came to expression of my rebellion. I used it to replace the ground red dried chilli in Dad’s recipes. I was afraid of its fire. The culture of female obedience and modesty made finding my way as a woman confusing — how to express my sexuality around that?
The answer came slowly as the heat built in my pans.
The flame of Kashmiri red chilli is in its warm bloom; tasted raw, that sweet, smoked foretaste is chased by a steady rise in height that causes the tip of my tongue to tingle, the roof of my head to raise and the base of my throat to catch.
This subtle inside-out spread of heat alluded to a model of spoken feminine power that I had been unable to articulate until that point. This was confidence on a low smoulder no less impactful for its subtlety. Sure, if you wanted flamboyant heat, Kashmiri red chilli was never going to cut it. But to my mind, flamboyant heat at all times was overrated. If the chilli is always on fire, I can’t taste the nuance of the spice surrounding it. If all I ever aim to seek is an overt expression of free sexuality, then what happens to those other, quieter parts of me that I want to retain: the soft mother, the sometimes-quiet thinker, the young and playful adventurer.
I loved this exploration.
As the profile of Kashmiri red chilli was raised in my pans, I matched its softly sexual character in my life. I took barefoot forest walks. I went skinny-dipping early and alone in a quiet section of a river, with only the dawn call of birds and the rising sun for company. I spoke up in truth about who I was, gently and with joy. I stopped hiding any part of myself from the people around me. When life was tough, I was honest as to why. And when life felt joyous, well, I made sure to spread my smile around, too.
A fully expressed woman is only in part an issue of body and physical expression. What I learned by cooking and living with heat is that emotional and spiritual courage matters inherently. There are situations that demand subtlety. Ammi knew that.
Currently my Dad is ill, and my role with him lies is now embracing my inner Indian daughter, that soft, loving and purely accepting model of femininity that I eschewed for so many years. For now, it’s ok for me fit that model for him. I know the power within me. Just as I know that sometimes, it takes more strength to tamp down the heat than it does to burn at eternal high flame.
Ironically, knowing how to (sometimes) turn my inner fire to a low smoulder has given me a natural ability to play with all kinds of high-alarm chilli and not get burned.
I have branched out from the always-subtlety of Kashmiri red chilli. When in the mood, I buffet a three-quarter teaspoon of Kashmiri mirch with a half a teaspoon of hot red ground chilli and two teaspoons of dried red chilli flakes. Heated in a pan with ground ginger, cinnamon, kala namak, ground cumin, turmeric, fine pink salt, a chunk of jaggery and a wallop of ghee, I support an overt but not overbearing heat that wraps itself beautifully in and around mutton or lamb.
I do not want or need to ask for permission to express my womanhood because my womanhood is no longer reliant on cultural cues to find its expression. My inner goddess is lived in a way that feels entirely expressive and natural to me.
I’m not interested in combat. It is my right as a human to not have to fight in order to show you the woman in me.