Arum stories from Assam

My nascent memories of kochu (arum) dwell in a game we used to play during summer holidays at Aita’s (grandmother) place. For bank-employee mothers like mine, it was killing two birds with one stone — notorious daughter under the constant scrutiny of a betel-spitting stern old woman. Aita taught me a rhyming song to go with this unique game; it involved our tender hands hiding seeds and seeking them in turns (cheating prohibited). The one with the seed wins the game. The seed, of course, isn’t an actual seed as such; it’s a small ball we made by plucking the baby arum stems growing near her gate. Does it come as a surprise that mischievous little kids are still called with the gender-neutral word kochu-guti ( colocasia seed)?

“ Awlowguti tolowguti/ kochuguti ghai/ Eikhon hator gutitu/ eikhon hatot pai ”

(One seed of a plant/ the head of an arum seed/ the seed of this hand/ can get in another hand)

Rudimentary games wield a peculiar tangibility on our psyches. They reveal much about our preferences and, yet, we can’t pretend to explain these to any degree of thoroughness; they remain elusive. The arum plant (botanical name: colocasia escluenta ) personifies something of this ambiguity — with every meal, I am reaching out for something; I am not quite sure what.

There was a time, said Aita, when schoolgoers would use the bor kochu or maan kochu leaf (elephant ear/ alocasia macrorrhiza ) as an umbrella on rainy days. Leaves as umbrellas made more sense when I saw the giant butterbur leaf Totoro uses in the rains in Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbour Totoro (1980). It barely covers his head but he uses it anyway to make friends with Satsuki. In a magical scene in the film, a frog watches Totoro (a forest spirit), clearly amused by the rains, accept a human umbrella.

Originally from Japan, this leaf is called fuki ( petasites japonicas ), also known as Japanese wild grass. Its shoots are boiled, chopped and eaten. The fuki umbrella helps the children Satsuki and Mei create an organic bond with Totoro in the film. They gradually come to terms with his other beast-like features such as claws and body hair. Like Totoro, kochu ’s appearance isn’t conventionally “palatable” — it grows in the wild, the tuber has rugged skin and curly brown hair. But the way Totoro makes use of the fuki leaf (however small for his head) is similar to how aroids are put to good use by those who barely get two meals a day. It is in their homes that some unbelievable and simple kochu improvisations are found.

Luna Barooah, faculty at College of Horticulture, Assam Agricultural University, says, “Aroids are tropical crops and they require marginal land and care. A rich red-loamy soil with a pH range of 5.5-7 is preferred. Well distributed rainfall with humid and warm weather during vegetative phase, and cool and dry weather during the corm development period is decent.” Furthermore, Barooah shows me the varieties of shama kochu (Bengal arum) and gandhakosu (Homalomena aromatic), both of which have medicinal properties and are rarely eaten. The bulbs of shama kochu are used to treat snake bites. “In Assam alone we have a plethora of sub-varieties from the Araceae family: panchimukhi , saatmukhi , ahinia kochu , kola kochu , dahi kochu and so on. There is also the delicious elephant foot yam, locally called oul kochu , whose tender leaves make for excellent boras (pakodas).”

The tuber part of arum is eaten after careful peeling of its skin. To avoid itching, it is advised that you rub mustard oil on the hands before contact with the kochu skin. According to Dr Namita Nadar, dietetics department, Fortis Noida, “Arum (also arbi ) is low in saturated fats, cholesterol and sodium. It’s a good source of complex carbohydrates, vitamin B6, phosphorus and potassium and micronutrients like copper and manganese. They do cause discomfort in the lips, mouth and throat, but this can be overcome by proper cooking, soaking and blanching.” She suggests that for the elderly, adding tamarind, heeng or ajwain with taro can ease digestion. Although the practice of blanching and rigorous boiling is prevalent in parts of north and northwest India, in several parts of Assam, the tuber is meant to retain its ticklishness/ itchiness for the most part.

The ability to tickle acts as a cultural semantic — a sensibility even — because one cannot tickle oneself. The presence of an “other”, an element of surprise in fact, is crucial to the sensation of tickling.

Aaron Schuster has discussed in ‘A Philosophy of Tickling’ (2013): “Any definition of tickle must be able to account for its lack of definition, its equivocal and evasive dynamism.” For its ability to cause itchiness, kochu is used as a torture tool for exacting revenge in the region’s blessed folklore. ‘A Tiger’s Marriage’ is one such folk tale where wild kochu is mixed with rice cake ( pitha ) to drive away a tiger who seeks to marry a human bride. It causes him tremendous itching. The masterminds in this tale are an old couple who found in kochu a way to get rid of the beast.

Kochu and its complex mineral constituency have helped many communities stay strong during floods and other disaster-inflicted misery. Lambodar Bhagoruwa, a character in Jatin Mipun’s story ‘Tarun Peguk Agom’ (2001) has this to say when asked about his afternoon meal, “ Saul kinibo porakoi toka jugar nohol. Baatot pai dutaman bonoriya kochuke khandi aanisu (I couldn’t manage the money to buy rice. I dug up some wildly growing kochu from across the street).”

Dr Amit R Baishya, professor (postcolonial literature), University of Oklahoma, shares how kochu has been imagined in literary texts. “ Bonoriya kochu is a ubiquitous presence in Assamese hunger fictions like Debendranath Acharya’s Jangam and Raktim Sharma’s Borangar Yan . When cooked with spices and dried fish, kochu is a delicacy. However, in Jatin Mipun’s Tarun Peguk Agom , kochu is boiled and consumed without salt or oil. The iron-rich tuber becomes a black, viscous mass when boiled. Although it is eaten because there isn’t anything else to consume, its viscous materiality frequently induces sensations of vomiting, thereby solidifying its associations with abject otherness.”

Kochu ’s tenacity to survive and create more of its own kind leaves me stunned. Unfortunately, its special traits haven’t been well explored — people buy the myth that there is only one kind of arum. To those, my Aita would say, “Those who don’t know how to cook say that.” She attended to all the kochu varieties in her backyard and some survive till date. One of her unique recipes was kochu - jolphai pitika (arum and local olives mashed), which requires skill and time, but the end-product has unbeatable flavour and aroma. She would expertly mix stems of neel kochu , unripe olives with minced onions, tomatoes, garlic and salt. Then, she would take a banana leaf and rub it with mustard oil before filling in with the mix. This leaf is folded and tied carefully and placed between hot embers for about 30 minutes. After the leaf is taken out and the mix cools down, mustard oil is used to garnish the end-product.

The olives are known to cut the itchiness, but neel kochu seldom itches anyway. However, with other varieties of arum, tangy curries and pickles are often eaten together. For instance, the pani kochu — its name suggests inhabitance in waterlogged areas and swampy lands. The leaves of pani kochu are eaten with ou-tenga ( Dillenia indica ) or khorisa (bamboo shoot). Many believe that a little side-dish tanginess can reduce the irritability of its oxalate nature. In parts of Bangladesh, dried fish, fish-heads, mustard paste and singri (prawns) are used to blend diverse flavours. Coconut powder is often used with taro stolons and singri , and it is a delicacy in Bangladesh, a prabashi special.

Once Nietzsche was asked in Thus Spake Zarathustra , “What is the best life?” And he had answered, “To be tickled to death.” Of all tickling games, the most memorable one is the game arum leaves regularly play with water: do those drops ever stop or do they roll forever? Some say, it is the hydrophobic nature of kochu leaves that repel water. I, on the other hand, think the leaves are having a secret conversation with the droplets, retaining parts of it and letting go of some. They both know they cannot be a whole, but their will to live, to remain intact on slippery surfaces, remain the same.

In a Goalporia folk song — ‘O jibon re’ sung by Pratima Pandey Baruah — the fragility of human life is evoked by the water droplets on a slippery kochu leaf:

“ Kochu pater pani jemon re, arey o’ jibon tolmol tolmol kore, oi mota manusher deha, kokhon toliya pore jibon re (like the globules on arum leaves, life too, is slippery. In the same way, nobody knows when the human body will bid adieu).”

A Zubeen Garg song goes, “ Jibon kochu pator pani, nathake sirodin upongi, jibon nodir bali, polokote jabo khohi (l ife is like globules on a kochu leaf, it won’t cling to us forever, life is like river sand, it shall erode in no time at all)”. A complete cuisine then, like the kochu plant and life itself, is also measured by all that is left unseen, untouched and alone.

After many years of leaving home, every time I eat kochu , these stories rush to my throat as I enjoy the tickle, the itch in my palate. Given a choice I would like to be reborn as a kochu stolon, weeding and crawling all the way through the wild to watch over Aita, who now lives as drops on a colocasia leaf.

Kochur loti aru mua maas

(taro stolons with Indian carplet)

10-15 taro stolons, washed

200g mua maas

Freshly pounded ginger-garlic paste

One finely chopped onion

Two green chillies

Turmeric powder 1 tsp

Salt to taste

Mustard oil

Method

1 Wash and fry the fish and keep them aside.

2 Wash the stolons thoroughly. If your shopkeeper tells you they might tickle too much, make sure to boil them in salt water and discard the water thereafter. Peel and chop them into medium-size sticks.

3 Heat a tablespoon of mustard oil. Fry the onions for a bit. Add the ginger-garlic paste, turmeric powder and sauté well. Add the stolons now and mix chillies as per taste. Cover the lid and keep in slow flame for four minutes. Stir well for a few seconds.

4 Add a small cup of water and let it cook in medium flame until the mix is a bit sticky and thick. Now add the fish.. It is best served with rice and yellow dal.

Rini Barmanis a Delhi-based writer and researcher

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