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South Asia, often referred to as the subcontinent, is for food lovers affectionately called the subcondiment. I was in Gordo, Ala., to work with letterpress printer Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. back in November. He told me about an Indian guy at the end of the road, who ran The Gordo Motel, and had a bountiful garden. “Apparently he grows a whole bunch of vegetables and herbs from the old country," Amos touted. "And Indians come from all over the south to buy his produce, you gotta check it out."
Covered in printer's ink and weary from manually pounding out letterpress posters, I finally made my way down to the motel. Chhaganbhai Patel, a former farmer from Surat Gujarat, wore crisply ironed cotton pants, shirt, and his aged leather Kola Puri chappals (sandals). He and his wife, Shantha, immigrated to the United States in 1997 and worked odd jobs, until they bought the small Gordo Motel in 1999.
Patel gently meandered through the blacktop pavement pointing out the parched garden. Erect dried chili pepper plants, without color or life, greeted me. "You are too late in the season now, it is all finished," he quietly added. Yet he gingerly walked me through the labyrinth of tangled vines. He pointed out common north Indian fare like edible lauki gourds and papri bean plants. He even pulled up haldi or turmeric (from the same family as ginger and galangal). Brilliant orange bits of color just below the soiled skin flashed for my eyes to catch. It doesn’t get much more local than homegrown Alabama turmeric.
From urbane in India to farming in Alabama
I returned this spring to glimpse the beginning of their planting season. The first thing I ate with the Patels was aloo tikkis, which are boiled potatoes seasoned with cumin, black pepper, coriander and whatever other spice that might be on hand, deep or pan-fried into crunchy cutlets, nestled in a white refined hamburger roll laced with a splash of vibrant green cilantro chutney, a favorite "subcondiment."
Shantha and her daughter, Anju, oversaw the kitchen while granddaughter Shraddha, Anju's daughter, served me aloo tikki after aloo tikki. Mr. Patel, his youngest granddaughter Shreya, and I dutifully chomped away. We ate, and quietly exchanged introductions. Soon Patel disappeared to the front check-in room of the motel to serve guests. We women and girls remained, comfortable at the table. Shantha emerged with her favorite seasoned daal made from her saved tuvar or toor beans she grew herself. It was a daal chaval (lentil rice) staple in her diet she was not yet ready to give up.
Shraddha Patel, the senior in high school, recounted her first year in Gordo. Her father had passed away unexpectedly, and abruptly her mother, Anju, and little sister, Shreya, ended up in the southern United States without their father, living with their grandparents, the Patels. This certainly was not the original plan, and Shraddha wonders what happened, still raw from her father's death a mere year ago.
The teenager had lived a more cosmopolitan life in a bustling Mumbai suburb. Now she had landed in Gordo where she'd given up all hope that anyone would ever even pronounce her name correctly. And, as she gazed into her aloo tikki, and periodically disciplined her younger sister, she wondered in disbelief, "I never thought I'd come to America to garden and farm."
She caught herself and reawakened, pinky finger raised as she sipped her water, "and of course I help my grandmother with planting, weeding, watering and taking care. We actually get many customers in the summer periods who request that we save a few pounds of eggplant, chili peppers, okra, bitter gourd, or a curry plant for them to pick up when they pass by."
"In these hard economic times," chimed in Shantha, the matriarch, "the extra income from the garden helps us manage."
An American future
I listened more to Shraddha's dreams for the future. I could see that in a mere five years time she'd already have less of an Indian accent, perhaps with a slight Southern drawl. She will have finished her studies at a local college and be on her way to weaving her life into the United States' fabric. But would her new life take her away from her grandmother and grandfather's garden? Would she come to believe that the work of the hands on the land is less valuable? Would she ever return to the garden?
My mind wandered back to Shantha, the queen gardener. "So what are you planting this season?" Shantha, the seasoned farmer and the force behind the garden, disappeared into her sparse kitchen and returned with many rumpled bread bags and assorted plastic food containers brimming with seeds and dried pods saved from last year's harvest: Cluster beans (gawar), cucumbers, okra seeds (bindi), broad beans (papdi), lentils (toor daal), chili pepper (lal mirch), bitter gourd (karela), ridge gourd (tooriya), and eggplant (bangain). In addition to saving those seeds, she oversees the planting of curry plants, coriander, tulsi or holy basil.
Mr. Patel takes care of the small machinery, turning the ground when needed, but it is Shantha who selects the seeds, decides what to grow and where, and saves the seeds each year. Left alone at times to manage the motel, 60-year-old Shantha exuded a confidence in her motel managing and gardening skills grounded in her farming experience back home. She remarked with pride, now that her daughter and granddaughters are here and able to run the motel check-in counter, how her regular customers ask with concern, "Where are my Momma and Poppa? They OK?"
The night before, the tornadoes touched down in Tuscaloosa, a mere 15 to 20 miles away. Luckily the twisters, in their unpredictable focused fury, neither settled down on their small plot of land nor uprooted the emerging green nursery plants that Shantha astutely planted, cultivated and cared for. So on my last spring visit, the motel buzzed with stressed out locals, mainly from Tuscaloosa, needing a place to stay while demolished homes lay in ruin, or while electricity and water lines got restored. This time, though, I overheard the Patels say at the check-in desk: "Where are your mother and father? Are they OK?"
Zester Daily contributor Sarah Khan is founder and director of the nonprofit Tasting Cultures Foundation, which develops multimedia educational programming on food and culture.
Photos, from top:
Shantha Patel in her Gordo, Ala., garden.
The Patels' Gordo Motel.
Credit: Sarah Khan
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