'Chili' stories
“Ohhhh, she likes it!” I hear my friend say as I take a bite of the pineapple, sprinkled with a mixture of chili powder, salt, and lime. I smile, close my eyes, savor the familiar taste. My friend’s voice is full of delight. I am both in awe and amused. In awe because here’s yet another commonality (dipping fruit in salt and chili powder) I did not expect to find with my Latina friends; amused because my friend thought this was my first time eating pineapple this way. When I finish the first slice, I tell her, “No, this isn’t the first time. Chilies were a big part of my childhood.”
As children, my brother and I would dip slices of lemon in a mixture of salt and chili powder, sucking in the sour and spicy juice, eyes involuntarily squeezed shut, our uncle laughing in the background, saying, “Kaowa dheko, look at the way they eat.” The same mixture of salt and chili powder would accompany other sour fruit: boroi (zizyphus mauritiana), unripe mango, amra (spondias mombin), kamranga (carambola), and kalo jaam (syzygium cumini). Boroi was always exciting for us, as the season also meant monsoon storms that would blow the fruit off the branches. We would go hunting for them early in the morning when it was hardly light out, as my grandmother always feared the neighborhood children coming onto the property and stealing them. The same went for mangoes, hard, small, and green, littering the backyard after a heavy storm, collected in the early morning during the small breaks in rain. My grandmother would efficiently peel and slice them, before handing them off to us to dip in the salt and chili powder mix. She would warn us to not eat too much, as too much would likely cause an upset stomach. We would heed her warnings for a while, and then sneak more.
Kalo jaam, too, was a source of joy. They didn’t grow on my grandmother’s property, so my brother and I would wait eagerly for our uncle to return from the market. Usually, he would only return after dark, the light from his flashlight signaling his arrival long before his voice reached us. My grandmother would wash the kalo jaam, mix them in salt and chili powder, place them in a jar, and hand them over to my uncle, who would dance around the room, shaking the jar. “This is how you really do it,” he would say, vigorously shaking the jar to break the skin of the kalo jaam, as it is only through this process that you release the full flavor. My brother and I would join him in his free-spirited dancing, pretending that we also had a jar of kalo jaam to break. We would then eat until we could not eat anymore.
In other instances, chilies would cure the evil eye. Whenever someone in the family had an upset stomach, my grandmother would find the largest dried chilies she had, pray over them, and then rub them over our stomach. This happened regardless of protest from us; she would fight to expose our belly, cursing in one breath, cajoling in the other, until we finally caved and let her rub the chilies on our belly. She would then carry the chilies to the kitchen and throw them into the fire. If there was a noxious smell, then that meant the treatment had worked and the evil eye, manifested in the upset stomach, was gone. If not, she would turn to other methods: taking salt to a healer to be blessed and then feeding us the salt or blessing a lemon and putting it next to the stove so that it would slowly dry out.
At rare times, chilies would be a source of protection. I remember once watching my grandmother grind dried red chilies on her stone grinding board. She then added the ground chili to a bowl of water and sat near the front door of her house, the red liquid within reach. Earlier that day, news of protests and vandalism had reached her, and she meant to protect herself and her family. Later, when I would ask her about this as an adult, she would share a few memories of the liberation war, of being afraid of torture or rape. She would say that this was her way of protecting herself.
Once, I overheard an aunt asking after my childhood habit of sucking my fingers. “Does she still do that? You can fix that—just rub some morich on her fingers before she goes to bed, and she won’t suck on them anymore.” My grandmother nodded along, but fortunately, never attempted such a method, believing instead that I would grow out of the habit.
Often, when we were very young, my brother and other boys in the neighborhood were told to hide their morich, chili, a euphemism for their penis. Once such an order was given out, the adults would giggle mysteriously and exchange amused glances.
These memories are just a few more additions to chili’s long history. What’s your history with chili?