‘Murmura’ and an Old Friend

Yes, it was delivered by Amazon e-commerce services at my doorstep, neatly packed in transparent plastic bag. I looked at it and thought to myself, how different it looks from the time when I was a little girl. It never came neatly packed in good looking transparent bags when I was a little girl, it was generally brought home hot, freshly puffed from the local ‘bhoonjawala’ guy either wrapped in newspapers of in any ‘kapde ki potli’. I remember the sand and iron wok that the men in small dingy shops used to use to make the object of my discussion here. Yes, I am talking about murmura, kurmura, muri, laiya, bhel whatever name you wish to give this very very popular food item of ‘the puffed rice’. This is one food item that one can find in the household of the poorest of farmer to the richest of businessmen. This humble food item I have really made use of during ‘lockdown’ and tried making bhel puri to jhal muri everything. Not to forget the regular ‘murmura namkeem’ which is the favourite of people in my house.

As this pandemic, ‘lockdown’ social distancing and a total reconstruction of lifestyle has given me opportunity to sit down and refresh my memory about so many things, ( not that I have a bad memory) today when I was making murmura namkeen my thoughts kept on taking me way back to when I was a little girl growing up in a very very small town of North India. My very first exposure to the ‘murmura’ or ‘laiya’ or ‘laai’ as it is called in that part of India, happened during one afternoon, when I was playing outside in the lawn and our old gardener , who we all used to just call by the name ‘budhaoo’ meaning ‘old man’ in local language, was tending to the brinjal and lady’s finger plants, I saw a  crudely made, discolored ‘potli bag’ lying near the flower bed, I knew it was kept there by ‘budhaoo’ but my curious nature wanted to also find out the content that that ‘potli bag’ contained, so without caring about anything I picked up that ‘potli bag’ and walked towards ‘budhaoo’ , who was busy watering the plants, I wanted to see what that potli contained and when budhaoo saw me with that , he gave a hearty laugh, that was the first time I  had seem him laugh this loud, his toothless , wrinkle ridden, laughing, happy face I still remember so vividly even after fifty years! As that was the beginning of a relationship with my old gardener. He said, “babuni, bhooja hai, laai hai, khaaboo kaa?” and I nodded my head. He opened his potli and first time in my life I saw ‘murmura’. Well, I still remember it was not the sophisticated ‘murmura’ that we see these days, it was a crude form of ‘murmura’ but after that day my old gardener, became my ‘murmura friend’. Since that day, he made sure that he carried his ‘laai’  potli with him whenever he came out to tend to our kitchen garden, his face would lit up seeing me around and ‘the love and affection’ that only we both could understand he  put in that fistful of murmura that he used to give me, is the reason that even today when I see murmura, I am reminded of the time when I first saw it and of the person who first gave me my first handful of murmura. ‘Budhaoo’ worked as gardener in our house for some years, a lone figure clad in dhoti and kurta with a turban on his head, he was bent but not broken in spirit, early morning he would get up and start working in the garden, all our vegetables and flowers thrived under his care and my mother would some time give him food cooked in our house to eat , he would live in the out quarters made for the staff. Once in two three months he would disappear somewhere and come back with sack full of ‘murmura’ or rice, that he would consume with chutney and a piece of onion which he used to take from our garden. I was in awe of ‘budhaoo’ and in fact he was my sort of superhero who would get to work all day amidst flowers and vegetables in the garden even during hot sunny days and we deprived lot had to stay indoors away from the outdoor grandeur. He would work with his head bowed down , sowing and tending to the plants, only time he would look up was when I was around, the toothless grin that he would give me would transform his face and he appeared to me someone from altogether a different world. I would squat next to him in the field and mess around with dirt and mud and chew on the murmura. He would take me to hand pump erected in the backyard and wash my hands and face before depositing me to my mother. This went on for quite a sometime, then one day when after spending my holidays at my grandma I came back, I found that ‘budhaoo’ was not there. People told me that he had moved away. I was heartbroken. I missed him so much and his ‘murmura’.My mother told me that I was down with fever because I was shocked to not find ‘budhaoo’when I came back.  Till now I am convinced no one in my house actually knew from where he had come, who was there in his family, where he had gone? He was just a person who just appeared from somewhere to work in our garden! The ‘murmura; from Amazon e-commerce has again remineded me of my old friend and today I find myself smiling a lot thinking about his toothless grin! Well anything to keep me in good spirits in these times of ‘lockdown’ and Covid 19!!