Why I Don’t Make Vadas

Let’s make one thing clear – I love hot, crisp vadas sinfully dripping oil, crusty on the outside, soft on the inside. I grew up eating these delectable little balls of yum. My mother and grandmother made them with consummate ease, the chubby little dollops of daal sliding off their moist palms eagerly, almost breathlessly into the hot oil. Once in, they swam around playfully in the bubbling oil gurgling away in unmitigated glee. And then out they came and plopped into waiting paper towels drying off like crisp little sunbathers after an unhurried swim. And when you popped the little guys with their completely symmetrical circles and their symmetrical holes in the middle into your mouth, they squelched with pleasure oozing cholesterol-laden goodness.

So when I got married I couldn’t wait to make them and decided to bestow my bounty on a couple of visiting guests. That was my first cardinal mistake. Never, ever, experiment on a new dish when company is expected and certainly not your brand new husband’s brand new boss.

Quivering with anticipation I follow my mother’s recipe to the letter and soak, grind, season the batter. All is going swimmingly.

Then it is time to fry the buggers and that’s when the trouble starts. Unlike the ones that slid off my mother’s palms happily and expectantly into the oil, the dal in my hand clings to my palm, begging for mercy, refusing to enter the pan. The holes in the centre stretch out of shape until they start to look like mouths stopped in mid-scream, little tendrils of dal escape the sides like fingers clutched in abject terror. And when I finally clench my jaws and push them into the hot oil, far from the cheerful gurgles, what emanate are fearsome little explosions from the water that drip from my over-moistened hands.

I gather up the unevenly cooked fritters, half-burnt, half raw onto the waiting paper towels. I can’t possibly serve these to my guests. I decide to camouflage the misshapen horrors by metamorphosing them into dahi vadas. So I fish out all the curd that I have in my fridge at the bottom of various little steel vessels in various stages of sourness and make the curd solution. I then dunk the shapeless balls into the cold curd. But horror of horrors! They bob up frantically gasping for air. I thrust them and hold them down in the curd until they are stuck to the bottom of the vessel and can’t bob back up. The deed is done. Silence at last. And not the good kind.

Finally, I serve them politely to my guests who eat them with unfailing politeness, chewing determinedly through. They even ask heroically for seconds! But I still feel so tainted, so violent, like I had just committed mass uradicide.

And that’s why I don’t make vadas.