Some envy my ever-lasting tan. The child of horrified Caucasian friends asked why I was always dirty. The colour of my skin. Described as chocolate brown, café au lait or olive. In various shades across my body. It matters because it testifies my family's roots, and speaks of a proud love that defied its times.
Comarassamy Soupa Chetty, my paternal great grandfather, was the son of Appassamy Soupa Chetty, a Tamil merchant migrant from India's South East, who settled in Mauritius in the first mid-half of the 19th century. Comarassamy converted as an adult to marry Anne Euchariste Clam, a Catholic with a family name allegedly of Dutch ancestry. He then changed his full name to Joseph Appassamy.
Any country with a colonial heritage carries sensitive layers of identities, Mauritius more so because of its size, no indigenous population, and a hybrid nation born from waves of European, African and Asian immigration. The inevitable process of mixed marriages has been excruciating and scarring. Anne and Joseph's budding affection must have been fearless; their commitment endured and led to six children and more than one hundred current descendants across the globe.
In 1968, the independence of Mauritius from the UK divided the country, raised racial tensions and provoked riots. Thousands emigrated. The extended Appassamy family was split with a portion moving to Australia. My parents chose to stay with my two sisters and me. I recall distressing farewells at Plaisance airport and Quay D at Port Louis harbour, and my family standing watching the Qantas plane or the 'Patris' ship depart, gradually shrink, and grow fainter till it vanished.
Families, like mine, that are born from migration are reborn punctually through the scent of their cuisine. I like to think that the Indian curry has transcended its origin, slowly bridged Mauritian ethnic communities, and established its own version as a national treasure. For those who left, the making of a curry remains a patriotic ritual.
What defines a uniquely Mauritian curry? A sound, more than a taste or recipe, comes first to my mind. It's a late afternoon in the early 70s. I'm a teenager doing my schoolwork at my desk in my bedroom. A grinding rhythm from the garden is audible through my window. Leaning over the ros kari, Jessie, our family cook, is crushing spices for the evening curry. With her two hands, she holds flat a cylindrical stone, the baba, and rolls it with her wrists back and forth, on a large rectangular base, the mama. Both are solid grey basalt hand-chiseled by tonbalis, stonemasons, from the volcanic boulders of Mauritius.
I see Jessie as a priestess and the ros kari as her altar, officiating a marriage of sorts between aromatic spouses. Their names and colours evoke a primeval celebration: gold turmeric, crimson chillies, emerald curry leaves, amber coriander seeds, khaki cumin and more. Some are roasted, others dried or fresh. Proportions vary. A little flicked water, then and again, to bind the paste, is compulsory. It takes skill and years of practice to drive a ros kari, to develop a method that pulsates and reiterates, and imparts the essence of the basalt stone into the masala.
Later, Jessie picks the oldest pot with broken handles to cook her curry. She heats up the oil before frying the masala, and a new magic begins. Jessie flings open a door to a pungent, intoxicating world that tickles and stings. The house is silent but the kitchen is exploding.
At my desk, I am distracted. Soon I race to Jessie having torn a piece of bread on the way. She is expecting me and, from a cooking spoon, tips some sauce on my bread.
I savour Jessie's curry. She glows as, with my mouth full and my eyes watering, I nod effusively my appreciation.
For those Mauritians who still choose to prepare a curry from scratch, the ros kari has, of course, been supplanted by a panoply of blitzing appliances. The majority, including myself, reach for curry powder mix. The action of adding just enough water to make a paste, and frying the paste remains the same. While some argue that the test is in the taste, a traditional masala remains, more than a benchmark, evidence of a forgone sensual harmony.
Jessie is now long retired. Her signature curry is eggplant with sevret, tiny local freshwater shrimps. My late uncle Jacques, who migrated to Sydney with his baba in his luggage on Qantas, and his mama in a wooden crate that followed on the 'Patris', kept for decades the Sydney-based Appassamy clan queuing at gatherings for his ox tail curry, nibbling the juicy, gelatinous meat from the bones, and sucking the marrow.
The colour of my skin? I prefer masala.
Bernard Appassamy is a Sydney writer and artist who is a bilingual medical care coordinator.
Photo credit: Marie-Claude Pascal.