1.
It's true! Well, the connection is not all that direct--she is related to me through marriage. She is, however, directly related to my brother-in-law Jose, who is married to Mridula, my Indian wife's sister. (Jose is a Syrian Christian; his name does not rhyme with today but with nose.) The name of Jose's blood relative is Sister Alphonsa, and since her cannonization by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008, Saint Alphonsa. She was my brother-in-law's grandfather's sister's daughter. If you don't think she is thus closely connected to me, one must recall she is the only Catholic saint in all of Asia. For a white guy to get a first prize in this, as it were, Asian lottery--what are the chances of that? About five billion to one; not bad.
I didn't know who Alphosa was until, one night, during a visit to my in-laws in South India, I noticed, while eating my dahl and rice, the saint's picture on a key chain. Who is that, I asked. "My Aunty," Jose replied.
He then told me about his "aunty"--this term is used quite loosley in India. She had had a hard life. His blood-relative (that is, his grandfather's sister, Alphonsa's mother) died young, leaving her daughter in the hands of a character well known in fairly tales, the Horrible Stepmother. When Alphonsa reached marriagable age, she had a terrible accident. She fell into a ditch of burning rubbish, severely injuring her feet. Rumor has it that she did this to avoid being married off, since no Indian male, she presumed--and was undoubtedly correct--would want to stroll down the beach beside a woman whose feet were gnarled up like the roots of a banyan tree
She got her wish and became a nun. She was very sickly. Rumors soon started that she was taking on the suffering of others, who became better as she became worse. She had severe digestive problems and during the last phase of her life--this will be significant as this story progresses--she could only eat a type of very bland food called nul puttu. She died (probably from stomach or colon cancer) at the age of 35.
After her death, miracles began to pile up. She became, as it were, The Podiatrist From The Other Side, having an understandable sympathy for those who where afflicted, as she had been in life, with deformed feet.
By this part of my brother-in-law's narration, we had finished up our dahl and were slurping up lovely handfuls of pal paysam for dessert; I must admit, I was getting a bit bored. The Doubting Thomas in me came to the fore. I interrupted him and asked, Did she ever perform a miracle for you?
His eyes glistened. Yes, indeed, he said. I listened.
Alphonsa died in 1946. The miracle occrued in 1948. when my brother-in-law was just a tambi, a little kid. He was out shopping with his mom on a day when the Kerala sun, which makes the land either hot, hotter or hottest, had reached the superlative form of the adjective. They were miles away from home. Poor little Jose had reached such a state of parch that he began to cry. Bitterly he told his mother, "Aunty helps and cures strangers all over Kerala--she's my aunty not theirs. Why doesn't she help us now? I'm dying of thirst!"
Immediately after he said this he had to duck a coconut which abruptly fell from a tree. (Now don't expect too much--a plastic straw did not fall down beside it.) Jose's mother gasped then shouted, "Miracle! Miracle!" Jose, being a little kid, thus believing that the impossible is not only possible but occurs with a frequency that elicits wistful smiles in adults, promptly ferreted up the coconut, brought it to the nearest coconut seller, who cracked it open with his little scythe and gave it to Jose--along with a straw.
Well, doubting Thomas wasn't convinced. Perhaps you, dear reader, scoff now, as he scoffed then, at such credulity. I ask you, however, to read on, for the miracles do not end here.
2.
First I must digress a little and discuss the Indian rice-noodle specialty, nul puttu. The dish consists of patties made of rice noodles which were, as mentioned previously, the sole form of nourishment of Saint Alphonsa during the last few years of her life. It is a very popular dish in South India; it is called nul puttu in Malayalam, idiyappam in Tamil and has one of the strangest names of all in Indian English. Yes, even the so-called Anglo-Indians, remnants left over from the British raj, love nul puttu. (They are a dying breed; you can recognize them on sight since they wear--the women at least--dresses that reach below the knees which can easily double as curtains on windows of Victorian bungalows; you can also recognize them by the sound of their affected, Victorian English.) Anglo-Indians disdain the "local languages" and either do not wish to or are unable to pronounce things such as nul puttu or idiyappam. Guess what word they came up with? They call them string hoppers! The first time I heard that word I laughed as hard as I did when a colleague spoke about the 'eleemosynary concerns of the Health Department'. I had been waiting all my life for a person to be sufficiently affected to use that word in a sentence.)
A few days after I arrived in India for the first time in 1977, Nirmala's mother made nul puttu and I fell in love with this delicacy. It is not easy to make--at least at that time. First, a servant would have to grind rice in a mortar and pestle on the floor. (So-called lower caste Indians love to squat.) Then the rice flour is mixed with water. The dough is then put into a stainless-steel cylinder; a piece with little holes in circular arrays fits into the bottom. At the top is a handle; as it is rotated, the dough is pushed out. Sort of like a meat grinder. After steaming, the rice noodles are served with sweetened coconut milk.. It is really delicious.
I made sure we bought a nul-puttu-apparatus on our very first trip. We didn't enjoy it very often, since my wife and I were very busy with our professions at the time. Then somehow the handle got lost and we forgot about nul puttu. Time to recount the second miracle!
It was the eve of my sixtieth birthday. It is a tradition in our family to make a special birthday breakfast for all family members, depending on whose birthday it is. I fell into a deep sleep. Suddenly I saw myself floating down a tunnel into a room of white light. And there she was, Saint Alphonsa, looking much like she does in the photo above, smiling at me with outstretched hands before a table that displayed the most delicious-looking nul puttu you could ever imagine. Overjoyed, I screamed, "Noodles! Noodles!" I apparently not only screamed in the dream world, for my wife woke up, terrified. We calmed down and went back to sleep.
The next morning I found an array of nul puttu on the kitchen table, looking much like the celestial nul puttu of the dream. From that day on, Saint Alphonsa has been known in our family simply as Noodles.
I wanted to write to the Vatican but decided that those bureaucrats would not be all that impressed by Noodles having produced a magic coconut in 1948 and a magic breakfast in 2005. I'm sure they're busy with more important things, such as proving that someone's leukemia was dispelled by another person's miraculous sneeze. I gave up the idea. Truth is, Noodles hasn't done much for our family since.
India has changed; nul puttu has changed. It is now available in the frozen section of every Indian grocery store that caters to South Indian tastes. We began to have it quite often. The fact that I began to call the dish string hoppers is a good indication that I was getting sick of it. I didn't tell my wife this, since she loved to surprise me occasionally with gobs of steaming nul puttu. We no longer had it very often; she continued, however, to microwave the stuff for me on every birthday since that second miracle occurred. On my last birthday, just last month, I had that dream again. Noodles was now offering me a palmful of nul puttu much the same way a Hindu priest offers prasadam to a devotee. I shouted out in my sleep, "Enough already! Noodles, be gone!"
The next day, I found on the kitchen table, unlike the nul puttu that I had on every birthday for the past five years, something different, thank God! fried eggs. Was this a secular miracle? I don't know, but the eggs were divine.
Regarding Noodles' interventions, you, as well as the doubting Thomas in me, are probably not convinced. We would need better evidence. For instance: if, in a dream apparition, Noodles formed numbers out of string hoppers, resulting in my winning millions of dollars in a lottery. Then, perhaps, I could with good conscience stretch my arms toward Heaven while my soul flew to the Lord, as it were, sporting six antinomian wings.
I imagine, dear reader, that you are now as tired of reading about string hoppers as I am of eating them. Be consoled. Only when the lottery miracle or its equivalent occurs--which is highly unlikely--yes, only then will Doubting Thomas conjure up (hopefully from Paris) intimations of glory from Noodles again.
Postscript: Doubting Thomas has no doubt that truth is sometimes odder than fiction. I finished this article on a Sunday evening at about six o'clock. Writing about Noodles made me miss her. I was looking out the window nostalgically when my wife entered my study. She informed me that, since we both had a heavy lunch, we would be having something light for dinner. Guess what we're having? To paraphrase a famous saying, Noodles does indeed work in strange ways.
2.
First I must digress a little and discuss the Indian rice-noodle specialty, nul puttu. The dish consists of patties made of rice noodles which were, as mentioned previously, the sole form of nourishment of Saint Alphonsa during the last few years of her life. It is a very popular dish in South India; it is called nul puttu in Malayalam, idiyappam in Tamil and has one of the strangest names of all in Indian English. Yes, even the so-called Anglo-Indians, remnants left over from the British raj, love nul puttu. (They are a dying breed; you can recognize them on sight since they wear--the women at least--dresses that reach below the knees which can easily double as curtains on windows of Victorian bungalows; you can also recognize them by the sound of their affected, Victorian English.) Anglo-Indians disdain the "local languages" and either do not wish to or are unable to pronounce things such as nul puttu or idiyappam. Guess what word they came up with? They call them string hoppers! The first time I heard that word I laughed as hard as I did when a colleague spoke about the 'eleemosynary concerns of the Health Department'. I had been waiting all my life for a person to be sufficiently affected to use that word in a sentence.)
I made sure we bought a nul-puttu-apparatus on our very first trip. We didn't enjoy it very often, since my wife and I were very busy with our professions at the time. Then somehow the handle got lost and we forgot about nul puttu. Time to recount the second miracle!
It was the eve of my sixtieth birthday. It is a tradition in our family to make a special birthday breakfast for all family members, depending on whose birthday it is. I fell into a deep sleep. Suddenly I saw myself floating down a tunnel into a room of white light. And there she was, Saint Alphonsa, looking much like she does in the photo above, smiling at me with outstretched hands before a table that displayed the most delicious-looking nul puttu you could ever imagine. Overjoyed, I screamed, "Noodles! Noodles!" I apparently not only screamed in the dream world, for my wife woke up, terrified. We calmed down and went back to sleep.
The next morning I found an array of nul puttu on the kitchen table, looking much like the celestial nul puttu of the dream. From that day on, Saint Alphonsa has been known in our family simply as Noodles.
I wanted to write to the Vatican but decided that those bureaucrats would not be all that impressed by Noodles having produced a magic coconut in 1948 and a magic breakfast in 2005. I'm sure they're busy with more important things, such as proving that someone's leukemia was dispelled by another person's miraculous sneeze. I gave up the idea. Truth is, Noodles hasn't done much for our family since.
India has changed; nul puttu has changed. It is now available in the frozen section of every Indian grocery store that caters to South Indian tastes. We began to have it quite often. The fact that I began to call the dish string hoppers is a good indication that I was getting sick of it. I didn't tell my wife this, since she loved to surprise me occasionally with gobs of steaming nul puttu. We no longer had it very often; she continued, however, to microwave the stuff for me on every birthday since that second miracle occurred. On my last birthday, just last month, I had that dream again. Noodles was now offering me a palmful of nul puttu much the same way a Hindu priest offers prasadam to a devotee. I shouted out in my sleep, "Enough already! Noodles, be gone!"
The next day, I found on the kitchen table, unlike the nul puttu that I had on every birthday for the past five years, something different, thank God! fried eggs. Was this a secular miracle? I don't know, but the eggs were divine.
Regarding Noodles' interventions, you, as well as the doubting Thomas in me, are probably not convinced. We would need better evidence. For instance: if, in a dream apparition, Noodles formed numbers out of string hoppers, resulting in my winning millions of dollars in a lottery. Then, perhaps, I could with good conscience stretch my arms toward Heaven while my soul flew to the Lord, as it were, sporting six antinomian wings.
I imagine, dear reader, that you are now as tired of reading about string hoppers as I am of eating them. Be consoled. Only when the lottery miracle or its equivalent occurs--which is highly unlikely--yes, only then will Doubting Thomas conjure up (hopefully from Paris) intimations of glory from Noodles again.
Postscript: Doubting Thomas has no doubt that truth is sometimes odder than fiction. I finished this article on a Sunday evening at about six o'clock. Writing about Noodles made me miss her. I was looking out the window nostalgically when my wife entered my study. She informed me that, since we both had a heavy lunch, we would be having something light for dinner. Guess what we're having? To paraphrase a famous saying, Noodles does indeed work in strange ways.
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