Ginger and Ganesh,
by Nani Power
Years ago I attended a time management workshop with my
teaching colleagues. We did an exercise
where we drew a circle and turned it into a pie chart detailing how we
spent our average day. I drew mine out,
content to see that my piece of the leisure pie was a huge, gluttonous
chunk. Then I glanced at the woman’s
next to me. Her piece of leisure pie was
a thin strip. The woman on the other
side of me had a mere line where her piece of leisure pie should have been. We were mostly women in that workshop, and
all of my colleagues were flapping their pie charts at one another, roaring
about how little leisure was in their lives.
I furtively hugged mine to my chest, eyes cast downward,
feeling like I should have been naked, except for high heels, an ostrich
feather fan gracing my shoulder, (fluttered by a hard working slave) as I
lay comfortably, languidly gazing into the eyes of my hard working
compadres. Then the discussion began.
What actually was it that defined tasks, chores, work, work,
work, and what defined leisure? To my
colleagues, meal planning was work. To
me, it was the creativity I enjoyed on the commute home, mentally creating
recipes as I dodged traffic. For them, cooking
was work. To me, it was an infinite
luxury, as evidenced by the fact that when I had no time, we ate factory
produced fast food.
So it is with Nani Power, in her Ginger and Ganesh. Although
I found this in the Indian cookbook isle at Powell's, in Seattle, I could have found it on a
fiction shelf. The premise of the book
is that the narrator pays Indian immigrants to the United States to teach her
to cook Indian cuisine, and she then gives the recipe each immigrant taught
to her. In fact, this is a story with
lots of characters, some deeply resentful, others melancholy, others burning
and perishing with unrequited love. As
far as literature therapy goes, I think this novel/cookbook has the ability to freshly
open one’s eyes to the beauty of food, and the warmth of the kitchen. Not only can this book help to heal a damaged
household attitude, it can heal your body as well, with its delicious
vegetarian Indian recipes.
Don’t worry. This is
not one of those books to suggest that a good woman strip naked, cover herself
in saran wrap, bite a rose in her teeth, all to welcome hubby (grand master)
home. Not at all. This is a single woman with an interesting
life to live. But she makes sure that
she enjoys every moment, especially the planning and cooking moments! If you could use a boost in the kitchen, to feel
a bit more enjoyment around the stove and fridge, this book could have a therapeutic
value for you.
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