Varuni Wimalasiri and Abhi Phatak reflect on the personal and culinary triumphs of women who survived the Sri Lankan civil war – now the subject of a fund-raising book of stories and recipe

Phatak, Abhi

Wimalasiri, Varuni

Varuni Wimalasiri (9364304)

Abhi Phatak (16282598)

Sussex Research Online

The fragile flavours of hope

Reflections on the personal and culinary triumphs of women who survived the civil war in Sri Lank

Phatak, A.

Bournemouth University Research Online

44 March/April 2017Resurgence & Ecologistdaughter and provided a remedy for her young son’s potentially fatal cold. The women swear by the healing prop-erties of this elixir of roasted coriander seeds, ginger and pepper. It is served during the monsoon time in Sri Lanka to warm the body, ward off colds and help tide the body over till the next source of nourishment – ideal to help replenish us in springtime in the West when our bodies are overcoming the depleting effects of winter. Try it for yourself! ETHICAL LIVING   FOODThe aroma of cooking fills the house, drifting beyond its walls. Its warmth and freshness are inviting. What promise it holds! A celebration of the present, a reason to be in the moment… Ayini’s hands work like a dancer’s, turning and shaping, scooping the dough with an intimacy only she knows. She recounts her memor ies about food and cooking from her lengthy displace-ment during the civil war in Sri Lanka, from 1983 to 2009. Like Ayini, many women had to abandon their much-loved homes and hearths and wander on their own home soil as fighting raged all around them for nearly three decades. Ayini’s stories are filled with sorrow, yet laced with gratitude and strength for what she has now managed to reclaim. Her tone is humble despite the utter courage and strength her stories relay. The abundance and fertility of Sri Lanka’s soil and the richness of the foods grown there are well documented. From celebrations to mourning rituals, from curing ailments and illnesses to providing sustenance to women as they progress through milestones in their lives such as puberty and childbirth, food plays a pivotal role in the Sri Lankan way of life. Moreover, wisdom about the medicinal and nutritional benefits of ingredients, and knowledge about ancestral recipes are usually handed down the female lineage and very strongly intertwined with the identity of the traditional Sri Lankan woman. Losing power over their kitchens would have added to the grief suffered by these women during wartime. It is perhaps deep in their hearts that we might find the meaning of true love for food, created out of yearning for what once was, while providing what little they could to sustain the lives of their families. Indeed, they would often have shel-tered under the very Palmyra palm trees that provided the basis of so many of their traditional dishes, without having any recourse to the tree’s products. Enjoying the flavours of their favourite ingredients, which had flowed abun-dantly to them during peacetime, was but a dream for these women and their families during the war. The very act of eating and cooking became a form of resilience amidst the ongoing violence and its continuous assault on the senses. “We fled our home in 1990 and didn’t return until 2002,” one woman recalled. “During that time we couldn’t use the products of the Palmyra tree. Since we came back we have started growing our own trees and utilising their products.”Finding even the most basic ingre-dient in war can be a fortuitous and tremendous feat. Putting together a meal from gathered ingredients became an essential skill. The women became artisans and magicians who found the makings in the most unlikely places and used their imagination to produce meals in what we might only interpret as their way of keeping alive hopes of peace for their families. In one such story, Janani describes the abundance of lentils and how it was sometimes the only food in the war camps; how she would barter some of her excess lentils for fresh items such as ginger and garlic – ingredients that lifted the taste of her dishes to “temporarily transport all of my family to another, more joyful world, outside of the camps”. Leela, a young mother, sits in her chair in Ayini’s kitchen, still as a bird but alert and ready to fly at any moment. She talks about her confine-ment while in the war camps. She says how thankful she was for the magic coriander seeds in the malli thanni that kept her energised for the birth of her The fragile flavours of hopeVaruni Wimalasiri and Abhi Phatak reflect on the personal and culinary triumphs of women who survived the Sri Lankan civil war – now the subject of a fund-raising book of stories and recipesKudi Neer (or Malli Thanni) – Coriander WaterCooking time: 15 minutesServes 3 Ingredients2⁄3 cup coriander seeds9 or 10 black peppercornsa 2–3 cm piece of fresh ginger, sliced or pounded3 cups of watersugar to taste (optional)MethodPlace the coriander seeds and pepper-corns in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and dry-roast them over a low heat. As the aroma rises, remove the pan from the heat.Add the ginger and water to the pan and bring it to the boil.Reduce the heat and simmer until the liquid has reduced to half or less.Add sugar if desired, stir to dissolve it, and simmer for another 4–5 minutes over a low heat.Remove the pan from the heat. Serve the liquid warm for relieving a cold, or cool as a wellbeing tonic.45Issue 301 Resurgence & Ecologist(Top) A woman cooking roti on the street   Photograph: Tharindu Amunugama(Bottom) A woman cleaning lentils in preparation for making dhal               Photograph: Suja Samivel  Since the end of the civil war in 2009, Sri Lankans have been starting to rebuild their lives. Recounting their wartime experiences can help ease their journey to healing. On her visits to Sri Lanka to support in the post-war efforts in the north of the island, Abarna Raj, chief executive of Palmera, a Sydney-based Australian social enterprise, saw healing portrayed in women’s stories about food. With the help of a group of volunteers, she gathered them into the illustrated story-cookbook called HANDMADE: Stories of Strength Shared through Recipes. It is also a tribute to her late mother, who herself fled the civil war. The book offers insights into the nutritional and medicinal properties of the ingredients used in Sri Lankan cooking. It is also a window into the kitchens and culinary traditions of the previously war-beaten, now reviving north-eastern Sri Lanka. Above all it is a beacon to the courage and strength of a group of 34 women, including Janini and Ayini, who survived the war. Their stories are filled with gratitude, humil-ity and grace, and also lessons in how to cook in the most stretched of circum-stances. All profits from HANDMADE go to assist people in rural Sri Lanka to reclaim their livelihoods. Varuni Wimalasiri is an organisational psychologist and is representative for the HANDMADE project for the South of England. She spent her childhood in war-time Sri Lanka and now lives in Devon, England.Abhi Phatak is the global representative for HANDMADE at Palmera and is based in Sydney, Australia.For  more  in fo rmat ion  abou t HANDMADE visit www.facebook.com/palmeraprojects/ or www.palmera.org/handmade. For other Palmera projects, see www.palmera.org

The fragile flavours of hope.

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The fragile flavours of hope

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