Puri Lens

It is no easy task to comprehend a 'community gathering' in Naya Vadi in the Yamuna Par (which translates to 'on the yamuna') in Agra. Community gathering is not accurate as this was a family gathering in a community. But as I found, community outside of family is a bit of a foreign concept in this peri-urban space. Even if you are there it is hard to do more than just take bits in much less process it. Language likely to blame, but regardless it has prompted me to share my experince at Rakesh's anniversary party through the lens of the puri. Puri refers to a small deep-fried chapati, which is just flour and water and salt. It seems to be the festival starch for weddings as well not because it is preferred to the chapati, which is grilled. or the paratha, which is infused with oil then grilled, but because it cooks quicker and therefore can be served hot on demand. That may explain the fastfood=deepfry relationship we find in the west as well.

So this is the story of Rakesh's anniversary told by following the puri around. Rakesh asked to borrow my camera to capture the event. Its a good thing too because I was feeling too sick from all the oil to do anything.

Puri starts as a mass of wheat flour and water and salt if they want. All the younger women at the event gathered around the puri's. The older women tended to go inside. The ones actually making the puris were the teenagers. Usually people just prepare the food on the floor in the house but in this case the number of preparers caused them to move to the space in front of the house. Rakesh comes from a relatively well-off family it seems as his house is nicer than most of the others.

After the dough is mixed and rolled out by the women, a relative, Om Prakash, (in this case) was tasked with the sabji (vegetables) and the puri cooking. He puts them in lots of oil on a wood and buffalo dung fire or a propane flame.

The men, upon arrival, take their seats on the floor in front of leaf placemats or in this case styrofoam platters. Piping hot puris are served on a wicker basket to them - as much as they want, when they call for it. Other young male relatives are tasked with water, vegetables, and sweets.

This is how we ate. Notice the women in the back making the dough for filling our plates.

If you come late, they'll find space for you. No matter what age you are. As long as you are male. And you'll get puri.

After the men have eaten and moved out to be hang outside around the music, the women move in to eat their puris. At other weddings I have seen women eat with men before, its just not customary. In this case, the women were served by girls rather than boys. Staring directly at the camera on the right is Lakshmi who is pretty cool. She taught me how to make any dish taste the same by dousing it in oil and garam masala.

After the eating is done, the women clean up the puri mess, and meanwhile there is a presentation of flowers from the sister-in-law (there is no brother-in-law) to the husband. Then there is a series of serious pictures in formal garb. Unfortunately by this time someone had set the 'shaky hand' setting on the camera and all the pictures came out blurry.

Everything formal taken care of, midnight, loud music, and electricity still provided, there is only one thing to do in such a social gathering...

Dance! (Only the males got to dance this time.) In other cases the women get to dance somewhere else, but certainly never together. The one doing the t-rex michael jackson walk in the middle is named Santosh - which means Content. Content from all the puris.