Deepa's Secrets: Slow Carb New Indian Cuisine by Thomas Deepa

Author:Thomas, Deepa [Thomas, Deepa]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2017-07-03T16:00:00+00:00

Savory Vegetables

Before you go graphing my family tree, let me point out that Thomas is a common family name in Kerala. Thampy’s father and my mother were not related (for as far back as we can go)—our marriage formed the union between the two Thomas branches.

A. M. Thomas grew up in Kerala, the rice bowl of India. He was the son of a paddy farmer who worked the land without the help of hired hands. He was often up before the sun, tilling until it was time to set out to school. Appachen (Malayalam for father) was the first in his family to graduate high school and go on to college. Then, after college, he wanted to go to law school. “Law school?!” Appachen loved to tell the story. It was the early 1940s and his grandmother didn’t know what this law school was. All she needed to know was that her grandson was compelled to go. She hawked her jewelry and saw to it that he went.

After he practiced law, A. M. Thomas was elected to serve in the first parliament of independent India. He served the first three prime ministers of India before being tapped to become High Commissioner to Australia and then Zambia. As the first Christian minister (the rest of Nehru’s cabinet ministers were Hindu or Muslim), Appachen was asked to escort Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia when he visited India in 1956. Thampy inherited the Emperor’s thank you gift, a set of centuries-old gold coin cufflinks.

I came into the family years later. My clearest memory? Not the Emperor, no. Dignitaries, yes. I can remember the head of the Orthodox Church waiting in the living room while I most vividly recall Appachen rolling up his shirt to give himself his daily insulin shot. This is a memory that came barreling back as I watched Thampy guide the needle into his belly the first handful of times.

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