Skin Stories

My blogger and FB friend Shruti Nargundkar , lives in Australia, and is an education innovator, entrepreneur,teacher, instructional designer, curriclum and courseware developer...loves to cook and feed people, read, write, listen to music and sing.

On her blog, she often harks back to the food ethos of her childhood, as she also picks up the culinary best her adoptive country has to offer.  Reading her post , Peel Repeal, where she writes about using vegetable peels for chutneys and relishes,  it suddenly brought home the fact, that culture, language, attitudes, culinary traditions and local idioms are all connected.

Like the attitudes towards peels and skins. "No skin off my back"  vs "  I will take off my skin and give it to make slippers for you.".......

OMG!
 
(All photographs by Shruti Nargundkar)

It is amazing
how traditions
in vegetable society
dictate
idiomatic use of the
local language.

Not to mention attitudes in cultures....

The hi-fi Zuchhinis
Lord Avocados,
and Dowager Squashes,
preening in
summer style,
sometimes
shrug off their wraps
in style,
so immersed
in their own importance,
it is like
"Do anything .

We dont care.

No skin of my back !"
........

And then
there is the
slender, slightly shy
doodhi,
and sometimes the
outwardly rough
but co-operative karela,
that not only
go to pieces themselves
to ensure
wild approval from Chapatibai,
but even offer
(along with
chillies and coconut types),

the skin off their backs

to make chappals

for her,

so she can make the trek
to a hungry one.....