Chow Chow Bath

‘Upma’ is a popular breakfast dish, especially in South India.  It is popular not just for its taste, but also because it can be prepared easily and quickly.  When I joined SIT, I was living alone in the quarters till I got married.  Though I had minimum facilities to cook in my kitchen, I was making only tea and coffee at home.  One day I decided to start cooking in a small way and the obvious choice to start with was upma.  (I am not a great cook, but I can manage.  Of course, post-pandemic, my culinary skills have improved!).  There were no supermarkets those days, so I went to a nearby kirana shop.  Since I didn’t know Kannada, I kept telling the list of things that I wanted to the shopkeeper in English.  He quickly jotted down, packed everything, put them in a big polythene bag and handed over to me.  Back home, I got ready to make upma.  Rava, oil, salt, and everything else was there in the bag, except mustard seeds.  I saw a small yellow color packet which I had not asked for.  I picked it up – it was a pack of custard powder. I don’t know if the problem was with my pronunciation or the shopkeeper’s listening – he had given me ‘custard’ in place of ‘mustard’!

I had a senior colleague who was also living alone at Tumkur, because his family was in another city.  One day he asked me:

‘Ajoy, what do you do during weekends?’

‘Sir, on Sundays I cook, clean my house, wash clothes etc.’

‘Oh, you cook, is it? I can’t cook.  What do you make?’

‘Usually, I make upma for breakfast and sometimes rice and dal for lunch’

I could see that he was impressed.  In order to impress him further, I invited him for breakfast the next Sunday.  On Sunday morning I kept all ingredients ready.  I thought I would cook only after he came, because it is always nice to eat upma when it is hot.  So, when he came, I went to the kitchen.  He too came with me and kept talking to me while I was cooking.  I made some tea as well.  When it was ready, we sat down to eat.  When I started eating, I realised that I had forgotten to add salt to upma.  My plans of impressing him had gone for a toss.  Though he kept saying, it is okay, he never came back to taste my cooking.  Salt is called ‘uppu’ in Malayalam.  So, that day we had ‘Uppilla Upma’!

During my initial days in Tumkur, when I went to a restaurant, among the usual items like idli and dosa, they used to say ‘chow chow bath’.  I didn’t know what it was.  From the way it was pronounced, I thought it was a Chinese dish.  Few days later, I heard someone sitting on the next table ordering chow chow bath.  I waited curiously.  When it was served to him, I was surprised to see that it was a combination of upma and kesari (a sweet dish made of rava).  Upma is more popularly called ‘kara bath’ in this part of Karnataka.  So, one scoop of kara bath and one scoop of kesari bath became chow chow bath.  I don’t know the origin of its name.  There is a vegetable as well as a breed of dog called ‘chow chow’.  But neither of them has any connection to ‘chow chow bath’.  So, if you are not from Karnataka, next time when you are in Bengaluru, if someone offers chow chow bath, you can happily relish its taste.

I feel like having chow chow bath now. What about you?