The large sunlit kitchen in my father’s paternal home had a top shelf that could be reached only by standing on a chair and reaching all the way up.

It housed a range of jars filled with delicious things. Marmalade, cookies, butter toffee and tucked away in the corner, a jar full of dark jaggery. Irregular lumpy pieces that could fit in between an inch of space between a thumb and an index finger, leaving behind crumbs to lick off.

When winter came 

My father’s much older sister, more of a grandmother than an aunt to us, was fond of sharing the benefits of different kinds of food at each meal, never mind how many times the same thing had been said before. Winter food was no different.

As the morning air developed a nip, this jar of jaggery would make its way to the  dining table after each meal. ‘Just one piece’ was the advice given, yet never followed.

Little crumbs of sweetness

‘Jaggery warms the body and helps treat seasonal flu and cold’ she would say. She would then wax lyrical about its immunity boosting potential and never forget to mention that it contained iron. This, she would insist, was the reason we were receiving a piece every day of our holidays. It had absolutely nothing to do with it's sweet taste, she would add with a twinkle.

Some of the jaggery would crumble inside the jar. She would scrape this out with a long-stemmed copper spoon and save it to be sprinkled on toast at tea times. 

As years rolled by, the holidays and the tea times were forgotten. The jar of jaggery came back only in memories. Work life began and we were introduced to a host of delicious wonders available on the tap of a finger.

Then one day, a work trip found me boarding a flight and then taking a three-hour drive deep into the hills. A full day of work rolled into a weekend of meeting the cousins. Invariably, a large, sumptuous lunch was planned. We caught up, connected, teased each other, and reminisced.

As the meal ended, aunt got up slowly and brought out her old jar of jaggery. She handed out a piece each as though we were not full-grown adults, but the kids she had always raised. And her stories about food and its benefits, warmed us all over again.

Vintage Tales 

Tale No 319 (vintage-tales.com)