Splendour in The Grass
On the cool quotient of khus-khus
Among travellers from the West in India in the early 19th century Mrs.Meer Hassan Ali's name stands out. She is not well known today, and many personal details about her are unclear, including her name. She was probably Biddy Timms, a devout young woman who met Meer Hassan Ali, an enterprising scholar from Lucknow who came to England in 1809 hoping to find work teaching Persian, Arabic and Hindustani to officers of the East India Company. The Company did hire him, not for their officers, but their military cadets, a less happy prospect given the lack of interest young soldiers had in languages.Hassan Ali spent six years at this and also doing translations, including one of the Gospel of St.Matthew into Hindustani for which, writes Michael H Fisher in his Counterflows to Colonialism, he got the help of Miss Timms — and just before returning home in 1817, he married her. As William Dalrymple has written in White Mughals, there were many cases of marriages between Indian women and Western men in the 18th and early 19th centuries, but Meer Hassan's was the rare opposite example. Some British or Anglo-Indian women did join Indian harems, and one, a Miss Walters, even had a mosque built in her memory. But Mrs.Meer Hassan Ali kept her religion and status as a wife in the Western sense, and when after 12 years she returned to Britain she used her unique exposure to Indian life, especially to zenana women, to write a book titled
Observations on the Mussulmauns of India (1832).
This is fascinating to read, far more sympathetic and accurate than the accounts of many foreigners in the decades to come. Mrs.Meer Hassan Ali delighted in Indian Muslim family life, and included details on everything from wedding rituals to the fruits and food they ate (though how dahi was made remained a mystery to her). And one thing in particular drew her into raptures — a system of cooling that used the roots of a type of jungle grass called khus-khus that, she noted was "collected on account of their aromatic smell, to form thatch tatties, or screens for the doors and windows."
These were kept wet so that the breeze passing through "is rendered agreeably cool, and produces a real luxury at the season of the hot winds, when every puff resembles a furnaceheat to those exposed to it by out-ofdoor occupation." This was such a relief she saw the Hand of God in it, and even if one isn't religious, but can remember stepping from a searing summer day into the cool of an air-conditioned room one can understand why she wrote: "This grass presents so many proofs of the beneficent care of Divine Providence to the creatures of His hand, that the heart must be ungratefully cold which neglects praise and thanksgiving to the Creator, whose power and mercy bestows so great a benefit."
Mrs.Meer Hassan Ali's thankful feelings were echoed by the British to come after her, particularly the women who had to survive the heat of Indian summers stuck at home. By the time Flora Annie Steele and Grace Gardiner wrote their Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook (1888), khuskhus cooling had gone high-tech with thermantidotes, a fearsome name for an early version of our desert coolers, with a hand-turned fan to drive air through the mats. Steele and Gardiner note its many advantages — houses could be kept sealed against the dust since the machines pushed air through and with ceiling punkahs, which were languidly pulled back and forth by a string, the punkah-man was apt to fall asleep, but turning the thermantidote's wheel kept him awake.
All this has long been known to Indians and Abu'l Fazl in the Ain-i-Akbari, his account of the life of Emperor Akbar, says that it was the Emperor himself who first devised the concept, which sounds like an early precursor to Al Gore inventing the Internet. Vetiver (or vetivert), the grass whose fragrant roots are used is indigenous to the subcontinent (along with other fragrant grasses like spikenard and calamus). Its name comes from the Tamil vettiveru, while the Latin name has changed several times, but currently seems to be Chrysopogon zizanoides. It is not much to look at, just green stalks, with a mass of thin tangled roots when dug up. Yet these roots have many uses — preventing soil erosion, for example, or purifying contaminated soils, or helping in landscaping. There is an international NGO called the Vetiver Network dedicated to propagating its use for all these multiple benefits.
And if all this was not enough, vetiver contains a very complex oil. In The Scent Trail, Celia Lyttelton's book on the sources of perfumery, writes that "scientists have isolated 150 molecules from it, and there are still more mysteries to be unearthed from its roots." Travelling to Kannauj, the centre of India's traditional perfume industry, she finds vetiver roots, gathered after the monsoons by tribal communities, and then left to steam gently in old copper stills till the oil distils into the intensely earthy-sweet smelling vetiver ruh, or essence. This is prized in the international perfume business (though much of what is used comes from Haiti and Reunion, where Indian vetiver is now grown) and is the basis for perfumes like Guerlain's Vetiver, Tom Ford's Grey Vetiver and Armani's Vetiver Babylone.
All this high end luxury literally has roots in something that many of us will find very familiar. It is the taste of water that we had in our grandparents' houses, at a time when water was still kept in earthen pots that both kept it cool and seemed to give it a subtly earthy taste. What I only realised after actually looking in the pots was that part of this earthiness came from the khus roots left to steep - and also that elusive woody-sweet note that one didn't taste, but really smelled as it went up one's palate, leaving an amazingly cooling and refreshing taste in one's head. For all their love of khus as a climatic cooler, the British never seemed to have realised how much it could also help when consumed.
There is a lot of confusion between this khus and the khus-khus that is poppyseed — it not only has the same name, but also a soothing reputation thanks to the soporific properties of opium poppies. But Hobson-Jobson notes that the seed's name is probably Persian in origin (and I think might derive from the sound the seeds make in the dry poppy heads). The root's name comes from Sanskrit and it is what is used in khus syrup which, unfortunately, is really so awful in most of its commercial forms that I think it has done more than anything else to put people off such a traditional Indian summer treat. The commercial syrups tend to be violently sweet and also, for some reason, violently green, and totally manage to destroy the delicate flavour of real khus root.
It is well worth tracking down the few exceptions, usually from small, organic producers, or just making your own. The roots are usually available from ayurvedic stores (in Mumbai Kanara Stores in Matunga keeps it). One tip for using it to flavour water is to put it in a muslin bag since particles from the root muddy the water in unenticing ways. It is also best to let it steep for only a few hours — the basic aroma disseminates fast, and too long can lead to rotten overtones. To make the syrup one simply needs to let the roots steep in a hot syrup (but don't boil or it will get bitter). It is a good idea to add lime, since the woodiness and sweetness can get a bit tiring without a slight acid challenge. But that is really all that is needed to have an antidote to Indian summer heat that is so simple and good that you will readily join Mrs.Meer Hassan Ali in giving thanks to whatever Deity made it possible!
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