The Great Matzo Adventure
Trip Start
Aug 11, 2007
1
22
23
Trip End
Jul 30, 2008
Chennai (Madras),
Tamil Nadu,
India
Thursday, May 1, 2008
I took the night train from Lucknow to Delhi on Thursday night and arrived at New Delhi Station on Friday morning. I was feeling hungry, and in the mood for some "non-Indian" breakfast food, so I decided to head over to Paharganj, a tourist-filled area located right across from the train station. I found a café and sat down to a yummy plate of omelet and hash browns. After finishing my meal, I went in search of Chabad, since I'd been to services with them once before and knew that they were located in one of the budget hostel buildings in Paharganj. When I reached the hostel where I'd remembered Chabad to be located, I asked at the desk if the office was opened. To my surprise, the man at the desk told me that Chabad had moved and gave me some vague directions about how to get to their new office (typical India). I walked down the street a little, looking for any sign of Chabad, but after a while, I decided it was a lost cause. So, I decided to seek out a cheap internet café where I could pass the time (my flight to Chennai wouldn't leave until 5pm) and maybe get some work done. I found what I thought to be a good, modern looking internet place and asked to use a computer. About 10 minutes into my "session," the internet connection on my computer stopped working, and after I sat there for 20 minutes trying to get it fixed, I decided that it must not be my day to be productive and packed up my stuff. Just as I was walking out of the internet café, 3 Hassidic rabbis, dressed in their black hats and long black coats, walked passed me. They were being followed by a young backpacker couple. I decided to follow them to see where they were going, since I suspected that they'd lead me to the new Chabad location. Indeed, just a few doors down from the internet café, the rabbis turned off into a narrow alleyway and began to ascend a staircase.
Before heading up the stairs, I tapped the woman backpacker on the shoulder and asked if she was going to Chabad. She told me she was, and that the rabbis had offered to let her and her boyfriend store their stuff there for the day. I told her that I came in search of matzo and asked her if she thought they'd have some at Chabad to give me. She said she thought so, and so together we followed the rabbis up the stairs. When we arrived at what seemed to be the Chabad kitchen, the rabbis had disappeared, but a nice Israeli man who seemed to be the Chabad cook greeted me and the Israeli couple and told us to put our bags down and join the rabbis on the roof for the burning of the hametz. I'm usually averse to participating in Chabad-led services or prayers, since I don't exactly support Chabad's treatment of women during services. However, not feeling that I had much of a choice, especially if I wanted the rabbis to give me matzo, I followed the Israeli couple up the roof where the 3 black-coated rabbis were standing around a small metal oven-like contraption. Two of the rabbis were holding prayer books and the third was holding a bag of what looked like tiny pieces of bread...the hametz. With the strong Delhi sun and the warmth and smoke coming from the oven, I don't know how those rabbis didn't pass out from heat stroke in their long black coats and hats. However, they seemed fine and spent about 20 minutes saying prayers and burning hametz while the 3 of us watched. I chatted a bit with the couple and found out that they were Israeli...which is a really good thing since the rabbis didn't really speak English and so the Israeli woman ended up being my interpreter.
After the hametz burning ceremony had ended, we all went downstairs and stood around the kitchen for a little while the rabbis scurried about doing what I suspect was more Passover prep work. The cook finally encouraged me to ask the rabbis for what I wanted, suggesting that if I waited until they weren't busy, I'd be there all day. Since I couldn't really communicate with the rabbis, I asked the Israeli woman to help me. We caught the rabbis coming up the stairs and I told them (with the Israeli woman translating) that I was having a Passover Seder the next day in Chennai and would like to bring matzo if they had any I could take. The rabbis seemed to be considering my request and one of them asked, "are you Jewish?" I was a bit offended...I mean, why else would I want matzo for my Seder? But, of course I had to be polite, so I nodded and asked again if they would be able to give me some matzo to take with me to Chennai. Seemingly satisfied with my answer, the rabbi reached up onto one of the bookshelves and took down a large, square cardboard box with Hebrew writing on it. They told me that it was matzo direct from Israel. I didn't think they would ask me to pay for the matzo, but I had to ask just to check. In response, one of the rabbis said, "Yes, give us $1000." I laughed and thanked them for the matzo. Before leaving, I thanked the Israeli couple for their help and wished them and the rabbis a happy Pesach...Haag Sameah. Matzo in hand, I couldn't help but smile at the fact that I had accomplished my mission of finding matzo in India...I couldn't wait to tell me story to my friends in Chennai.
Luckily, my flight to Chennai left on time (something I've heard that the cheap Indian domestic airways aren't always too good about) and I arrived in wet, sticky Chennai around 8:30pm.
Jacob, the friend whose house we were all staying at met me at the airport and took me back to his place. He lived about 30 minutes south of Chennai in a house that was a hop-skip-and-jump from the beach. When we arrived at his house, the smell of the ocean and the salty air made me recall how much I love living by the beach! That night, my friend Myla led the 4 of us who were there in a Shabbat service and I pitched in for some of the songs.
The next morning, Myla, her friend Nalasa and I headed out on a mission to look up recipes, create a menu and buy ingredients for our passover seder that night. We took the local bus (something I would never do in Lucknow since the buses there are always PACKED to the brim) to an internet cafe and looked up recipes for Passover-ish dishes we could make. We knew that we wouldn't have all the ingredients or kitchen implements (ie. an oven) to make a perfectly traditional seder meal, but I think we came up with a good selection of typical Jewish dishes to cook.
The next stop was 3 or 4 different markets and fruit/veggie sellers along the road. When we found most of the ingredients we needed (and when our arms were overloaded with bags), we hopped the bus back to Jacob's house.
When we arrived back at Jacob's house, all 3 of us were hot, sweaty and dripping from the humid heat. We relaxed for a bit and watched a movie before beginning to cooking prep process.
After getting everything started cooking, we were again dripping with sweat, so we decided to take dip in ocean. The beach near Jacob's house was not exactly a swimming beach. In fact, it was more of a fisherman's beach and had lots of debris to prove it. However, the water was cool and we need to cool off, so we jumped in and had a good time splashing about in the waves. I also discovered that the beach had some amazing shells, and being the shell-collector that I am (I inherited this gene from my mom), I decided to wake up early the next morning (when the best shells are usually out) to go searching.
Our swim refreshed us and gave us the energy to finish final seder preparations. We made a seder plate with everything except the Shank Bone, since most of us were vegetarian and we didn't know where to find a bone without buying a whole chicken or something. Our menu also included Humus, Simus, Veggie Borscht, Charoset, Potato Salad and several other yummy dishes that I can't remember because there was just so much good food! ]
That night, all of us (about 10 people in all) gathered on Jacob's roof for our Indian Seder. My friends Myla and Leah led our seder and everyone got involved at some point. The thing I usually hate about seders is that they're too long and I'm starving, or past the point of hunger even, by the time we eat. Luckily, this seder was an abbreviated version and we spent the bulk of the time eating rather than reading through the Haggadah (seder guidebook). By the time we ate the matzo at our seder, however, it was almost stale-tasting...though this might be due to the fact that it was sitting in my bag in the hot, humid Chennai air for over a day. However, despite the staleness, everyone was quite impressed that I had managed to find matzo for the seder and, in the spirit of tradition, we ate it anyway. Everyone thought the food we had prepared was delicious and ate a ton, and we still had leftovers to eat the next day for breakfast (and lunch and dinner if they were still good). After completing the requisite "Search for the Afikomen" (the middle piece of matzo), we all helped clean up, sat around chatting for a while, and then finally went to bed with our tummies still full. I think that this will definitely be one Passover that I'll remember!!
