Not long ago I visited a place in Yorkshire called Morley which has a famous pie shop. Apparently folk come from miles away making special journeys for these pies, They have queues forming outside the shops most mornings. So I thought I would try one! It was hot. I dont really like eating hot pork pies, pastry excellent I recall but a pork pie is almost a different pie eaten hot. I loved them cold. And I was rather disappointed as my attempt in trying it hot.
Now some may argue that the pork in a pork pie is as far
away from meat as a good Hindu is away from beef steak. Others will tell me of
their delightful ingredients of eye lashes and eye balls all died pink
congealed in jelly that makes them irresistible but best not to dwell on it too
much and enjoy the pies for how they taste and make you feel. For me it was always the pastry that I fell in
love with, quite like something I had never tasted before. Crispy case, crumbly
and salty and if one was quiet enough when cutting into one you could hear the
crunch of it being sliced. A girl at church called Catherine would ask me at
our Sunday afternoon tea after service if I would swap her pastry for my jelly
and pork which I gladly did, our delight at fair swap made us the "bestest
friends". Well…. we never got pork pies at the temple God
She did not understand that most Indian girls - including
me although British by birth but Indian by descent - had our ears pierced
before our 1st birthday. It was a disgrace and indecent to
have bare holes in your ears - "undressed and undignified." Most of the English
girls wore very little jewelry at church if any and had never eaten Indian food. Auntie Mary had yet to try one of my curries to really
understand why I loved them so much. Pork pies were the one food I never
spiced up, nothing but some HP sauce would do for me. HP sauce stands for Houses of Parliament after the sauce was being served in the restaurant over 150 years ago.It was though I knew what Heaven was like when I bit into one. Which led to the old saying in our home, “When are we having English?” As 95% of the food we ate was Indian.
Auntie
Anyway, later, my friend, Catherine, asked to have her hears
pierced too.
I decided that neither the church nor the temple were for me. But remained friends with Catherine. So at the age of 12 I went back to my skateboard and enjoyed the rest of the summer. Much to my mother’s disapproval for several reasons.. First, I had given up both church and temple. Secondly, skateboarding was very unladylike indeed. It was not something she ever dreamt of for her Indian daughter. Thirdly she worried about what our relations would think. Most of my extended family lived abroad but for my poor mum they lived in her head. She often could not understand why I was into skateboarding. She knew of no other Indian girl skateboraders in Bradford. She really did not understand the scene.
But for me it was a fearless freeing fantastic sport than help me think and focus on so many things. For instance, why my parents were the only two members of our family who had left India in early 1950's out of 14 brothers and sisters between them . What India must have been like. And what my folks back there must have been like.
But for me it was a fearless freeing fantastic sport than help me think and focus on so many things. For instance, why my parents were the only two members of our family who had left India in early 1950's out of 14 brothers and sisters between them . What India must have been like. And what my folks back there must have been like.
