Shashi's Cooking Class

This morning has been the best morning in India so far without a doubt. Alex and I woke up early and walked up the hill to the Sunrise Cafe which rests atop Shashi's home, which is a two room cement building with a small balcony that houses two pet turtles...for luck of course. Shashi is a local woman from a small village outside of Udaipur and she moved to Udaipur when she was married over 20 years ago. Her husband was a good man and not only was good looking, but had a good nature as well. Theirs was an arranged marriage and Shashi did not see his face until after the wedding...at which time she did breathe a sigh of relief. After 13 years of a happy marriage (he helped her cut vegetables in the kitchen) he was murdered by by his best friend for 35,000 rupees. His best friend invited him to his home and drugged his curry with sleeping tablets and when he passed out, he then suffocated him with a plastic bag over his head. His best friend served 1 year in prison and was set free, but Shashi's life would never be the same. She spent 45 days in the corner of her house with her face covered crying and did not leave the house for a further year. This is Hindi tradition, but also we think due to the severe shock of this horror. She had two small sons at the time and had they had to sneak out and get laundry to bring to her home so she could clean for some rupees. As Shashi's family are part of the highest caste, she is NOT allowed to clean and this had to be done in secret. After time, she met an Irish man through the cafe her family runs on top of her home and he told her that she was a wonderful cook and should start cooking classes from her home. Over time, and with the help of tourists, her cooking classes grew and word of mouth spread and now she runs two cooking classes a day and sells a myriad of colourful and dazzling spices from her small two room house above the noisy streets of Udaipur and has no time to herself. Sounds surreal...and it is! So today we met this lovely woman, and her 2 pet turtles, two sons, extremely depressed and abused sister (she did not marry a good man and her husband beats her and her children, but this is common place and her lot in life), some neighbours, a cousin and a random crazy woman who eats all the leftovers and hangs about the kitchen.
We arrived at 10am and sat around while her family got dressed and went to the local market for all the vegetables we would need to cook. She is a devout vegetarian and we only cooked with vegetables...though she did explain how to make the recipes with chicken. We started with a masala chai and drank it up. It was warm and creamy with a sweet spicy cardamom flavour. What a treat. We then made Vegetable Pakoras, which are like party snacks. Alex and I did not realize that we were going to cook a vegetable curry, vegetable pilau, naan breads, chipatis, naan stuffed with potato/spice/veg, tomato masala with garlic cheese to spread on top of the plain naan and a sweet naan stuffed with coconut powder and icing sugar so we gorged ourselves on pakoras...what a dire mistake.
About 4 hours later, we sat down to enjoy our feast and could only take small bite of each delicacy and then packed the rest away into plastic bags which actually work quite nicely as make shift Tupperware for dinner later on our train ride to Mumbai. They gave us both red friendship bracelets with bells (despite Alex showing the whole family her tattoos and piercings and refusing to use their toilet) and elephant key chains and sent us on our merry way. What a wonderful way to spend a lazy Sunday and by far the highlight of the trip thus far.
We will not soon forget this experience or Shashi and her little cooking school in Udaipur.