Khichri from Iraq
"The kubbeh, made with minced lamb, was the national food for the Jews all over Iraq. Thursday was the day of khitchri - it's a dish cooked with rice and lentils."
-- From an article on BBC News about Israeli Jews who fled from Iraq in the '50s.
Khitchri / khichri / khichdi / िखचड़ी .. oh, where do I start about it?
Khichri [ok, that's the spelling I'm most comfortable with] is a popular Indian dish cooked often by the natives of India's west coast [mostly the Maharashtra-Gujarat area]. In fact, it's so popular that the Indian channel Star Plus used to air a hilarious sitcom that went by the name of 'Khichdi'.
The main ingredients of khichri are rice, lentils and water. The kind of lentil that my mother and all the women in Nagpur that I know use to make khichri is masoor daal, I think. It's orange in color. It imparts a tasty yellow color to the rice. After most of the water evaporates, you can have a steaming plate of khichri with any of the following: yogurt, dal-ka-paani [don't get me started on that one!], the gravy of dishes that have red-meat in them and yellow curry.
My community, the Bohris, are especially fond of khichri and dal-ka-paani [from now, abbreviated to DKP]. My grandparents used to have it every night, once upon a time. Every night! We never get bored of it. If and when I go away from home to study, khichri and DKP is one of those things that I'm really gonna miss.
So what were a bunch of Iraqi Jews doing having our favorite dish? Every Thursday, that too!
Jews have been around in Iraq since the sixth century BCE. It used to be called Babylon [no, not the one from Queer as Folk] because the ancient Mesopotamians were all party-lovers and wanted to name their city after a nightclub. Sixth century BCE.. that's a hell of a long time ago!
Around 2,100 years ago [also a helluva long time], a ship carrying Jewish families - possibly from Iraq - got shipwrecked near the west coast of India. The survivors were seven families of Jews who settled in an area near present-day Mumbai.
Yakov Reuveni, the man in the BBC article says that khitchri was a dish eaten by Iraqi Jews every Thursday. The story writes itself out from here. I have a very strong feeling that it was the shipwrecked Iraqi Jews who, after landing on the west coast of India and settling the place, passed on the recipe of the wonder that is khichri to their ethnically different Indian neighbors .
What a delicious connection! This thin thread called culture, that binds us together, it never ceases to amaze me. So it's not just the nutty, aggressive nature that Jews and Bohris have in common. Khichri's on the list, too!