If Kolkata enjoys its afternoon raga, Mumbai shines brightest in the evenings, and Delhi parties through the night, morning is Chennai’s finest hour. Especially during Margazhi — the season between mid-December and mid-January when the city, perennially hot and prickly, is rewarded with gentle coastal winds, dewy mornings, music, dance, and food. Women bring out their silk saris and wear jasmine in their hair, and men endeavour to clean up for concerts, conversations and festivities.

During Margazhi, Triplicane, a beachside village with a towering Vishnu temple, finds the quiet of dawn broken daily by the chimes of cymbals and the singing of minstrels. They sing the Thiruppavai, a collection of 30 hymns: one for each day of the month. These verses of devotional love were composed by an 8th century teenager named Andal, venerated as the only female patron saint of Tamil Vaishnavites.

Decadent dish for a celestial beau

According to legend, Andal, all of 15, had a crush on Ranganatha, the deity at Srivilliputhur, a temple town in the Western Ghats. Every dawn during Margazhi, she walked to the temple, expressing her devotion and love through song.

Long before western commercial offerings for St. Valentine’s Day reached India in the form of greeting cards, chocolates, and roses, Andal wooed her divine paramour with poems, fragrant lotus garlands, and akkara adisil, a porridge of sweetened rice overflowing with ghee.

Akkara adisil | Photo Credit: Sudha G. Tilak

One hymn, Koodarai Vellum Seer Govinda, in ragam Poorvikalyani, is particularly delicious. In it, she describes her akkara adisil as having “golden ghee that would melt and run down from the palms to the elbows”. She offers the decadent dish to her celestial beau, asking him to fulfil her desire for a divine union.

Guilt-free and giddy, Andal’s hymns are fired by vivid images and descriptions of indulgent food, blurring the lines between pleasure and piety. Dancer and choreographer Anita Ratnam, who presented Andal’s Garden, a series of dances based on these hymns, says Andal can be contextualised in the 21st century as a feminist teenager. Her burning devotion, lovelorn fantasies, and bright-eyed female gaze dissolve the boundaries between sacred and sacrilegious. “Andal’s songs are timeless and speak of that special joy and innocent intensity that mark teen love,” Ratnam says. “She is thrilled to offer a bowl of akkara adisil as a sacred symbol of her affection.”

Anita Ratnam, playing the narrator, and Nandini Subbalakshmi in Naachiyar Next, a dance-drama on Andal | Photo Credit: Rishi Raj

A visit to a Vishnu temple in Tamil Nadu during Margazhi would be incomplete without tasting a donne, or leaf bowl, of piping hot akkara adisil from the temple kitchen. Rakesh Raghunathan, an expert on temple cuisine, says, “A smidgen of edible camphor is the subtle ingredient that makes the akkara adisil an aromatic blessed offering.”

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It’s Margazhi month again, and a bunch of us school friends are chatting. Today, we are scattered across the globe, faces in boxes on a Zoom call.

Our voices drop low as we discuss the teenage crushes of our sons and daughters. Then they turn to me with evil grins.

“Where’s that Lingayat lad you were sweet on when you were 16?” asks a pointed voice.

“Still annoyingly dishy, someplace in America!”

“That Bawa boy from Harrington Road?”

“Living happily with his beau,” I frown.

“And that lanky Iyengar chap?”

“Far away and very content!”

The screen freezes on their laughter as the WiFi drops.

I sigh and shut down the laptop.

It’s been decades but I tell myself it’s a good time to honour my teen crushes, adding warm memories to the harsh winter of North India, where I now live.

I place a brass pot on the stovetop and roast a fistful of yellow moong dal until they turn ochre and release a welcoming aroma. I slow-cook a cup of rice with the dal, in cow’s milk, until it becomes the consistency of pudding. The milk overflows. Pongal in Tamil means ‘gushing’, and is the measure of a well-cooked akkara adisil, and a metaphor for Andal’s boundless passion. The milk bubbling over is usually greeted with ululating and loud appreciation in most kitchens.

I drop rocks of jaggery into the pot and watch the flames flare. As the heat rises, the hard jaggery melts into amber syrup, mingling with the creamy rice. I add a generous pour of ghee, then drop in roasted cashew nuts, raisins, and threads of saffron. The akkara adisil bubbles and pops.

The combination of the golden colours of jaggery and saffron, the velvety textures of rice, dal and milk, and the crunch of nuts isn’t quite enough.

I recall the cologne of a brandy-eyed boy as we sped down the East Coast Road on his motorbike during college days.

I add a pinch of edible camphor to the pot and give it a turn.

I ladle a spoonful into my mouth. I revel in the flavours that burst forth.

The akkara adisil tastes of pure pleasure, much like Andal’s sweet love.

The Gurgaon-based journalist is the author of ‘Temple Tales’ and translator of ‘Hungry Humans’.