Wherever the Limdi Grows: Growing Up Gujarati in Southern California

I deliberately and obstinately use the word ‘limdi’ and not the term ‘curry leaf’ because the word ‘curry’ has always bothered me.

My family has a game we play. If we are on foot and we pass by a small motel, we might dip into the parking lot for a stroll, our internal divining rods primed to detect where the limdi grows. If we are in a car, we may ease off the accelerator and cruise slowly past, necks craned, to see who spots the tiny glossy forest green leaves first. You may catch a glimpse of its abundantly leafed branches while driving past a Motel 6 off a dusty highway in Merced or discover its thin frame leaning against a wall at a Best Western on a busy stretch of Biloxi. When a limdi towers tall, we know the family has been here for decades; when you see one potted, perched in a sunny spot, they are likely more recent arrivals.

Limdi, the Gujarati word for curry leaf, is a delicious edible aromatic leaf that elevates our cuisine, like basil to Italians. Gujarati is the language of the people of the state of Gujarat, whose people are Gujaratis. We Gujaratis like to pointedly share the braggy bit of trivia that Gandhi was from Gujarat.

I deliberately and obstinately use the word ‘limdi’ and not the term ‘curry leaf’ because the word ‘curry’ has always bothered me. Bothered me is a euphemism. I know what daal, bhaat, shaak, and rotli are because I grew up eating them every day. I know what kadhi is because its limdi-rich buttermilk thick soup combined with the ricey lentil goodness of khichdi is as ultimate a comfort food for a Gujarati as mac and cheese is for a Southerner.

But curry? Curry is a colonizer concoction for food with spices in it, a word that only means something to boiled potato people for whom seasoning is a black and white affair that begins with pepper and ends with salt.

From the moment Vasco De Gama touched down on the Malabar coast in 1498, what was once simply a Tamil word for sauce—kari—was passed like a colonizer’s baton in the race for Empire from the Portugese to the British. By the 1700s, it landed in British cookbooks as “curry:” anglicized, bastardized, a nebulous umbrella catchall for Indian food. This term spread as far and wide as Her Majesty’s Empire itself, so much so that curry is now considered a national dish of England. When I was younger, I was often approached with, “Do you eat curry? I loooove curry!” I never quite knew what to say: “I don’t really know what curry is, but I think you mean food seasoned with cumin and coriander and turmeric and other Indian spices, and so yes, I eat it every day?” But now I have aged and my bones have thinned along with my patience.

Gujarati food without limdi is incomplete—it just doesn’t taste like home. In the words of renowned Gujarti poet Adal: “Jya Jya Vase Ek Gujarati, Tya Tya Sadakal Gujarat.” Wherever one Gujarati resides, there forever is Gujarat. The spot-the-limdi game originates with Gujaratis leaving the homeland and migrating to the US. Koreans captured the market on corner stores, Cambodians came to dominate donut shops, and Gujaratis grew to become motel moguls. This was our niche, our vehicle to the American dream.

When a limdi towers tall, we know the family has been here for decades; when you see one potted, perched in a sunny spot, they are likely more recent arrivals.

The dreamer, in this case, my father: In the early ’70s, Dad faced a life altering crossroads in the decision tree of his life—whether to make the UK or the US his new home. The US policy of family reunification (now rebranded ‘chain migration’) would allow him to sponsor not just his parents and wife, but also all of his adult siblings, while the UK policy at the time would exclude them. He ultimately picked the country whose policies reflected the importance of extended family, not just the nuclear one. Family reunification synced with our cultural values, where a cousin is like a sister or a brother, and aunts and uncles like second parents. He chose America, and chose a motel.

With Dad and Mom as our clan’s anchors, it started with the single seed of a small motel in Southern California. As the decades unfurled, with visas processed and green cards granted, siblings and their spouses sponsored their extended families and the instrument for settlement was the motel. My parents have spent the last half a century in this country and at last count, there are about 150 American citizens here directly because of my parents. Since my parents arrived in the USA, half of all motels in the US have become Indian owned, the majority of those by Gujaratis.

We grew up as motel kids, the parking lot our playground. Driftwood Motel, Malta Motel, Town and Country Motel, Rancho, Family, Surf, Belmont Shore, Compass (which we pronounced “Come-paas” only to realize as adults that our parents mispronounced it the whole time), Sun ’N Sands, La Vista, Hyde Park, Willow Tree. Our home was our place of business: busy Friday nights with 2 a.m. jaunts to the sidewalk to light the ‘No’ of the No Vacancy Sign; spreading fresh white sheets on queen beds while watching Saturday morning cartoons; perfecting the art of sounding professional with the pleasant pitched polish of, “Beach Comfort Motel, may I help you?” We developed the craft of casing a car as it pulled into the lot, charging fifty-five plus tax for the night when it was a shiny Chevy Camaro instead of thirty-five plus tax for the banged up Hyundai Excel. Motel kids know the heater isn’t broken but just needs a pilot relight. We know where the circuit breakers are and how to work a snake to unclog a drain, and we roll our eyes because you shouldn’t have dumped the coffee grounds there in the first place.

By our teens we realize it’s best that we man the customer window when the crew cut Camp Pendleton marine tries to finagle a room for twenty bucks. When refused, he is less likely to scream “Paki” at us than at our sari-clad Moms or our thick-accented Dads. So we promote ourselves to work front desk and as soon as we hear the first notes of the bell, we run to the window to be the more benign, less offensive version of the immigrant. Our American-born and -bred selves always nod graciously at the compliments customers shower upon us about how good our English is.

My parents encouraged us to wear our differences proudly and set the example. But many of their generation sought a more harmoniously antiseptic encounter with the average customer. Not all Auntys and Uncles were made of the same flint and steel core as my pioneer parents. As I got older, I forgave them, but as a kid I was ashamed of their shame. They replaced their lungis with sweatpants and their saris with slacks and made sure there was a shut door between the office and the adjacent living room. They also did their utmost to seal away the unruly wafts of limdi with grated ginger and mustard seed sizzling in canola oil. Sameers became Sams, Devangs became Daves, and Nikhils, Nicks. Motel owners draped American flags prominently, wishful that the stars and stripes would provide the necessary armor against a rock through the plate glass window, or worse. Neutral look, neutral smell, neutral customer encounter.

Gujarati food without limdi is incomplete—it just doesn’t taste like home.

In spite of the voluntary erasure of the most external markers of our culture, always, always, there is still a telltale sign to the insider eye. Somewhere, if you scour carefully, in the strip of dirt between the parking lot pavement and the swimming pool gate, or in the slice of soil adjacent to the rose bushes, or in the sun drenched spot next to the concrete curb of the office window, a limdi lurks. Its tender branches rustle with new shiny green leaves, lovingly tended to by an Aunty who knows better than to pluck the limdi until the plant truly takes in the soil.

And so we play the spot-the-limdi game. Because within the limdi lies the story: the story of who you are and where you come from, the story of tiny seeds passed from hand to hand, the story of home, of loss, of longing, of transplant, of circumscribing a small piece of earth and claiming it as yours. And if you are lucky, your limdi grows from seed to sapling, from sapling to bush, from bush to tree. And it takes root, spreads, and thrives—just like you and yours.