Shobha Ramani
Last Diwali, my tooth shattered to pieces when I bit down on a til laddu (sesame candy ball). One minute I was crunching on sweet sesame goodness; the next moment, I had lost an irreplaceable part of my body. I felt a sharp twinge in my upper jaw and went to look in the mirror. The check revealed the shocking empty space in my upper right jaw. I didn’t realise that I was also gulping down fragments of my tooth when I swallowed the morsel of laddu.
I hadn’t thought the off-and-on achy tooth to be fragile enough to shatter on a til laddu. Luckily, it was the tooth behind the incisor, so there was no black gap to startle others when I smiled. A eureka thought struck me — that’s why most of the great-grands in the family albums had solemn, grim-looking visages.
Quite fitting indeed, I mused after I had reconciled myself to the fact that my tooth was gone forever. The sesame laddu had been part of the ritual offerings for my father’s annual shrādha (memorial) ceremony. We were left bereft when my father unexpectedly passed away on a Diwali day several years ago. So, when my tooth decided to dissolve to dust, as all natural things must, it was on another Diwali day, done in by a black til laddu.
It turns out that black til is essential for the various rituals during the first year of mourning and following yearly shrādha ceremonies in the traditions followed by our community. Our family’s spiritual guru informed us that all the other things — the goods and rituals that the tone-deaf priest kept pushing — were simply unnecessary paraphernalia. The core of the Hindu remembrance rite of the forefathers — tarpana — only requires a few grains of sesame seeds (preferably black) held in one’s hand, along with water and a few wisps of durba grass.
I had never viewed sesame through the lens of grief until that year.
Could that be the reason the Buddha had used sesame seeds to illustrate the universality of death? When the inconsolable mother, Kisa Gotami, clutched her dead son to her chest and pleaded with the Compassionate One to restore the child to life, he instructed her to get some grains of sesame seeds from a household untouched by death.
The grieving mother’s whisper of hope got silenced as she frantically ran in desperation from house to house, seeking the impossible. When Gotami cannot find a home that has never faced death, she regains her equanimity and accepts the inevitability of mortality.
Or did the story revolve around white mustard seeds? Various online sutra translations state that the Buddha requested mustard seeds from Gotami, not sesame. Perhaps it’s a case of “lost in translation” or “flipped for relevance”. My childhood recollection of this tale, as narrated by my grandmother, remembers til as central to the parable. Did later storytellers deem sesame as more relevant for the story, considering the role this tiny black oilseed has played in the traditional ritual oblations for millennia? Possibly.
A quick Google search throws up the fact that sesame has been cultivated in India for over 5000 years. This tiny seed has been used as a source of oil, spice, and a base for sauces for ages. Desi grandmothers and nutritionists passionately advocate til as a great source of nutrition and energy. In pretty much every part of India, one can find this little black or white crunchy seed and the slightly pungent smoky sesame oil as a key ingredient in dishes and rituals throughout the seasons.
The cold winters in northern India are incomplete without sesame as a traditional energy booster. Rewdis, gajak, laddos, and tilpatti — all versions of white sesame brittle or candy with or without other nuts — are widely available, as til is considered ‘warming’. The delicate tilpatti wafer, which melts as you bite, is a particular family favourite. One could call it the OG energy bar.
Every year, I have tossed a rewdi or two into the Lohri bonfire to hear the flames roar when the oilseeds pop. Rewdi is distributed freely on the winter harvest festival day, and sadly, that’s why the popular coin-shaped bits of energy have now become synonymous with freebies promised to voters by politicians of every hue.
In much warmer Maharashtra, Karnataka, and all the way across to Assam, sesame remains a common element of the winter harvest, called Til Sankranthi or Bihu. It goes without saying that til gud/gul and other sweets with sesame are the central theme.
However, sesame is used in more versatile ways beyond a sugary treat that’s distributed at festivals. It gets used in tempering, that quintessential process of Indian cooking. The nutty flavour of sesame adds a satisfying crunch to salty, spicy Indian snacks. Chutneys and vegetable dishes also make use of it.
In Western India, especially in Gujarati cuisine, white sesame seeds are added as a crunchy bite to numerous dishes. Various friends who side-eye the sweetish profile of Gujarati dishes overcome their prejudice and gorge on the farsans, muthias, and khandvi, enjoying the play of textures and flavours, which the generous sprinkling of sesame helps to accentuate.
In my biased opinion, the large assortment of sesame-studded crispies popular across South India is infinitely superior to doughnuts or cookies as a lovely counterpoint to caffeinated sips of India’s characteristic chai or kaapi.
Most of the Mediterranean, Egyptian, and Middle Eastern dishes that I savour also feature sesame as a key flavour — za’atar-dusted breads, sauces such as tahini and hummus, and sweets like halvah. To the east of India, sesame oil and sesame-infused sauces are very popular in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean cuisines. And unfailingly, my favourites have added some dark sesame oil imparting the characteristic umami note.
Remember Ali Baba and “Open Sesame”? I found it intriguing that the password is believed to refer to the abrupt snap with which the ripe sesame pod pops in a shower of small black seeds. I went down the rabbit hole that’s the internet and discovered the original Arabic folk story had no reference to sesame, but that’s for another day. The deep dive also revealed the fun fact: the Akkadian/Sumerian and Tamil words for sesame are the same — ‘ellu’. It really made me wonder about human migration, cross-cultural exchanges, and trade routes of days gone by.
But it’s in the deep south of India where ‘ellu’ and the oil that’s extracted have seeped into the very essence of both the soil and its people. Lovingly called “good oil”, nalla enai, the golden-hued gingelly oil (distinct from sesame oil due to the difference in the oil extraction process), is as integral to this region’s culture and daily life as the ubiquitous coconut.
A core part of my childhood, gingelly oil formed a part of most daily activities — from ritual baths, pickles, medicinal drinks, and massage oil to votive temple lamps and being an essential condiment to everyday dishes. As a Tamil, I can vouch that many signature dishes, such as the spicy vathal kuzhambus, gojjus, and curries, are a different culinary experience with fresh gingelly oil.
Even the humble idli, often dismissed as bland, is transformed into a lovely morsel bursting with complex flavours when generously splashed with gingelly oil and dipped in the spicy gunpowder podi that’s been freshly ground with a hint of roasted sesame. The recipes for various podis, aka spice mixes, used to make “variety rice” also need sesame’s piquant touch.
This is why ‘sesame’ wouldn’t have been my response to grief in word association games until that year of loss.
Maybe this is also why til/sesame is seldom celebrated in romantic Indian folk traditions. Lyrical descriptions of yellow mustard fields, golden fistfuls of wheat kernels, or lush green paddy fields abound in songs and tales, yet sesame seeds or fields are rarely mentioned. Somewhere deep within our ancestral tribal memories, sesame seeds have been imbued with the darker emotions linked to the circle of life.
According to a spiritualist blogger, offering the ritual tarpana to all living beings that have passed on helps one comprehend the interconnectedness of life. Perhaps the black sesame specks represent the countless living beings, not just humans, that we are connected with and who help us live our lives.
This year, when I gather the grains of black sesame in the palm of my hand to offer oblations, I will express my gratitude to all those who have helped me be here. And with time, I hope to understand the lesson Gautama Buddha imparted — All living beings and feelings that arise will cease. Those who understand this achieve peace. Uppajjitva nirujjhanti, Tesam vupasamo sukho.
Glossary
- Laddu: Spherical sweet treat common in the Indian subcontinent
- Farsan: Range of savory Gujarati snacks
- Muthia: Steamed or fried snack from Gujarat made from gram or millet flour
- Khandvi: Spiced gram flour rolls from Gujarat
- Lohri/Sankranthi/Bihu: Winter harvest festival names in North, South, West and East India
- Kaapi: South Indian intonation for coffee
- Za’atar: Herb blend from the Middle East and the Levant
- Tahini and hummus: Tahini is a condiment made from toasted ground hulled sesame seeds and is a major component in Hummus, a sauce made with ground chickpeas
- Halvah: Versatile dessert made from a variety of ingredients, often including sesame seeds, especially in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, East Europe, etc.
- Vathal Kuzhambu: Spicy South Indian main dish with tamarind sauce
- Gojju: Thick, spicy, tangy, salty, sweet, bitter appetisers
- Podi: Dry, coarse spice powder popular in South India
References
- https://truestoryaward.org/story/504
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame
- https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/the-story-of-kisa-gotami/5984
- https://sacred-texts.com/journals/jras/1893-19.htm
Shobha Ramani loves stories and storytellers; she often spends hours narrating tales to herself. Some of these tales have been published on Kitaab and Setu. She works in strategy and marketing to pay bills. She loves to travel, as there are always new stories waiting to be discovered. Occasionally, she skeets on @svr72.bsky.social
Featured photo by Ivan Samkov (Pexels)
