Falooda
Graphic by Amy Luo; photo by Alisha Singh.
This summer, I decided to make falooda. The dessert is sweet and fragrant, and refreshing on a hot summer’s day. After seeing a video of Indian street vendors selling the drink, I was sold. I had never tasted falooda or talked about it with anyone, but none of that mattered. I was going to make it for myself.
As a daughter of parents that immigrated to the U.S. as children, I grew up distanced from my culture in a way none of my friends have. I do not speak an Indian language at home, nor have I learned Indian classical singing or dancing. I seldom attended pujas and Indian gatherings, and have never been to India. My friends did all of these things.
I have long held a fascination for my culture. I desire to be on the inside instead of the outside, and have the familiarity with it that someone who has grown up in it has. This internal calling is apparent in the way I spend my free time. My guilty pleasure is Bollywood, and I listen almost exclusively to Indian music. I go to pujas, festivals, and celebrations whenever my friends invite me, and barrage them with questions to learn more. I have self-studied Hindi over a course of ten years, taken Hindi college courses, and joined a Bollywood fusion dance team. As someone who has not had my culture dumped on them, I brought my culture to me. My latest endeavor was to tackle the Indian art of cooking: I was going to make falooda.
I set about trying to gather the ingredients: rose syrup, vermicelli, strawberry jello, condensed milk, sabja seeds, ice cream, almonds, and pistachios. It took me a week and multiple grocery trips to obtain all items. I found falooda mixes at the Indian store, but I was determined to make the dish from scratch – I was on a journey of experimenting with flavors I had never tasted.
Preparing the dish was fun. I called my Caucasian friend over to join me. We prepared the strawberry jello, then let it chill in the fridge overnight. The next morning, I boiled the condensed milk and sweetened it with sugar. I took out glasses and drizzled rose syrup along the rim, which I let drip down like a crown as I set the glasses in the fridge to chill. I boiled the seviya and soaked the sabja seeds until they became fluffy. Finally, I made a nut topping of almond and pistachio pieces I ground with a mortar and pestle.
When all cooking was finished, my friend and I assembled the glasses. We prepped each glass with a couple teaspoons of rose syrup, jello, sabja seeds, and seviya; we then filled the glasses with sweetened milk and stirred the mixture until it was a rose pink, then topped off each glass with french vanilla ice cream, crushed almonds, and pistachios. The result looked ravishing, and I posted a glamor shot of it to my Instagram story.
Finally, the exciting part arrived: the tasting.
My parents loved it. ‘It tastes like a flower!’ they praised – and it was true. The dessert was light and fragrant, and made creamy by the ice cream. It tasted like a rose.
My friend disliked it. She thought I was romanticizing it when I called it delicious. This was a good learning experience – rose is a very Indo-Persian flavor, and is unfamiliar to the American palette. Perhaps it would have been prudent to introduce her first to other desserts more suitable to the American taste.
What I did not expect was my Indian roommate’s comment. She responded to my story with the message ‘bro falooda? highkey the worst dessert, how can I be friends with you.’ I knew she was teasing, but a wave of annoyance flashed through me. I don’t think my roommate recognizes the privilege of having an opinion on falooda, or even knowing what it is. I remember other times friends accidentally made me feel ignorant of my culture, and this kind of teasing always rubbed me the wrong way.
My roommate’s quip also touched on a worry that occasionally passes through my mind: as someone who is self-exploring Indian culture, I feel I appropriate my culture when I partake in it. Thanks to the people that wear bindis to Coachella, appropriate Hinduism and call it witchcraft, and tag #sarinotsari when wearing their friend’s loaned lehenga, I have grown to be hyper aware of the ‘wrong’ way to participate in culture. When I try something new, I often wonder if I am ‘doing it wrong’ or accidentally being disrespectful.
As I continue on this journey, I am slowly learning to reframe my mindset. I have a claim to my culture. I engage in it with genuine respect and interest, and that is all anyone can ask for. Moreover, the beauty about culture is that there is no correct way to ‘do’ it. Culture is a living, evolving artifact; it is a shared inheritance that everyone participates in, conceptualizes, and enjoys differently. To my Caucasian friend, I am an insider to Indian culture; to my roommate, I am new to many things. There will always be someone for whom you are a ‘newcomer’, and someone else who admires your knowledge and passion for your heritage. Truly, no opinion matters, except that which grows you and supports you.
If you have the interest, reclaim your culture. Connect with your heritage. Fumble along, discover, and try things out.
Make that falooda.