O is for ... Own ... n ... Ordinary

 

Last night I had fried okra for dinner and thought right, I have my O post. But most of my folks would have a different opinion. Because they call it ladies’ fingers in India, very evocative and all that, but the thing is, I grew up in places where it was called okra or okro, neat and on-point. And in the case of okro, nicely symmetrical vowel sounds. So I’m more comfortable with the shorter name. Whatever name you call it – okra has a long, fascinating and somewhat disturbing history behind it. 

The origins of okra are in Africa, surmised to be in the areas now in modern day Ethiopia and Sudan, then spreading from there to the north and west. The Ancient Egyptians grew okra by 1200 BCE. There are murals in Egypt which depict the vegetable. Okra went east with the migrations of the Bantu tribes and grew along the major river valleys in India and China by 2000 BCE. The uses/benefits of okra are known to Ayurveda, an ancient Indian system of medicine that arose in the 1st millennium BCE. However, we do not have any hard evidence of okra being eaten in the Indus Valley. Specific mention of an okra recipe is made in the 12th century, a dish being served to Someshwara III, a Chalukya emperor who ruled in southern India in 1126-38. The next bit of documented evidence comes from  a Spanish Moor who visited Egypt in 1216. He recorded that okra was combined with meal to reduce the mucilage. 

Okra went west with the slave trade. African slaves brought it to the Americas with them, cultivated and cooked it as a reminder and a legacy of their lost homelands. Leah Penniman, the food justice activist, describes her ancestors collecting and braiding seeds into their own and their children's hair as a bulwark against an uncertain future, so they could carry an inheritance of tilling into an unknown land. Maybe okra too came to the New World this way, crossed the Atlantic and reached southern USA in the 1500s. 

Okra was cultivated in the slave quarters in personal gardens by people from many different regions/communities of Africa. They cooked it up in equally varied recipes, in soups and stews, fried and seared. The seeds were roasted, ground and used as a coffee substitute. It became a mainstay for the enslaved workers, especially under the harsh conditions of forcible food withholding by slave owners. And because okra is a fast growing, undemanding, robust plant, it established itself across the south where the climate was conducive. But cuisines don't remain static, they evolve and assimilate influences and ingredients - give rise to newer dishes. So okra too was added to local foods to create/innovate newer recipes and gradually became an integral part of the southern American cuisine.

An ordinary vegetable with an extraordinary, fascinating history. 

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