Outlook Talks | Writer - Filmmaker Priyanka Mattoo in Conversation with Assistant Editor Vineetha Mokkil
Priyanka Mattoo is a Kashmiri writer and filmmaker who lives in Los Angeles, USA. She was born in Srinagar and when violence escalated in 1989 during her childhood, she and her family fled from Kashmir. Since then, she has had a peripatetic existence spanning 32 home addresses across India, the UK, Saudi Arabia, and the US over 40 years. In her recently published memoir, ‘Bird Milk and Mosquito Bones’ (Penguin Random House India), she traces the pain of displacement, the joy of family and community, the delights of Kashmiri cuisine, and the resilience needed to rebuild home over and over again. Mattoo spoke to Outlook’s Vineetha Mokkil about her memoir, a moving and insightful account of her journey. It shares with readers her reflections on home and belonging, and her abiding love for Kashmir, where she spent many joyful moments with her parents and her large extended family.
Reporter: Vineetha Mokkil
Editor: Ehraz Zaman
#Kashmir #Kashmiri #KashmiriWriter #Filmmaker #Srinagar #UK #USA #SaudiArabia #Memoir #PenguinHouse #KashmirElections #Kashmirelections2024 #JammuandKashmirElections
Reporter: Vineetha Mokkil
Editor: Ehraz Zaman
#Kashmir #Kashmiri #KashmiriWriter #Filmmaker #Srinagar #UK #USA #SaudiArabia #Memoir #PenguinHouse #KashmirElections #Kashmirelections2024 #JammuandKashmirElections
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00:00tricky place like Kashmir where things can be taken away from you at any time, there were strikes,
00:04there were wars, there was all this. What they can't take away from you is your education,
00:07they cannot take your mind. So I think there's also not just as a love of reading, but I think
00:11there was a good scope, it would start out as a coping mechanism. I think, you know, I think it
00:15was very much like, you know, a baby's blanket or something like that was it was a book. A book
00:20was a constant for me. Hello, and welcome to Outlook Talks. I'm Vinita and we have with us
00:36writer and filmmaker Priyanka Mattu, who has recently published her memoir,
00:42Bird, Milk and Mosquito Bones. Hi, Priyanka. Thank you for being with us today.
00:49Hi, Vinita. Thanks for having me. Priyanka was born in Srinagar. And in 1989, when she was a child,
00:56violence escalated in Kashmir. She and her family fled. She has lived in the UK,
01:04Saudi Arabia, and several parts of the US. She's had 32 home addresses in the last 40 years.
01:13Give or take. She is now based in LA, where she lives with her husband, who's from New York,
01:21and her two children. First of all, I would like to talk about the title of your book.
01:27It's a very intriguing title. And it sort of stays in your memory. And it's called Bird,
01:34Milk and Mosquito Bones. So tell us a little bit about the title.
01:39So the title, you know, I had written it when I had sold the book, which was on proposal,
01:44I had proposed it as a book of sort of lighthearted essays about food and family. And when I started
01:51writing it, it became a bit more layered than that. You know, it wasn't just these kind of
01:56short comic essays, it became really, you know, an investigation of memory and what home means
02:03and all these sort of deeper things that I wasn't ready to confront, perhaps when I sold it.
02:07And so by the time I was done with the book, I thought, well, I need a new title. The original
02:12title had been 16 Kitchens. Sounds like a fun book, right? So it wasn't a great title. And so
02:19I handed in the manuscript without a title. And I said, you know, give me a couple weeks to go
02:22figure it out. And I knew that the key to the book was in, I knew the key to the title was in
02:28the Kashmiri language, which I love very much. I'm very attached to it. I think it's very
02:32indicative of who we are as a people, I think, quite sharp, funny, you know, oblique.
02:39And so I really walked around for ages. I talked to my family. I looked through books of old
02:45colloquial phrases, proverbs. I wrote down scraps on pieces of paper. And then I came
02:51across this one phrase in Kashmiri, it's called,
02:54it's called bird milk and mosquito bones. Now we're a storytelling people. We are prone to
03:02exaggeration. And so bird milk and mosquito bones is a phrase used to refer to something that is so
03:10precious. Like if you're telling a story, you say, oh, this king had a palace and it was filled with
03:14bird milk and mosquito, even bird milk and mosquito. It's so rare and precious that the
03:19listener should question their existence. And it really stayed with me because it was a perfect
03:26symbol, I thought, of the house, of the house we lost in Kashmir, that we built carefully,
03:31that we oversaw, that we brought, you know, one dish, one sheet, one this, one curtain, one,
03:37you know, we carefully assembled this house. And when we lost it in 89, my memory of it is so
03:44rich and special and precious that I wonder, I wonder if it really existed
03:52as it does in my memory. And if it isn't what it was in my memory, is that important?
03:57Or is it really about the story that we take forward with us from those memories?
04:00That's something I wanted to ask you about. When you write a memoir, especially when you're writing
04:06about Kashmir, and what was what happened to you there? What happened to your family?
04:11How do you pick? One memory is a very unreliable narrator. It's fickle, as we all know. And how
04:18do you pick and choose from all the memories that you have, and put it together in a book?
04:24And how hard was it for you to finally put it down in words?
04:29I really just wrote down the memories that A had stuck with me. Because to me, that meant, okay,
04:34these mean something to me, if over 40 years, you know, 30 years, these are the ones that are
04:39the clearest, and the most significant in my mind. Let me figure out why. So I started with
04:45those. And I also started with the family stories that are told. Because to me, it's so interesting.
04:49I mean, we all have families that tell stories over and over and over again. So I started to
04:53investigate, okay, why are these the stories we tell? So it's a combination of those two things
04:57with my own memory. Why was it? Why do these stay with me? And why do they stay with our family?
05:01And I just wrote down this story. And I started investigating why, why, why, why, why, why these?
05:05Why did they impact us? How have they impacted us? And so that's how the book sort of started to
05:09take shape.
05:10There are very interesting family stories about a large cast of characters in your book, you know,
05:16your, your grandparents, aunts, cousins, the maternal grandmother's house, where you used to
05:24spend a lot of time as a child. And then you describe your family trips to Pahelgaon. I really
05:31like to visualize that, and how it was a very joyful place for you as a child, when you were
05:37in Kashmir, and then how things suddenly turned completely. So talk a little bit about your
05:44grandparents who were really a big influence in your life, especially your Nanaji.
05:52You know, domestic work was a distraction for girls from their school works. And he would
05:57really like chase away his daughters and his nieces and say, go into your, you know, do your
06:02reading, not don't stand around in the kitchen. So please tell us a little bit about your
06:08and the role they played in your life.
06:12Yeah, so in our maternal ancestral home is called Matamal, we call it Matamal. And that is our,
06:19you know, like my mother's side of the family, where, you know, it's a joint family household,
06:23it was three families all together. So my mother grew up with 11 cousins, it's a
06:27boisterous, wonderful home. And it was mostly women. Out of 11 kids, there were two boys.
06:33So it's nine girls. And it was very, the energy was very, very feminine. But it was run by my
06:39grandfather, who was a very masculine man. He was like an army guy, professor, big mustache,
06:44woman voice, you know, but he had, he was very close with his mother, who was quite a character.
06:49I don't think I even got into her, but she's redhead, she would sneak cigarettes, you know,
06:54she was a cool lady. So I think he really was quite close to her. And when she passed away,
06:59she said, make sure all these girls are educated, your sister, including his sisters, make sure that
07:03the most important thing is that they get educated, that is their way out, that their way forward,
07:07that's the way forward. And I think that stayed with him, the strength of an education, especially
07:12in a tricky place like Kashmir, where things can be taken away from you at any time, there were
07:16strikes, there were wars, there was all this, what they can't take away from you is your education,
07:20they cannot take your mind. And so that was repeated often. And it was with the girls as
07:25well. It was like, you are not here to be someone's servant, you are not here to be of utility to
07:28someone, you are here to have your own brain, and, you know, feed that brain and then move forward
07:34in the world with your own confidence and your own, your own personhood. So that was the from
07:40the head from the head of Zeus came like that directive. And it trickled down to all the women,
07:46including, you know, I was the first grand, he, my mother was the first child of the 11. And then
07:52I was the first grandchild. So it went straight direct lineage to me. So one line that stuck
07:59with me in your book was I've moved a lot. But I carry Kashmir everywhere I go. What does that mean?
08:06How do you do that? Yeah, yeah, I think that what I'm referring to there is, is, again,
08:13we're a community, not just us, not just pundits, but also Muslims, like it's Kashmiris as a whole,
08:19have had such plot heavy histories, that I think it is just a value system that is passed down.
08:29The thing that I just mentioned about the, the only permanent thing being our educations and
08:34our family bonds, because at any moment, I think we knew that other things could disappear. So
08:42everywhere I go, I carry the value system with us. And I think and a sense of humor, hopefully about
08:48it. And, and just sort of this is what we carry with us. And this is what we pass down. And of
08:54course, my affinity for the place, you know, I love the place and I loved our home. But it's really so
08:59much more about those intangibles. It's a culture that is, you know, we hope we try not to let anyone
09:06chip away at it. It's pretty concentrated. I also feel that, you know, you build a home in language,
09:14first of all, because you're a very good reader, like you was telling me that you're an avid reader,
09:19you're a writer, and the way you picked up languages along the way from your childhood.
09:24I remember that scene, that chapter in the novel, where you first go to nursery in the UK,
09:30and you don't speak a word of English. And they don't speak a word of Hindi, nobody understands
09:36Hindi and you come home crying so badly that you vomit, you're this little nursery kid.
09:42And you say no one speaks my language and I don't understand what they're saying. But soon enough,
09:48you say that the new language, English, and you became inseparable. And your love of language led
09:54you to literature. So did you find a home in literature? Who are some of your favorite writers?
10:03I started reading quite early. My mother says four, that sounds too early to me, but
10:09that's her story. And she's sticking with it. So we used to go to the library that was, you know,
10:14we didn't have a lot of money. And I loved books. I love she read to me a lot. She told me stories.
10:19And so that was a natural, I had a natural affinity for, for stories. So I spent all of my
10:24free time at the library spent all of my free time reading. And I loved it. I loved it, especially
10:29all the moving and stuff. It was sometimes easy. You take a world with you everywhere you go. So
10:33I always had a book of the secret garden or whatever with me in my bag. So wherever I went,
10:37I could plug into like, okay, now I'm in the secret garden doesn't matter if I'm in some
10:41strange apartment. In a strange land, I have my book. And that is the constant that I can take
10:47with me. So I think there's also not just as a love of reading, but I think there was a good
10:52it started out as a coping mechanism. I think, you know, I think it was very much like,
10:56you know, a baby's blanket or something like that was it was a book, a book was a constant for me.
11:02And music, I think, right? And music. Yeah, my connect with music. There's a very interesting
11:08episode where you listen to Ali said the Pakistani singer and writer Ali Seti singing
11:15Pasuri, the song which we all love. And then you find him like you contact him actually,
11:21like you find the real Ali Seti. And you guys bond one of these is a first born, like the son.
11:28And he was born in Lahore, you were born in Trinagar. And then how you want to tell us a
11:33little bit about that interaction. Yeah, I was at a writing residency in the woods in the middle of
11:40the woods in the middle of winter is the first time I'd ever been away from my kids for more
11:44than a few days and really give me the space to kind of explore what I might be interested in.
11:49And then I heard this song. It was right when it came out right when Pasuri came out.
11:54And I was like, what is this song? I mean, the same response we all had to that song,
11:58which is like, I feel like I've known this song forever. What is this? Why do I feel like I've
12:04known him forever? I was writing a book at the time. So I was like, I need to write about this
12:07song. Yeah, I need to write about this process. And then I found him through like, his sister
12:12and I had a friend and you know, it was like that, like, then I found his sister, then she
12:17introduced me. It was like a whole, there's a whole thing. But I got him on the phone and I
12:23talked to him and it really felt like we had known each other forever. The way he spoke about this
12:27song. I mean, I write in the book, his creation of the song, you know, and his also his background,
12:32his extremely traditional training and classical classical, you know, Hindustani music and all of
12:39this. And so, so it was fascinating to me how we built the song and how we ended up finding each
12:45other and really getting along. It was really, really beautiful how just loving, loving each
12:49other's art can kind of bring us together, especially in the internet age, the internet
12:53gets a lot of flack, you know, but how incredible that we were able to talk to each other and find
12:57each other through that. The other thing is food, Kashmiri food. You talk a lot about it.
13:03And you also talk about, there's one place where you learn to make Rogan Josh via Zoom.
13:10Your mother is in Michigan, and you were in LA, and then she's teaching you how to make
13:16the dish and then you finally succeed in making it. And now you want to feed it to your kids.
13:22Tell us a little bit about Kashmiri cuisine and your connection to it.
13:26Kashmiri cuisine, again, is another thing we took with us another constant, right?
13:31Wherever we were, we could recreate our dishes from home. And it's a cuisine that doesn't
13:35veer much. I mean, there's a couple of Kashmiri chefs now who are sort of
13:39experimenting with different presentations. But we don't, we have our classics,
13:44and we do our classics. And this is how it's supposed to taste. And don't mess with it.
13:50No experimentation, no nothing. This is pure comfort food. Like we've been through a lot,
13:55eat your Rogan Josh. It tastes like Rogan Josh has tasted for thousands of years, you know.
14:00So that was one other constant. Not just the book, but everywhere we moved. Okay,
14:06like let's get the kitchen set up. Let's make some, you know, let's make some hawk. Let's make
14:10this. Let's make that. This is the food you've always had. Here's another point of comfort,
14:14you know, and a touch point. So I am very attached to it. I always loved food. I was a big eater,
14:18and I was a chubby little girl. And I loved, I loved food. I loved being in the kitchen with my
14:23mother. I loved helping, you know. But this Rogan Josh was something she had always made me. I had
14:28never cooked it. Kashmiri food specifically was her domain. And if I wanted it, I would see her,
14:35or she would see me, or she would make some and send it home, you know, in a brick, a frozen brick,
14:40because we live across the country from each other. It's a four and a half hour flight,
14:44you know. So during the pandemic, I obviously didn't have access to it. And I really wanted
14:49Rogan Josh. I missed her. I missed the food. And I said, okay, now you have to tell me.
14:53I've tried a couple of recipes. It doesn't taste the same. And like any Indian mother,
14:58she doesn't have a recipe. She just says, I put in this much, it's red. And then it's like,
15:02no, no, no, no, I need you to measure, you know. And she was grumpy about it.
15:07And I think also sad that to lose the connection of like, oh, no, I'm the only source, you know.
15:11So we got on Zoom, and she walked me through it. And yeah, we figured we wrote it down,
15:17we figured out how to do it. And that was a big moment for us.
15:20You also say that it's quite misunderstood, even by Indians, that Kashmiri cuisine,
15:27why do you think that is?
15:30Because I think there's a little bit of a, what's the word? There was a bit,
15:36there's a bit of a fairy tale mystique around a lot of things that are Kashmiri. So on a menu,
15:42you might say, ah, like, the elusive Kashmiri Rogan Josh, there's a little bit of like sparkle
15:49around it. And it's never right. It's just never right. There's a reason we're so insular and
15:54protective of our food, of everything, you know, we are protective and insular people, you know,
15:59for a reason, we've been, we've been sort of, you know, invaded by gangs of marauders
16:05since time immemorial. So we protect everything, including recipes. So you see that on a menu,
16:11you're saying that's possibly Rogan Josh, it's not possible, unless it has this, this, this,
16:16tomatoes, no way, not Rogan Josh.
16:19So is this memoir a way of, you know, dispensing with the mystique? Like, are you trying to
16:26get closer?
16:27A little, a little bit, a little bit. And it wasn't just for me. I didn't write this book
16:33for me. I didn't want to write a book about myself. But I love my people. I love my Kashmiri
16:39people. I love my community. And I was just tired of everything, all the headlines being about
16:46stuff that had happened to us, this kind of like, victim mentality, which I understand why it exists.
16:53But the idea that every time I read about Kashmir, it was like, here's this horrible
16:56thing that happened to a bunch of Kashmiris this week. And I was like, you know, we have some joy
17:01too. We have some things to present other than pain and suffering and you know, all this,
17:06and we're sort of held at arm's length and pitied in a big way. And often, you know,
17:11I tell people I'm from Kashmir and their faces kind of fall like poor thing. And I'm like,
17:15I'm fine. I'm great. I've been very, very fortunate. Of course, some people have not
17:19been as fortunate. I understand what a privileged position I hold. But those people who are less
17:24privileged, who have been living in refugee camps, who have been under any kind of like
17:27hartal for like 20 years, they are not able to write this book. I was able to write this book
17:33because of like some fortune that I've had, right? So let me just represent one family and
17:38hopefully you can see a more complete picture of what one Kashmiri family looks like.
17:44That's another thing you call your upbringing danger adjacent. What does that mean? You always
17:52feel like you even like you're saying you're from a privileged background, you were able to move,
17:57you were able to go to school in Riyadh, and then study in the UK, the US, etc.
18:03What is this adjacency to danger that you feel?
18:07There were always things happening, but we were never in the middle of it. So even when we were,
18:12there's a bit of a timeline shifted. But when we were in all the Kashmir stuff happened when we
18:17were in Riyadh. So we were not in Kashmir. So we've just narrowly missed a lot of the actual,
18:24you know, guns, bombs, all that stuff, you know, but it was always just violence. Yeah.
18:31What I felt was like, again, our family was a unit, we were protected, my parents did everything
18:36they could to protect us physically, emotionally, and then just outside they were dangerous,
18:40you know, so like, anything could happen just outside if we had just been my God in the wrong
18:45place at the wrong time. I talked about that time we went to Jammu and the movie theater blew up.
18:52That stuff, that was the kind of one example, but that kind of stuff was happening all the time.
18:56That was your mother and you, you were living in Jammu at that time.
19:02We weren't, we were visiting Jammu at that time.
19:04And it was considered safer, obviously, compared to Kashmir, but a bomb went off
19:10in the movie theater. And you say this was supposed to be a safe place.
19:15So yeah, but we were supposed to be at that movie. We had bought tickets to that movie.
19:20And then it didn't work. You know, we went shopping, something ran long, and then the
19:24bomb went off. And we were supposed to be there. So those kinds of incidents were always happening.
19:30So while they didn't happen to me, knock on wood, there was always a sense when you're a child,
19:36and people around you are dying, that does infuse you, you know, it's sort of like, oh,
19:43an understanding of how the world can be.
19:46But does it also make it make you stronger in a certain sense,
19:50like your children, you call them very Californian, like they've grown up there,
19:54they consider that home. And they have obviously have had a much brighter, you know, perspective
20:01on life, the way they've lived. But what is the wisdom that you have gained from, you know,
20:06your danger adjacency?
20:09I think there's there's two ways to read it, right? Either, either it makes a child,
20:15it kind of makes a child a fatalist, like a little bit like,
20:18everything can disappear at any moment, there are good and bad things to feeling that way.
20:22One is, one is I have perhaps like an unusual kind of allergy to objects,
20:28places, I don't buy things, I don't have a lot of clothes, I don't have a lot of, you know,
20:32the house is the house, how we have a house, that's great. But I don't buy things, I have,
20:37I have a very hard time getting attached to any physical objects, I just don't.
20:42Because there is obviously in the back of my head some idea that, oh, what's the point,
20:46they can just be taken away, or they can disappear, things happen.
20:50But on the other hand, I think it makes me much more probably grateful,
20:54and mindful of like every moment and how precious it is.
20:58Which again, can swing into anxiety, I think, because, you know, it took me a long time once
21:03I had kids to kind of hug them and be able to let go of them, even at school, I'd be like,
21:07oh, God, what if something happens? Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. So it takes a while to let go of
21:11that alarm bell in my brain. And I still have it sometimes. So, so that's, you know, the anxiety
21:19that comes, I think, with a with a sort of a lifetime of that takes a while to rewire. But I
21:25think I am very, very, very grateful for every moment we can spend together for everything that
21:28I have the fact that I have like a stable family life, a stable, stable profession, you know,
21:35a stable marriage, like all these things I'm so, so grateful for, because I know how lucky I am,
21:42I know how rare it is for all of these things to fall into place that I should be here.
21:47It feels like a wild stroke of luck.
21:52And what is home like in your head when you think of home? What is home? Or is it multiple places?
21:58Or is it just memories like you know, that at one point, I think you say, a web of memories
22:04suspended in time. So for you, if you were to pinpoint a place, what is home? Is it England?
22:13Is it the Kashmir, where you think, you know, you have so many memories of?
22:18It's hard to say where you are right now. I thought that when I finished the book,
22:24I would have some sort of answer. And the answer that I came to in the book is that I don't know
22:30that there ever will be one place that's home for me. Because it was so fractured growing up,
22:36but I am very attached to a number of places. At the same time, I don't feel roots in any one place
22:42like my kids feel here. So I think my job now, as I see it, is to make sure that they feel connected
22:50to this place so that they know for them what home feels like. Even if it's not home for me,
22:57it's too late for me. You know, like, I'm just going to feel I think forever sort of comfortable
23:03and uncomfortable wherever I am. But I think my kids, you know, my kids a few more years here,
23:09and they'll I think don't really feel like it's, I think they're always gonna feel like
23:13What do you tell them about Kashmir? You talk to them about?
23:17Well, my daughter's quite small, so she doesn't understand any of it. My son is almost 11. And
23:22he's read the book. And he's seen he's read the book, he's seen photos, he understands,
23:27he understands all of it. So we talked quite a bit about that. He'd like to see it someday.
23:32And he hasn't been there? No, not yet. I'm not ready.
23:42And also making friends, you don't talk about, you know, someone asked you what instrument do
23:47you play? What is this gift? And how do you do it? I don't know if it was a gift or a skill
24:00developed over time. You know, being the new kid in so many places, I spent a lot of time sitting
24:06and observing human behavior. Trying to understand it, codify it, tap into it, understand how I can
24:13mirror people and connect with a wide variety of people across the globe, different ages,
24:20different backgrounds, all of that. So now it's an instinct. It was something that I had to do
24:25to learn to do as a young person. And now I don't even think about it. It is something though,
24:32I do reach out. My kids are very friendly as well. And I hope that I had something to do with that.
24:38Because not everyone in Los Angeles walks around talking to strangers, but I do.
24:43Because I'm like, that's life. That's what that's what life's all about is an interaction with
24:48someone, a shared moment of humanity. You know, I think in too many of these cities, you just walk
24:52around in your little bubble and like live your little life. But what's the point if you're not
24:57connecting with people? And so yeah, it sounds much more. It sounds much more malevolent when
25:05I play people like an instrument. But I do understand people. And that's because I'm
25:10curious about people. And I have a lot of data points.
25:16Okay, thank you so much for talking to us. And good luck for your new book.