For the longest time in Mum and Amma’s kitchen, I knew the two popular dried chillies of Mangalorean cooking simply as Kudya Munchi, the short chilli, and Udda Munchi, the long one. That was how they lived in my memory, named in the home kitchen language rather than the market language.
Only later, after asking a few curious questions, did I learn their real names. The short Kudya Munchi pronounced as Koodhya Moonchi is the Gundu or Mundu chilli, and the long Udda Munchi pronounced as Oodha Moonchi is the Byadagi. Yet in our home, the ingredient list was never spoken that way. It was always ‘naal (four) kudya munchi bokka aaji (six) udda munchi’.
Those little conversations from their kitchen still stay with me. When sharing recipes on my website and social media, there is always a quiet temptation to name them just the way they were said at home.
Because sometimes life is like that too. The world may give things formal names and tidy explanations, but the meanings that stay with us are the ones learned quietly at home.