TUESDAY, MAY 14, 2024
Frazer Andrade
MAPUSA: Merlin Juliana Simon D’Souza, a 32-year-old teacher from Ahmedabad, has found a unique way to share her love for pickles with her fellow Goans. Merlin was born and raised in Ahmedabad, where she teaches at St Xavier’s Higher Secondary School. Her parents, Simon Marcos D’Souza and Cecilia Marcos D’Souza, have been living in Ahmedabad for nearly forty years. Merlin enjoys creating resin art, alcohol-based ink art, and fluid art in her free time- but pickling seasonal fruits and vegetables is her favourite passion project.
“Since I was born in a place blessed with an abundance of mangoes, making pickles at home has always been a ritual where neighbours and friends would come to assist. We would prepare about 20 kg of pickles for home consumption, which would last for over a year,” says Merlin. “Though we made it only for home consumption, some friends and neighbours would sometimes make small purchases from us,” she adds.
Merlin was inspired to take making pickles to a higher level during her visits to the Ahmadabad market, filled with countless shades of yellow and green. In addition to the market being an inspiration, she and her two sisters have always been encouraged by their father to be independent women in society.
“There was once an incident when someone actually called up my dad and said, ‘Your grandmother sold gram, and now your daughter is out selling pickles,’” recalls Merlin. Despite facing taunts and discouragement from neighbours and friends, their determination to do something different kept them going. On the occasion of the feast of Nossa Senhora dos Milagres at the Igreja de São Jerônimo, celebrated in Mapusa on April 15, the sister duo set up a stall to gauge how Goans respond to her pickles.
“It was our very first time setting up a stall like this, and we were quite surprised by the response we received,” said Merlin. “My sister, Melita, who resides in Goa, helped me with all the formalities required to set up this stall,” she added. The different products the duo had in stock included pickles such as mango, mixed vegetable, sweet lime, Channa-Methi, and chilli, along with papads and khakhra of various flavours, including one with an Italian twist, which became a major attraction for people. “Khakhra makes a healthy substitute for junk foods like chips,” says Merlin. “Considering the fact that it is wheat-based, parents should opt for it,” she adds. She would open her stall early in the morning at 8.30 am and close by 11.30 pm.
“Making all these foodstuffs is a slow and time-consuming process. I worked on it only in the second half of the day when I returned from work. I never faced any hardship preparing all of this; on the contrary, the whole process actually relieves me of my day’s stress,” says D’Souza. The only preservative she has been using in her pickles is groundnut oil.
“It indeed gives me immense joy, as I was successfully able to travel with the tastes from Ahmedabad to my primary home, which is Goa, offering my dear fellow Goans a taste slightly different, through the hands of someone of the soil, physically distant from the State for a while.”
