It was the early monsoon of June 2008, and it wouldn’t stop raining even for a second. I walk into the house dragging my half-drenched frock which got wet while I was playing in the rain ignoring my parent's orders to not get wet outside. A couple of minutes later I am drowned in non-stop sneezes which kept my nose running, listening to all these sneezes my mom walks in to see what was going on, and the moment she sees me all drenched her eyebrows narrowed -and I know she’s pissed. After another non-stop scoldings for being an ignorant stubborn kid, she dries me up and change into a fresh set of warm clothes. At the same time, she has a pot of soup cooking on the stove to which she adds half a teaspoon of pepper which immediately enhances the soup. A small amount of pepper was what it took to make my cold much better in that instant of time. Cut to college, when I was moving out and had to make my own arrangements for food the first thing she packed for me is the “masala dabba” which is a mandatory Indian household item like a specturm of all the spices, mainly pepper. This pepper was my ultimate savior when even though i did not know all the cooking instructions I never forget to include salt and a good amount of pepper and here you go I had mastered adulting already .
How did the desi spice astonish everyone? Being very
intrigued by pepper I decided to trace its path to make out some interesting
facts and to my surprise, different sources told different tales. One person
said when Christopher Columbus set out in 1492 in pursuit of spices and India
he set off from Spain in search of India, but instead, he discovered America.
He believed he had discovered India. The natives consumed a hot pepper that
tasted spicy and led him to believe it was an Indian spice. So he gave it the
name "pepper." Because of this, pepper is what Americans refer to as
capsicum. People continue to be perplexed by the word "pepper"
because a red hot pepper is actually capsicum, and the pepper that grows on
this vine is a red hot black pepper.
There’s also another interesting story told about pepper
where the peppercorns were placed inside Ramses the Great's nostrils when he
was mummified (1303–1213 BC) and other artifacts related to the historic commerce
of pepper from India to Egypt have been discovered.
Then the Romans came by towards the southern part of India
and saw the potential of trade and more future endeavors pepper could bring.
The Romans had a booming trade in spices, including pepper, by the year 40 AD.
Roman sea traders transported pepper, cinnamon, and incense to their important
commercial center in Alexandria in July when they sailed from the southwest
coast of India on the monsoon winds. The traders rode them back in the fall
when the powerful monsoon winds shifted.
Pepper also acted as a medium of exchange where they had to
trade it instead of gold. When Rome was invaded in 410 AD, the Romans paid
"three thousand pounds of pepper" in addition to gold, silver, silk, and
hides to end the Visogoths' siege and stop the city from being pillaged.
However, talks quickly stalled out once more, and the siege was restarted. The
Eternal City was eventually taken over.
Others started assuming control of the spice trade once
Rome's imperial might collapsed. Arabs formed themselves into a powerful force
in the commerce of pepper under the unifying influence of Islam and that was how
the Arabs took over the international trade of pepper. By the Middle Ages,
numerous other seafaring groups had joined the spice trade, proving that Arab
traders were not the only ones on the sea. Genoa had developed into a
significant commercial hub by the 14th century, with pepper serving as its main
export. Over 40% of the value of everything that arrived in Genoa from
Alexandria between 1367 and 1371 came from the pepper.
Then it went around Venice, Portugal, and other parts of
Europe and was soon a highly dominating spice worldwide. Vietnam is now the
world's largest producer of peppers. Between 130,000 and 135,000 tonnes of
pepper, valued at over $900,000,000, were shipped in 2013.
As India is among one of the largest pepper producing
countries the quality and quantity of yield of the pepper has improved over the
year .With better advancement in the agricultural technology of pepper production
, the ways to produce good quality pepper has evolved.Over the years we can
very evidently look at the upward rising trend of the yield of pepper but it
also shows a non negligible drop during the year 2011-2012 which was due to the
uneven downpour of rains ,so the expected production was less.
If you’re someone from Karnataka and planning a trip to
Coorg don’t forget to stop by some pepper plantation where they also walk you
through the whole process of how the green unripe berries are plucked from the
tree, boiled in water, and then later sundried till it turns black and sent
around. Pepper has always been close by us binding us with the homely of how we
grew up with it and it is always present on the table even at the fanciest
restaurants you go to
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