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Chicken sandwiche |
I took a bite of the chicken sandwich that I made this morning and the hit of salted butter brought back a gush of memories.
After all luchi chholar dal, tinkona porotha and ghoogni, radha bollobi alur dom, are not what a ‘Bengali mom cooked breakfast’ means to me. It is the chicken sandwich that talks to me.
My grandparents wanted their eldest daughter to focus on her studies while growing up so that she could be independent in life.
Which meant that even though my didu (gran) makes fabulous luchi and porothas, my mom can’t.
Nor can I.
My dad passed away when my bother and I were very young and my grandparents’ thinking came of use as my mum brought us up as a single parent and college professor. A job which involved a near four hour commute everyday on rickety buses, and from which she retired from 14 years back as she reminded me during our phone call yesterday.
She would make us chicken sandwiches though despite her crushing schedule. For tiffin in school. For train journeys to visit my aunt in Delhi. School picnics at the chiriyakhana (zoo) or the Victoria Memorial or Lily Pool in Calcutta.
Shredded boiled chicken, salt, pepper, buttered white bread.
She would cut off the crust and shape the sandwiches into triangles to give that that British touch for her Canterbury born son.