There comes a time in a man’s life where his discourse is full of comments which start with, ‘in our time…’.
I am not sure about the age at which this starts. Is it when one is in one’s 39a? 40s? 50s? 60s? 70s? Though, if one looks at people talking of 18, 20, 25 as a ‘milestone’ birthday on social media, I wonder if this starts earlier. One could argue that this behaviour is more a function of psychographics than demographics. ‘Age is just a number,’ as the saying goes.
I am not 50 yet. I do write about things that happened ‘back in the day’ quite often. That’s because as a writer, I like to indulge in nostalgia. Yet I would like to think that I do not walk with my head turned backward. Stories from the present fascinate me too. Is this self contradictory? Possibly not. The human mind is not a uniform monolith. There’s texture to it, contrast and dialectics
The point of all this philosophical faff is that I had a thought of a simple story sparked off by my lunch of ruti and deemer jhol at home. Bengali style egg curry and roti. Which I served myself on a sectioned plate in between work. I clicked a photograph of the thali after I placed it on the day’s newspaper (food styling for Insta) before I took out a table mat to eat on. I added dahi to my plate. Heated up a couple of Godrej Yummiez chicken frozen galautis. The ‘rotis’ were jowar bhakris made by our morning cook #kaytiecooks. She made the egg curry too. The spices and recipe for which I gave her when she came to work. The curry turned to be devoid of salt and I had to adjust it while reheating it. As I had for the sambar yesterday. I had given her a pep talk this morning about the lack of salt in the sambar. To no effect apparently.
The plate reminded me of the office lunches at my first job which was in a market research agency called IMRB in Calcutta. I joined it from campus in 1997 after my MBA.
Back in the day first jobbers did not use cabs to go to work or order in food from outside at lunch time as often as kids these days seem to. This is the era of consumerism. Us Gen Y folks were raised by parents who were Boomers and who had a thrift based outlook to spends having seen their parents struggle in post independence India. Today’s Gen Z folks have been raised by Gen Y parents who reaped the material benefits of working in post liberalisation India. They have been raised in far more lavish and liberal way than we had been. Which makes their outlook towards spends more relaxed than ours. Perhaps the purchasing power of current salaries is higher too. The emergence of app based cabs and restaurants ordering apps with their discounts would have helped. The geographical spread of business districts in our cities has increased. Many of the new CBDs are not serviced by public transport and do not have affordable work lunch options which necessitate this behaviour. So don’t go ‘ok boomer’ on me kids. ‘Uncle please!’ Perhaps. Not boomer. I am Gen Y. We are cool.
We valued our first incomes highly. Would take buses and autos and the metro (in Kolkata) and local trains (in Mumbai) to work. And at lunch hour would eat from the office canteen. Unlike the newer IMRB office in Kolkata, our canteen was not really a canteen. We sat at our desk, plates kept on old newspapers and ate. There was no separate cafeteria space to eat in.
The canteen food, served by a gentleman whom we called Mesho (who has passed away unfortunately) consisted of home food-like Bengali dishes. It was cheaper than going out to eat. Vegetarian dishes would be common for every meal.. Roti, rice, dal and a vegetable dish. The add ons would be fish curry on some days, chicken on others and the ubiquitous egg curry which appeared most often.
I was not much of a fish eater and the idea of having fish at work did not appeal to me. I loved (and still love) murgir jhol (chicken curry). It was the most expensive of the lot though. I would skip the chicken curry. My conscience did not allow me to spend so much on myself. I would go for the vegetarian plate everyday. And the egg curry whenever it was there. Eggs feature a lot in Bengali office para (business district) food. As deem pauruti. Savoury French toast. Toast mamlet. Well done masala omelettes cooked in mustard oil. As egg chow. Stir fried noodles cooked with black, red and green sauces. Imitation soya, tomato and chilli sauce. Egg roll, which sell a lot more in comparison to the more famous kathi kebab rolls. Kosha deem with porotha or kochuri. Boiled eggs in a thick onion based gravy base. Deemer jhol bhaat. Runny egg curry with rice. Egg biryani (with alu). Interestingly, in both the kosha deem and deemer jhol or dalna (the latter being a richer version of jhol), the egg is boiled first, then de~shelled, smeared with salt chilli turmeric powder, scored and fried and then added to the onion based masala paste of the gravy.
I said ‘interestingly,’ for when I moved to Mumbai after a few months of working in Kolkata I found out the canteen egg curry come in a coconut based curry with boiled a egg slipped in at the end, unsullied. Not scored, nor fried first. It did not absorb the flavours of the curry. The taste of the curry showed no influence of the egg. The two cohabited on the plate and yet lived in two very different worlds. A bit like Lady Di and Prince Charles.
And unlike mesho in IMRB Kolkata, who served the food in china/ ceramic crockery, bowl balanced on a plate; the canteen food in Mumbai was served in sectioned stainless steel plates. Brought to the office area in a stack by the canteen boys. Unlike in Kolkata where we went to the pantry, in a much smaller office, and collected our plate once mesho prepped it. I would place my plate on a newspaper and eat. While reading the previous days Telegraph from Kolkata. My heart still left behind in Kolkata.
From that point on, I knew that my life would not be the same again. I realised that I could live in my adopted home of Mumbai without accepting it as my hometown. Or I could choose to live in the present.
I chose the latter. Luckily.
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Driving Miss Kaytie |