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| I have been living on my #eatbetter interpretation of Kolkata’s jhal muri as an evening snack these days. Does it taste the same as in Kolkata? I doubt it. |
I recently received a few direct messages from folks saying that they loved the Bengali and Calcutta food stories that I write. That these make them nostalgic. In one case, someone even wrote in saying how her mother, a Bengali, was thrilled to come across my page.
I have learnt not to refer to mothers of my social media friends/ readers as ‘aunty’. Specially when some of the ladies politely, but firmly, pointed out that I was elder than them! The realities of being a writer and social media content creator in ones very late forties, but this essay is not about that.
The thing is that this appreciation of the ‘Bengali soul’ in my work baffled me. Let me explain why.
I have always felt a bit diffident about my ‘Bengaliness’. Am I really a khaati (pure) Bangali, I wondered.
I was raised by my mum and my maternal grandparents and family after my dad passed away. They were Delhi Bengalis. My mother had moved abroad when she got married. Her first experience of living in Calcutta coincided with mine and it was a culture shock for both of us.
We are a family of migrants. My father was born in Barisal and my mum in Dhaka in what is modern day Bangladesh. My younger brother and his wife are the only ones in our family who were born in Calcutta. My niece was born in Gurugram. My wife is a Bombay girl. The ‘Kolkata Bengali’ moorings of our family are not very deep.
I lived abroad till I was 8. In relatively small towns, Canterbury and Liverpool in the UK and Rasht in Iran, where there was very little Indian presence in the mid 70s. My parents spoke to me in English after I was born so that I would not get confused while learning to speak. I picked Farsi faster than my parents when we moved to Iran. Forgot it once we moved to Calcutta a year later. It was finally time for me to learn my mother tongue, Bengali, and along with it Hindi too. As a third language in school. I was confused and would mix up the two. Somewhere down the I dropped my British accent. Now don’t do a Professor Higgins on me and ask me to geotag the said British accent!
The bulk of my friends in Calcutta were Bengali. Some of the closest of them had lived elsewhere earlier, as I had. We had been exposed to multiple cultures before we moved to Kolkata and this shaped our world view.
We spoke in Bengali. Crushed in Bengali. Swore in Bengali. Joked in Bengali. My comfort with the language grew as the years passed by. I am talking of spoken Bengali. Reading and writing did not come to me that easily.
Talking in our mother tongue was frowned upon In the ICSE board Protestant run English medium schools that I went to. Once we were even fined for it. Imagine that happening in today’s woke times.
Having studied in ‘English medium’ schools, the books, newspapers and magazines that I read, the TV shows and movies that I watched, were all English. Hindi crept in thanks to Doordarshan serials and 80s Bollywood flicks. The music I listened to was largely 80s pop and 70s rock. Largely English apart from the odd Nazia and Zoheb Hassan album. I become a fan of Hindi film songs when I was in senior school but in our house, as in many other Bengali middle class houses, Hindi films were frowned upon and watching them were a forbidden pleasure.
Bangla (the language) did not figure prominently in the ‘immersive culture’ that I grew up in.
I struggled in two subjects all through school.
Math. Who doesn’t?
Bangla (as a second language). ‘Shame on you’?!
College was a relief. I studied Sociology Hons at Presidency College (now University) followed by Business School. Bengali did not feature in the curricula here.
I moved to Mumbai and worked in market research and advertising agencies where the medium of communication was English unlike in Delhi where I was fazed by Indian clients in MNCs speaking in Hindi in meetings!
I wrote in English when I began blogging 14 years back because that’s what comes naturally to me.
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| I talk to my sons in Bangla. Their father tongue. |
It would be fair to say that by now, 25 years after I left Calcutta and moved to Bombay (as the cities were called in ’97), I think and dream in English. Be it feelings of euphoria or moments of self doubt, they all play out in my head in English. That’s the truth. Make what you want out of it.
These days I only get to speak Bengali during my daily calls to my mother. In most cases, she speaks and I listen! And to my didu when I get through her. Apart from that, when I meet my few friends who are Bengali in Mumbai. This could be once in three months or even more.
I speak to our cats in Bangla when alone. To us, they are our sons. You will not get this till you have pets. I did not. Maybe this tells you what Bengali means to me. Perhaps I am not entirely a lost cause.
I have never felt confident about using Bengali in a ‘work’ context. Felt self-conscious in the rare occasions that I had to. Nervous that it will come out wrong and that I will be a subject of mirth. Which is indeed the case when I speak in Hindi, but that’s not my mother tongue. There it could considered endearing but in this case, criminal.
I’d been thinking about podcasting in Hindi recently. Gets you more numbers they say.
‘Someone needs to communicate to the rest of the world. What will happen if everyone speaks in Hindi!!!,’ I argued with myself.
Then I saw the recent debate about whether Hindi is our national language or not.
We’d been told a lie while growing up it seems! It apparently isn’t! We do not have a single national language we learnt. Le halwa, as one would retort in Bengali back in the day. WTF.
Then I did a short podcast in Bangla about something our cook had cooked that day. It was completely a spur of the moment thing.
People loved it! Or so the DMs indicated.
‘Your Bangla is so mishti.’
‘Felt so good to listen to Bangla while so far away from home.”
Much to my surprise, given my past misgivings, I enjoyed recording the podcast in Bangla.
Unlike what I’d thought would happen, I spoke fluently, not bothering when I did a ‘Rajiv Gandhi’ and slipped into English.
I cracked jokes in Bengali. Was self deprecating.
Probably the most relaxed I’ve even been while podcasting.
I was myself.
This time in my mother tongue!
This made me start a series called #FinelyChoppedBangla and I am loving it. Who would have thought??!!
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| Kaatla kaalia and machher mudo diye lau. Made by our Maharashtrian cook as taught by me. I had learnt how to make these from the internet after age and distance from home made me appreciate these and many other Bangla dishes. |
Coming back to where I had started this story, I had been teased and trolled over the years for using turmeric in alu posto, for not making kosha mangsho with mustard oil and for making it in the pressure cooker, for pairing Bengali dishes with basmati rice and not Gobindo Bhog, etc etc
I was not too fond of Bengali food while growing up. Nor was my mother’s kitchen very ‘Bengali’ given her myriad life experiences. She was a college professor, raising two sons by herself in a city that was new to her. Grinding masalas from scratch on a shil nora was not her first priority. The pressure cooker was her trusted friend.
I am married to a Parsi and we live in Mumbai. She loves Bengali food after she got acquainted to it through me. I am a self taught cook. I learnt to cook Bengali dishes and later taught our cooks to do so. My wife says that their cooking is never the same as my cooking. I know it is not just love speaking, I do cook well. How ‘authentic’ is my Bengali cooking, or my knowledge of it, is anybody’s guess. And it is only a portion of what eat. Mustard oil does not run in my veins.
Given my background, who am I to write about Bengali food? Or talk about it, as I said to my friend Roxanne Bamboat who insisted that I speak about Bengali food in her podcast, Not Just Butter Chicken. I was worried of not doing justice to our clan. Of being called out as a fake.
Roxanne was adamant and we did record the episode. I have not had the courage to listen to it yet. What if I had embarrassed myself?
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| My 6 year old niece, who was born in Gurugram, communicates in English with most |
Let me tell you about what sparked off the train of thought behind this post.
It was my father’s death anniversary earlier this month. I wrote about how he happily mixed with locals wherever he went. Of how I think I have inherited that trait.
I wrote about how despite being in England and then Iran, he did not forget his Bengali roots. He sang songs by Hemanta. Wore dhuti panjabi on festive occasions. Taught my mother how to cook Bengali food. Would sit beside Brahmin doctor friends during Durga Puja in London, friends who would stand in as the priests thanks to their caste but did not know the mantras, and would recite the prayers as he had learnt to from his mum.
And here I am. I don’t know how to wear a dhuti. Don’t know the names of the current Bengali movie stars or movies or playback singers, TV shows or footballers. Don’t know which are the five spices that go into panch phoron unless I Google it and am happy to buy ready mixes of the same. While I know how to make shorshe jhol, I happily use kasundi as the flavour base these days which is not kosher.
Who am I to be seen as a representative of Bengali food and culture?
And then I thought, hey don’t be so hard on yourself. Dad had grown up steeped in Bengali culture. I had not.
Then a reader and a fellow ‘probashi’ (expat) Bengali wrote in saying that there’s a certain ‘Bangaliyana’ (Bengaliness) which is ephemeral and cannot be described in black and white, but exists in us Bengalis regardless of where we go. This expresses itself in a form unique to us and our socio-cultural milieu and this is which makes us shola aana Bangali (100 per cent Bengali).
Hmph, you Bengalis and your love for big words, K would say if she was to ever read this.
It struck me that while I’ve chased an elusive ideal of an ‘authentic’ Kolkata Bangali, the truth is that a Bowbajar Bangali in Kolkata would be different from a Bansdroni one, a Ballygunge one, or a Bandra one for that matter.
As would the Kolkata Bengali be different from that in Bankura, Burdhaman or Birbhum.
And I am not even crossing the border to East Bengal (modern Bangladesh), where my ancestors hail from.
My 6 year old niece, who was born in Gurugram and lives there, converses in English with her parents and friends. Bengali is used only when taking to her maternal grandparents. My brother tells me that this is true of her other friends of the same age, whose parents are Bengali, and who live in Gurgaon.
Perhaps I was not as much of an outlier or a freak as I had thought myself to be.
Net, net, FinelyChopped will continue in English as its core language, while nurturing its child, FinelyChopped Bangla.
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| Bangaliyana |
Ps: I was going to write a short Insta post about how I find joy these days in kaatla maacher jhol bhaat meals which I spurned as a kid. And in the aam doi kola cheere which I used to tease my mom for having when I was a kid.
But then, I am Bengali. How can I express myself in just 300 words?
Appendix:
1. Talking to Roxanne Bamboat on Bengali food
