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September 2021. The first time that an uttapam was made in our house |
This story begins with a tiffin box full of uttapams at a school ground in Calcutta thirty years back.
The days after my ICSE results had come out were fraught with anxiety. I had got decent enough marks to get into science but my school, AGCS Tollygunge, didn’t have a plus two section then. Our ‘main school’ at Park Street didn’t guarantee admission. Some of the other ISC schools had quotas (inter Christian sect politics, police, ‘party’ etc) and the scene seemed bleak. Not that I loved science but pursuing it m was the done thing to do then. Specially for hours.
We were told at an iconic heritage school that they weren’t taking students from ours and then got the news from a classmate’s mom who was in queue there that St James’ was taking in students from ‘outside’ including from our school.
My mom and I went there, walking all the way for an hour to Jora Girja from near Esplanade (‘ei ektu aage’ bystanders told us), till we made it. Literally and figuratively. I was a proud Jacobean for next couple of years.
I am pretty sure that we would have had dosas or chhole bhatoore at Indra Mahal to celebrate the breakthrough before taking the metro from Esplanade home.
The first year of ISC science was like having to face the fearsome four of the West Indies at Sabina Park after having batted only in flat Indian pitches before that. Read the Sunny Days to know what I mean.
‘I hate to see the smile go out of his life,’ said dadu. We almost considered my dropping a year and joining commerce. Which was inconceivable in our family. In hearing this, our math teacher assured my mom that second year would be easier and advised me hang on. Which was really kind of him given that we did not really share any bond. I would often flunk math. Nor did I take tuitions from him. Yet, he decided to take an interest in my case and ack me.
I heard him lit and took the decision to move to arts once done with twelfth. Backed by my family this time.
Presidency happened. Sociology happened. PR (our HOD) happened. Those were the best days of my life, as the song from my college days said.
I made some great friends in James’. Most in our section, like me, had come from schools which didn’t offer ISC science. They belonged to different communities. A veritable jhal muri of Sindhis, Parsis, Gujaratis, Andhraites, Tamilians, Chinese, Kashmiris, Punjabis, UPites, Marwaris, Biharis and very few Bengalis. The entire national anthem in a sense. Preparing me for the mosaic of Mumbai, the city I moved to later in life.
Tiffin time was a food festival everyday. A Chinese boy from Tangra would get scrumptious roast beef sandwiches. Another from a Muslim family that owned a movie hall would get mind boggling beef kebabs.
One day a South Indian (possibly Andhra or Tamil) brought something which reminded me of a pizza. The only pizza I’d had before that was near Minto Park in ‘82 with my dad. The tomatoes, capsicum and onions in both seemed to be the common connection.
I loved the uttapams that I had that day. A name I heard for the first time that momentous day in 1991. My friend was a rather polite and peace loving boy and I polished off his tiffin that morning. Little Nimki, our younger cat and food bully, would be proud of me. I insisted that he bring them again and he did often.
This gave me an idea. I told my friends that we should meet in each other’s houses on weekends to get a taste of their community’s food.
I got to try a Gujarati thali made by the mother of one at Bhowanipore and was smitten by dishes such as kadhi, basundi and shrikhand. Names that I learnt a few years later in Mumbai.
Our class genius, a Tamillian, had forgotten to tell his mother that we were coming over when we landed up at their place. The kind lady was nonplussed and made dosa after dosa in their Southern Avenue kitchen. I was enthralled. I loved dosas, but was used to having only one at a go at restaurants. Here was someone who was serving them to us the way didu made me luchis. I think I broke some sort of world record in dosa eating that day, while her son went on to max his SATs a few months later and moved to Caltech.
Our other class genius, who was not as much a bhalo chhele as the former and was rather full of spunk, had called a classmate of ours and me to his home at Rani Kuthi one day after school and before the ISC finals to help us understand mechanical physics. We were all Bengalis and I loved the chicken curry, rice, dal and chutney that his mum had got their cook to make for us. I was stunned to see my friend eat his chaatni at the start with rice and dal and not at the end the way we did. He went off to Stanford and we’d meet on breaks over fascinating stories of his new life (the founder of his dorm had made a condition a century back it seems that ice cream was a must at dinner). We lost him to cancer a few years back but I will never forget his kindness.
I would not recognise a tan theta or a sec c if they hit me on my face today. Or Resnick & Halliday if they were sitting at a table across me at Candies; and that sums up the time I spent studying science in plus two!
Yet, when I sat down to have an uttapam for breakfast the other day, I realised that the story of Finely Chopped began with the uttapams from Gopa’s tiffin at the SJS play ground.
That in the Gujarati thali made by Deven’s mom, the dosas at Chari’s and the chutney in Chanda’s, lay the seeds of The Travelling Belly, my food travelogue set across India, the Finely Chopped Food Walks that I do to introduce people to Mumbai through its food, the #foodocracykitchens podcast where I talk about the food cooked by home chefs belonging to different communities, and everything else.
I guess studying science in high school was not that bad a thing.