I did not know cooking when I emigrated to the United States. As a student, the university cafeteria and the local pizza shop sustained me for a while. I had few options and fewer dollars to spend on food. Eventually, after a year and a half of procrastination, I decided to try sporting with culinary skills. It wasn’t an easy transition. Initially, I did not care about the taste, so anything in the microwave with a dash of cumin and turmeric would qualify as ‘Indian’ food for me! I wasn’t too keen on reinventing Bengali food yet, just Indian food that could be conveniently and quickly microwaved! Soon enough, a visit home after my second year, signaled that what I ate and declared to be ‘Indian’ food was not anything remotely close to any cuisine identifiable with the subcontinent. It was just plain laziness on my part and perhaps, a reluctance to admit that food recreates nostalgia. And heartache.
I did not realize then that food can connect time and people in time. That food helps to forget, remember, and recreate. Food Connects.
I started calling Maa more frequently, initially I forayed into rice, lentils, fired (sic) eggs, or fish. After the phase of getting the eggs out before burning them, or firing them completely, or frying the fish before burning myself (!), I adventurously started out with trying cutting vegetables. It wasn’t easy. I had never done it, never watched anyone do it! So, getting fresh cut vegetables and later frozen ones worked for me. So, what went for vegetable kofta in my little apartment was actually mushy frozen veggies that I had planned on as a dish! I was learning, but the curve was really rather steep! I defended my sagging self-esteem by admitting it was the course work that drained me of my ‘culinary skills’!
During this time, Didibhai, my maternal grandmother, came to stay with my family. Telephone calls got lengthier since I wanted to talk to her as well. She was a wizard in the kitchen, from Indian to Mughlai, from jellies and preserves to fritters, from dairy based desserts to flour based ones, from cakes to kulfi, she had it all on her fingertips. I depended on this oral knowledge transfer, you tube had just been born and Indian recipes, videos, and blogs were few and far between at the time. For me, Didibhai bridged cultures of cooking while happily substituting online knowledge.
Initially, I was tutored on the various spices and when to add them whole, when to grind them fresh, and when to just use them as garnish. A summer during my third year, went by getting spice jars and spices shipped to me from Kolkata, or those that journeyed in friends’ suitcases smelling of home. I remember organizing the kitchen around spices, utensils, skillets, and pans. I was getting interested in this business. It was fun to spend time in the kitchen outside of work! I even ventured to the public library in my town and took a look at books on food. I was growing an interest in food. In my understanding of cooking, I was simultaneously developing another level of intimacy with Didibhai.
With her commentary, I gradually learnt how to use the knife; mincing, slicing, cubing, and chopping were words suddenly having meaning, shape, and size in my cognition. My refrigerator had fresh vegetables, fish, and meat, instead of takeout boxes, hardened pizzas waiting to be trashed, and bags of frozen vegetables that were never going to be used! I had discovered the kitchen. Outside of work, the kitchen was my space to chill out. I almost likened myself to a scientist at the lab, only my work space was slightly different! During this time, Didibhai gave me recipes using no spices, 1 or 2 spices, or even those that could use a variety of spices during different phases of their preparation. I learnt how to make varieties of shuktos. I learnt it with ground mustard and milk, or the one with celery seed (radhuni) and five spices (panch phoron), the one with fish, and the one with leftover vegetables. I processed her recipes to recreate them my way. Innovations with “how I cook Indian food” started. I actually gained enough confidence (with my cooking skills) after my 4th year here to volunteer at a food meet during International Student’s festival. I had, indeed, come some way in my culinary journey.
I kept up phone conversations with Didibhai long after she went back to her home. We now joked about the secret book of her recipes that I will inherit! It was somewhere and we chatted about it. Didibhai’s skills were still eons outside of my level, but in my own way, I thought I recreated her ideas in my kitchen every day. She gained significance during the period I started to date. My fiancé, a food connoisseur and expert chef, wanted to test me on my skills. Over a restaurant meeting, I decided to invite him for a home cooked meal. Our first meal at home together started with watermelon punch—Didibhai’s idea for her would-be grandson-in-law. It was Memorial Day, warmer than usual, and the punch with crushed ice, lemon slices, a dash of rock salt sealed our relationship. I think Didibhai just knew what would work for me! Maybe, she had a story in the creation of the punch somewhere, maybe it would connect my warm Memorial Day meeting with another warm day during her youth…
Time flies. And it has been over a decade since that first meeting.
As we grow our relationship, we have continued to experiment with food and cuisine in the kitchen. Iranian spice mix, Moroccan couscous, or Spanish paella, our culinary borders keep expanding. I cannot disregard Didibhai’s role in triggering my enthusiasm. The food plurality that binds us together made me design my first senior level class on food and identity. Maybe, I was hoping to find similar narratives like mine in the students I met and interacted with. Sure enough, I heard stories of Haitian grandmothers’ stew recipes, of Jewish chulent recipes during Sabbath, Guyanese recipes using cumin and saffron, food narratives from all across the world seemed to have animated every class that I taught. From bridging portals of home, work, personal and professional worlds, Didibhai remained ever present. Her food stories and expertise could de-stress me and let me begin all over again. Our phone conversations had come under a schedule, however, a short trip back to Kolkata, always meant handmade delicacies from her kitchen—to eat and carry back.
Didibhai left us last year.
Oftentimes, after a long day at work, I remember our joke about the book of her secret recipes. I had by this time realized that the book of recipes was Didibhai. She was the text, the secret of all the recipes, of all the foods I will ever create in my kitchen. A jar of her last mango preserve sits in my refrigerator. I hesitate to consume it. I can feel her presence, her touch, her love in the preserves. And, I want to hold on to it. I realize that it has a limited shelf life yet I am fiercely guarding it from time, unconsumed. As I write this, I realize Didibhai is in my kitchen and in the memories that my food creates of her. She is renewed through the food we discovered together, and these renewals keep the journey of food and people forever throbbing.
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