As I sighed to myself and compelled myself to get up and
amble towards the kitchen, my mind inadvertently started to think of the
permutations that I could churn up in the kitchen. I trotted around the tiny
kitchen and switched on the exhaust fan before glancing around carelessly at
the ingredients available- a pointless exercise considering that my mind had
already decided on what to make. Again, sighing to myself, I delved into the
wicker basket with my right hand and conjured, as if my magic, 3 potatoes and
with my left hand fetched the chopping board. Humming the tune from “Five
hundred miles away from home”, I poured water into an aluminium bowl and ran my
fingers all along the inside of the bowl to rub off any dirt before throwing
away the water. Refilling the bowl, this time I closed the tap and reached for
the cylindrical polycarbonate container of rice. As I unscrewed the lid, a waft
of summer suddenly hit my nose.
I had been cooking this rice for over a year now, yet the
sweet fragrance of mango blossoms that inevitably filled the small kitchen
every time I opened the container, would easily transport me years and light
years into the past away from the hustling and bustling, never-sleeping
metropolis of Mumbai to the always sleepy and cosy city of Calcutta. It would
take me back to the numerous summers spent stealing mangoes from the
neighbour’s trees and the many cuts and bruises all over my body – all incurred
for a few heavenly slurps of the ripened nectar or a few crunches of the sliced
green mango, nicely marinated in chili powder. I wrestled my mind away from the
sunny skies and the tangy feeling in my mouth overpowering my nervous system
and ordering the eyes to shut and the face to wrinkle momentarily and forced it
to return to the dingy room. As I measured out the accurately named Ambemohar
rice into the water-filled bowl, my mind couldn’t help but wander back to the
carefree summers spent, what seemed aeons ago.
Nine spoonfuls later, I washed the rice in the water, before steeping it in half a bowlful of water. Done preparing the rice, I shifted my concentration to the potatoes and was immediately transported back to the narrow alleys and bylanes of old Calcutta where windows are too close for comfort and yet it comforted the soul to look through the wooden slats and iron grills at the rows of terraces all interlinked to each other – some decorated with potted plants and others bearing the last remaining vestiges of erstwhile pigeon feeders.
As my father hobbled into the typical old Calcuttan kitchen,
his balance hindered by the heavy jute bag filled with vegetables and fruits, I
rushed to help him and through the corner of my eyes I could see that age was
catching up with him fast and yet an adamant man, he refused to hire a cook
even with my mother bedridden after an operation. An inquiring glance from me
alerted him to the need for lunch and before I could follow up my questioning
look with any words, he announced the menu for lunch. Frankly speaking I was
disappointed. Having heard a lot about his cooking prowess during his days
living alone in Kanpur and Mumbai before marriage, the stories having never
been transformed into reality often left me utterly frustrated at having missed
out on discovering this aspect of my father. Seeing that no one had given my
mother an off-day in the last twenty years, fate had rather cruelly decided to
take things in her hands and relieve my mother of all duties for a month in the
summer of 2010. Frankly speaking, once I got over the shock of seeing her
bedridden, I was rather excited at what my father would be cooking but his
decision today did everything to dampen my excitement.
As I peeled the potatoes from muscle memory, my lips curled into a smile thinking back to the time my father told me that this dish would not be possible without the Persian, the Japanese and the Chinese.
Dismissing
his comments as the ranting of a madman, I concentrated on stocking the
refrigerator with the vegetables. Seeing my lack of interest yet unperturbed by
it, he asked, “Have you never wondered
why the English call it potato and the Gujaratis call it batata but we call it
aloo?”
“Why ?”
“Well most of the
world calls it that – the Spanish, the English, the South Americans. The French
have a extravagant name for it but that’s the French- always jazzing up the
language. Anyway, the original Caribbean word was ‘batata’ which became
‘potato’ in English and ‘patata’ in Spain and through the Portuguese and
Spanish traders who frequented the west coast of India, ‘batata’ and its
various spellings and pronunciations became popular. What’s weird is that why
do some North Indians and Bengalis call it ‘aloo’? It’s a misnomer that has
stuck proving that sometimes mistakes do live forever. ‘Alu’ is the Farsi word
for plums and the usage can be seen even today in ‘Alu Bukhara’ (the common
plum) and ‘Zard-alu’ (apricot). In the 1800s a British ambassador to Iran, Sir
John Malcolm presented the Nadir with potatoes recently discovered from the
European’s expeditions of the far west. The Iranians misunderstood the offering
to be a variety of plum and called it ‘Melkom alu’, an abomination further
perpetrated through Asia Minor right up to Kandahar and along the Gangetic
Plain till the river empties itself into the Bay of Bengal. The Afghanis still
call it ‘kach-alu’ and we of course prefer to call it just ‘aloo’”
“What about the
Iranians? Do they still remember Malcolm every-time they eat a potato?”
“Well funny story
there is that the good thing that the Iranians have done is to move on from the
misnomer. The bad thing is they use a calque”
“A calque?”
“A linguistic
carbon-copy if you will. From the French nonetheless. An Iranian ‘Sheb-zamin-i’
to counter the French ‘pomme de terre’ literally meaning ‘apple of the earth’”
Both of us burst into hysterical laughter, almost falling
over in our attempts to gather a semblance of balance and sanity. I gathered
myself and sighed a couple of times to flush out the laughter before asking, “We covered everyone from the Caribbean to
the Iranian but I don’t understand how the Japanese fit into this.”
“Without the Japanese
there wouldn’t be a rickshaw to take me to the market. They invented the
rickshaw in the 1800s you see and that’s why today I can go to the market and
return with a week’s worth of vegetables. In fact, even the word ‘rickshaw’ is
rooted in Japanese.”
“I can’t believe this.
This connection is way too far-fetched”
“It’s the truth son.”
“Well, what about the
Chinese then? How are they connected to all this?”
“Well who do you think
introduced the rickshaw to Calcutta? It was the migrant Chinese workers in the
Kidderpore dock who were the first pullers of the rickshaw. They came here to
start tea businesses but worked at the docks to earn enough seed money for the
business and in the process, gave Calcutta not only a vibrant Chinatown but
also rickshaws”
As I washed the peeled potatoes and drained the brownish
water, I wondered back to the summers which were much simpler than this one – when
stories were made and stories were told. Lighting the gas, I placed the bowl of
rice on one burner and the wok on the other burner. Lining the walls well with
mustard oil, I let it collect in a pool in the trough and happy with the
quantity, allowed it to heat up. I placed two peeled potatoes inside the rice
bowl and taking out an egg from the refrigerator, dropped it into the water
too. Returning to the remaining potato, I starting to chop it very finely and
once done, soaked it in salted water for a couple of minutes. By this time the
bubbles on the surface of the mustard oil had subsided and I drained the
chopped potatoes and drying them with a napkin, released them slowly down the
side of the wok into the heated oil. As the aluminium bowl bubbled away to its
heart’s content on my left, the mustard oil hissed and fizzed before letting
out a wisp of smoke. Quickly taking a ladle, I turned over the potato pieces to
ensure they brown evenly all over. Slowly but steadily all the pieces were
fried, strained and plated just in time for the rice to boil down to its last
few puddles of water. Scooping up the egg and the potatoes, I plunged the egg
in a bowl of ice-cold water and mashed the potatoes with the back of my spoon.
Content with the cooked rice, I turned off the gas lest the rice starts to
become sticky.
Years ago, a 16-year old had scoffed at the simplicity of a
plate of steaming hot rice, with dollops of Jharna ghee , a pinch of salt, some
mashed potatoes, a solitary boiled egg, some salt, a green chilly and a bunch
of crispy fried potato sticks but as the 16-year old devoured perhaps the
simplest of all culinary delights from the Bengali’s cookbook, sitting beside
his mother and father , chatting away about history and linguistics and the
city he had perhaps realised that even the simplest of dishes can have a
beautiful story and for sure, can make an astounding one. 10 years later a
26-year old realises that in the toughest of times, in the darkest of days a
plate of piping hot rice eaten with equally hot mashed potatoes and a boiled
egg, topped with spoonful of Jharna ghee, a sprinkle of salt and a solitary
green chilly and finally garnished with crunchy rice stick can really warm the
heart and make it feel like home even five hundred miles from it.
