Dried fish and vegetables, cooked in an intestine-burning spice mix. Redolent and ‘smelly’. Steamed rice. Hands approaching the plate. Fingers slicked with the spicy, umami delight being licked at length. Relentless mango showers outside.
This is probably the fondest memory I have of my childhood. I remember my ghoti*, brahmin neighbour exclaiming “Chotoloki khabar shob (Such plebian food)!”
Later, I read a book. Parts of it describing “plebian” food, still makes me salivate.
She [Ekelwi] went into the hut again and brought down the smoke-black basket in which she kept her dried fish and other ingredients for cooking soup. She broke a piece in two and gave it to Ezinma, who clung to her.Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
I also read a story about some particularly blasphemous food once. It left me with a craving no less than any desire. Let me share it with you.
Written by Mohammed Khadeer Babu and illustrated by Gulammohammed Sheikh, Head Curry is a complete sensory experience.
But breaking the smoked head is a greater art... While Mother is not so skilled in this art, her sister is an expert. Once the head-piece reaches home, one has to plead with my aunt to come. When she is brought home and given some nice tea, she settles down with the head-piece in front of the cement tub, holding a blunt knife. [...] First, she splits the head with the knife, puts the brain aside, throws the jaw bones away, cleans the tongue and cuts the meat into neat pieces – with the skill of someone embroidering a flower.
A day in a young boy’s life. The promise of a delicious meal. The anticipation. The episodic preparation.
Once the curry starts cooking with fresh coconut, tomatoes, cinnamon, ginger-garlic masala... wonderful smells start emanating from the kitchen. Taking in the aroma, Father starts pacing the room, humming da da da with joy.
The smells, the sight of a simmering pot. And then, instant gratification served straight onto the plate. Hot and tantalising.
Sitting around in a circle, eating the head curry – so full of fat that it sticks to the hand, the small black pieces tasting heavenly – mixing it with hot rice, with brain fry as the side dish... all the headache that plagued us till then disappears. leaving us feeling that THE WORLD IS A BLESSED PLACE.
French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss once famously wrote, “…cooking was a metaphor for the human transformation of raw nature into cooked culture.” The idea was to talk about how some categorical opposites like ‘raw’ and ‘cooked,’ ‘fresh’ and ‘rotten,’ ‘moist’ and ‘parched’ also gave rise to propositions, or beliefs involving everyday life.
In a cultural conundrum like India, these categories explode with binaries like brahmin-dalit, Hindu-Muslim, and even other forms of social stratifications, like bangal-ghoti**.
Cow-vigilantism is on the rise in India. Reported cases of caste atrocities seem to be rising in number every passing day. Muslims and dalits both consume beef in the sub-continent. Caste Hindu society has historically relegated the task of scavenging animal carcasses to dalits. Eating beef, or even being seen close to a dead cow, or perhaps any dead animal, can lead to deaths in contemporary India.
Food is everyday. It’s sustenance. It’s memory. It’s desire. Let it be.
*Colloquial Bengali term used for inhabitants of West
Bengal. My family were ‘refugees’ from East Pakistan, or Bangladesh.
**Bangal is the
colloquial Bengali word for people from East Pakistan, present-day Bangladesh. The bangal-ghoti divide exists across culinary and cultural terrains.
Head Curry is part of Different Tales – a project involving stories from the lives of children who rarely find place in mainstream children’s literature. This series of thirteen stories addresses issues of marginalisation – along the axes of gender, caste, minority, disability.
The series is published by Mango Books, an imprint of DC Books, Kerala.
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