Of ‘ Bangla ranna’ & Gujju friends

When  a friend  recently expressed his love for ‘Bangla ranna’  (Bengali cooking),  having stayed in Kolkata for a while,  I was transported back to my early days of getting familiar with and learning to cook traditional Bengali dishes. My introduction to any cooking at all was rather late. While at my parent’s place as a teenager and also as an adult, studies and other sundry things kept me busy, and my indulgent father found me excuses to slip away from chores to do with cooking, while my mother cried foul.  Having found a job later, I found even more excuses to slip away from it all!

Again, with me being an honorary Gujarati having stayed in Gujarat for long and having more Gujju friends than Bengali, my preferred palate was/is Gujarati, even though Bengali food was a staple fare at home.  However, once into my marital home, I realized that my in-laws recognized only Bangla fare, that food was their world and not being able to tell one ‘maach’ (fish) from the other, was a sin.

And here I was…my knowledge of anything to do with cooking being zilch (I actually couldn’t tell one ‘dal’ from the other leave alone fish!)…at the mercy of incorrigible foodies! Those days I was eternally petrified of being exposed and of putting my foot in the mouth once the discussion veered towards food and cooking. Mercifully, no one actually expected  me to cook a meal in the early days of marriage, so it was quite okay for a while.

A short while later having moved away from the joint family, I had to learn to cook, which I did through trial and error. Hubby of course dared not complain as I burst into a flood of tears once at being ‘told off’ for not having made a dish to his liking, but with in-laws being  in the same city, some kin or the other would spring a nasty surprise by arriving unannounced for dinner. Then it was my turn to dish out the traditional  Bangla fare. Those days the uniquely Bengali five spice mix called ‘panch phoron’  came to my rescue as I cooked every vegetable dish  with this mix and powdered spices! Cooking the ‘dal’ in an open pan on the horrible kerosene stove was a nightmare, and with me being asked about what ‘tadka I would use’  by my ‘guests’, it was even more horrible. Often times my ma-in-law would give me the incredulous look as I told her about what would go into my dish while my pa-in-law who demanded to taste the half cooked ‘dal’ or ‘subzi’ would insist that I was ‘almost there’.  As for the fish, I had to go by my instincts, and hubby’s ‘covert’ help!

To combat the in-laws’ onslaught I armed myself with a book on ‘how to cook traditional Bengali dishes’ to save my face. Much water has flown under the bridge hence and now I can at least cook some Bengali dishes, if not all, with comfort.

Strangely, I received a certificate of sorts from people when I cooked  a simple fish curry – shorshe bata maach (fish with mustard paste)- a great favourite with Bengalis, at a ceremony to mark the passing on of my pa-in-law two years ago. Even though many complex and difficult dishes that my pa-in-law loved were cooked by my kin from the in-laws side, it was my simple fish curry that stole everyone’s hearts that day! And I could almost hear my pa-in-law whisper to me ‘See, I told you, you were almost there, but now you truly are’.

And as for my dear vegetarian Gujju friend, I promise to treat him and his family to ‘luchi’, ‘alur dom’, ‘chholar dal’, ‘begun bhaja’, ‘ tok’  and ‘mishti’ very soon !