This is a memoir of Bengali life in the early to mid-1900s. Rural, landowning, wealthy, cultured families led lives very similar to those in faraway Goa.
In fact, all over and across the subcontinent, it was the norm to have several generations live under a single roof. The kitchen was the most important room, bustling with activity through the year, with each month, week, day having its own religious or cultural importance. Routines were adhered to and supervision of harvests, crops, processing the produce was overseen by the matriarch, in this case Thakuma, the grandmother of the little girl whose is narrating her memories through what was happening around the buying, cleaning, chopping, peeling, grating, grinding, seasoning, serving, and consumption of whatever was cooked.
The translator has kept the voice of the local dialect. Short sentences, colloquial phrases kept literal at times, allowed me to understand and express the same in my own Konkani. It was easy to relate to recipes (without measurements or formal processes) of fish curries: the one using fish heads, for example. The way the vegetables were cut, root vegetables in cuboids, brinjals in thick slices, onions either chopped or diced depending on which dish was being cooked, the grinding, smooth or gritty to make the gravy liquid or thick.
Quotes: ‘… the peeled, whole pointed gourds and cubed potatoes were smeared with salt and turmeric and then deep-fried. Meanwhile, Ma made a fine paste of mustard, turmeric, green chilies (spelling American) and salt. Thakuma put more oil in the pan, mixed the mustard paste with some water, and poured it into the pan. She would stir the paste in oil, making the smoke swirl in the vessel and fly through the front window by the side of the kiln. She then added turmeric and dry chili paste and stirred a little. … a small amount of water again, evaporating the excess water. When the oil separated, she added the fried pointed gourd and potato and covered the pan with the lid.’ Teamwork in the kitchen. Aunts, cousins, servants, neighbours, all played a role. Simple prose, detailed stories.
‘Here’s your share of the puja offering.’ Placing one palm upon the other, I take my share of prasad...’ cultural titbits are included. Muslim neighbours and helpers are like extended family. ‘The houses in our neighborhood hadn’t yet adopted the grandiose concept of “entrance.” The path for going in and out of the neighborhood houses was the narrow alley adjacent to our home. The boundaries stood so close together that the tree planted in the ground of one house cast is shard on another’s yard.’
‘Stale clothes’, puffed rice eaten in small metal tumblers, coarse-grained red-rice gruel eaten with leaf vegetables, and coffee/tea sweetened with thin molasses resonated with my own memories here on the west coast. The words ‘veggie’, ‘darling’, ‘my dear’ and ‘sweetheart’ seemed out of place. Better substitutes might have been vegetables, ‘beta’, little girl, my child.
Nature: ‘On top of the deodar grove, the overcast sky seems to come down so close as if it can be touched by extending one’s hand. At times, it seems the leaves have started playing hide-and-seek in the layers of dark clouds. But once the wind blows, they melt in the rain, making the sky distant again… Unruly gusts make the purple fruits fall…’
There are detailed references to flourishing businesses—weaving, textiles—whose decline has a steep graph, culminating in relocation during Partition.
The Antonym Collection, an indie publication house, focuses on translated work in their Moving Words imprint, from underrepresented voices from the Indian subcontinent and the world. For a young writer, born in 1981, in Sirajganj (Bangladesh), working for the New York Board of Education, she has researched well and written it (original title ‘Roshui Ghorer Royak’) like she has lived the experience. The translator, an Associate Professor in the Department of English, Shri Shikshayatan College, Kolkata, has done translation works for Sahitya Akademi.
Self-taught illustrator Shreya Prasad’s black and white charcoal/pencil sketches are brilliant. They have totally brought the text alive. I spent as much time examining and enjoying them as I did the prose. From vessels to flowers/spices, to bangles, her proportions, shading and precise shapes have prompted me to write, ‘here’s an artist to look out for’.
I must point out the very few negatives, small though they are, in proofing. The back cover has a typo ‘receipes’. Outside Bengal, no one might know what a ‘hailstone’ is, used to grind. On page 65, the word ‘fufu’ is in italics, and on 67 it’s in plain font. Words like ‘ji milte hain’, ‘sapota/chikoo’, ‘roka shoka’, ‘bhav’ and ‘mard’ need explanation to those not familiar with them.
All said and done, this is an impressive coffee-table book that I would recommend to lovers of food history and social studies, specifically of the Indian subcontinent.
Sheela Jayant is a writer and columnist. She lives in Goa.
Courtyard and the Kitchen.
Author: Smriti Bhadra.
Translator from Bengali: Malini Mukherjee. Illustrator: Shreya Prasad.
Edited by Bishnupriya Chowdhuri and Nadia Imam.
Publisher: Moving Words, an imprint of The Antonym Collections.
Number of pages: 149. Price: Rs 699/-.