Do join us for the annual monsoon lunch which we are hosting this year. There will be khichudi, beguni and ileesh maachh bhaja," Mrs Banerjee was insistent with her invitation as I got out of the car, a Saab fitted with a fabulous music system from whose unseen speakers Hemanta Mukherjee's digitised voice wafted out, warm and mellifluous, untouched by the icicle-forming chill of the airconditioner on full blast. Even at this late hour, almost close to midnight, the heat outside was blistering.
Summer in this part of the US can be as bad as what we have to suffer in the dust bowl of India, also known as the National Capital Region. It had been a hot and humid day and I had sweated profusely, walking from one building to another in the sprawling university campus. I had looked forward to an easy, boozy evening of casual banter and Tex-Mex grill at the house of a professor of cinema (why can't we have film appreciation as a full course in our colleges and universities?), a laidback, now approaching middleage, child of the Sixties with vivid memories of Woodstock, who was hosting a reception for me to meet Indian American members of the faculty. Nearly all of them turned out to be Bengalis, barring a professor of mathematics whose father had fled to the US when Brahmins were banished from Tamil Nadu.
The evening was boozy and the grill was wonderful though I thought the 'hot' sauce was a bit of a scam, but there was little casual banter. The faculty members were serious and ponderous, more so the ex-Jadavpur University lot which was given to both hectoring and lecturing me, their poor upcountry cousin who was visiting America courtesy a State Department grant. Among them was Prof Banerjee who taught some exotic course related to particle physics. From Garfa Main Road to this university town, he had travelled a long distance, moving up from the crowded footboards of the ramshackle double-decker buses plying on the 8B route to a cool, silver blue Saab. Mrs Banerjee, who too had travelled a long distance from Bagha Jatin and no longer needed the comfort of the 'Ladies Seat' on the 8B bus, the only seat with its dark green rexine intact, on hearing that I had been away from home -- and Bengali food -- for more than a month, promptly invited me to her annual monsoon lunch on Saturday, which was two days later.
Prof Banerjee took a paper napkin, scribbled the address of their house, and offered to drive me back to the hotel where I was staying and I accepted his offer graciously, doing a quick calculation of the dollars I would save in taxi fare. The grant was not meagre, but it was inelastic. The previous week I had been rather reckless in celebrating my being made a 'Citizen of the State of Arkansas' by Governor Bill Clinton. When I mentioned that occasion to President Bill Clinton during a 'line-up' at the White House, his smile broadened into a grin although I am sure nothing registered on his mind.
But let's return to Mrs Banerjee and her lunch. I wasn't quite prepared for something so theatrical. The curtains of their cavernous drawing room and sprawling dining space had been tightly drawn to recreate the dark and gloomy days of monsoon in West Bengal. The place was teeming with expatriate Bengalis, the men dressed in kurta-pajama (or pajama-panjabi, as Bengalis prefer to describe this attire) -- some of them were wearing neatly pleated dhuti -- and the women were clad in heavy brocade and Banarasi saris.
There were two incongruities: The ubiquitous can of Budweiser beer (everybody seemed to be holding one), the abiding symbol of American 'taste', and me dressed in T-shirt and khakis (everybody stared at me as if I were an intruder at a secret society's ritual ceremony, an alien amid the natives). The bouquet of expensive perfumes and after-shave lotions mixed with the smell of khichudi (bubbling in a pot), begun bhaja (sputtering in a pan) and ileesh maachh (sizzling in another pan) in the open kitchen off the dining space to swamp the absence of the more-alluring -- some would say seductive -- aroma of Joba Kusum hair oil, Kanta scent and Cuticura talcum powder associated with such gatherings back home.
As high noon turned into afternoon and the women exchanged gossip or sang along, often gratingly, out of tune and scale, with the Rabindrasangeet playing in the background while the men got sozzled on Budweiser beer -- of which there seemed to be an unending supply -- Mrs Banerjee announced lunch was ready. It was a hearty feast washed down with more Budweiser. The women compared the merits of 'eggplant' available at one supermarket with those at another. I gingerly poked at the extra large piece of 'ileesh maachh' which Mrs Banerjee had selected for me from the platterful of fried fish. It tasted like ileesh but wasn't quite the same. And how did she manage to find ileesh at the local supermarket? "That's shad you are eating," Prof Banerjee's colleague in the department helpfully informed me, "In America, we use this as a substitute for ileesh."
Later that evening, back in my room at the hotel, I marvelled at the enduring -- and, despite its comic elements -- and endearing effort by a group of Bengalis, far away from their land of birth and origin, to cling on to an idiom which for them was central to their cultural identity. The annual monsoon lunch in a place where it does not rain and from where their children cannot even begin to imagine the incessant downpour that drenches Kolkata every year helps them retain their 'Bong' connection, an idea so frivolously trivialised by Anjan Dutta in his film, The Bong Connection.
The sense of alienation that immigrants feel in a foreign land, which Manju Kapur has sought to capture in her latest novel, The Immigrant, through the tragic yet elevating story of Nina and Ananda, the constant conflict between your own culture and that of your adopted country, remarkably crafted into everyday stories about first and second generation immigrants by Jhumpa Lahiri in Unaccustomed Earth, the wistful longing that underlines desire and its suppression of which Bharati Mukherjee has written with great effect, are something which we who have refused to move and migrate can never really either appreciate or understand.
Yet, migration blues and cultural disinheritance do not come attached with trans-national or trans-continental journeys alone. We who have migrated from one State to another, looking for jobs and a better life, opportunities denied to us in our 'home State', are not really strangers to such emotional conflict. In our own way we try to cling on to our separate identities, stressing on that which makes us different from those around us.
(September 7, 2008)
Visual shows Durga Puja celebrations hosted by Pashchimi, San Francisco Bay Area-based organisation. Picture by Swagato Basumallick.
***
There was no intimation of a storm when I left home for work last Thursday. It was only after I hit National Highway 24, which is an apology for an inter-State highway that mocks at our tall claims of 'progress' and 'development', that I spotted the dark, menacing storm, roaring across the highrise-dotted dust plains that separate Delhi from Uttar Pradesh. Within seconds an all-engulfing darkness descended at high noon and gale force winds swept down, whooshing their way through malnourished trees and scrub, scooping up dirt and millions of discarded plastic bags, and sending them swirling in the gathering gloom. It was not a pretty sight to see garbage and filth of various descriptions, dumped every day along the highway as part of an officially endorsed waste disposal 'system', being tossed around.
Mercifully, the rain came soon after. First there were fat drops that plonked dully on the windscreen and turned into streaks of black-brown grime. There was a distant roll of thunder, and then the skies opened up, sending a downpour that came crashing like a sheet of water. Within seconds, the stench of festering garbage had been washed away and the plastic bags had disappeared, weighed down by the rain. By the time I crossed Nizamuddin Bridge into Delhi, the roads were flooded and traffic was crawling at a speed lower than usual. Everybody was cranky, which was not unusual. It rained for the next couple of hours, and then drizzled for a long while.
Later that night, the roads looked fresh and clean, with puddles glistening under streetlights and the damp air redolent with the smell of rain. I rolled down the car windows and breathed deeply. You can't do that very often in this part of the country. For all its pretensions of being 'world class', the National Capital Region, barring Lutyens' Delhi, is really a sprawling, polluted concrete slum, pock-marked by ghastly glass-and-chrome malls. Next day's newspapers described the thunder squall as "unseasonal rain" and carried photographs of stalled autorickshaws, cars, buses and trucks with motorcyclists trying to clamber over and across them.
Similar storms at this time of the year are joyously greeted in the eastern hinterland, especially in rural Bengal where they herald the advent of summer. As Choitro gives way to Boishakh, marking the end of spring, Kaal Boishakhis, or nor'westers, make their annual, almost ritual, appearance. The skies turn dark, egrets take flight, their sparkling white plume standing out in sharp contrast to the ink black clouds, and the wind comes roaring, whistling through coconut and palm trees, in a strong blast that lasts for about five to ten minutes. This is followed by a sharp drizzle that drenches the soil, dampens the air and cools the evening breeze which makes east India so very different from the rest of the country, more so Delhi, India's dust bowl.
Decades ago, while growing up in Jamshedpur, my friends and I would wait for Kaal Boishakhis with bated anticipation. The immediate hour after a Kaal Boishakhi would be spent collecting green mangoes, raw and sour, which were otherwise forbidden, torn off their tender stalks by the raging wind. There was something Darwinian about the mango trees in our colony: The fittest fruit survived the frenzied storms of Boishakh to mature into delightfully sweet mangoes in the scorching heat of Joishtho. But they never tasted as good as the forbidden fruit.
It was during those years of growing up in a small Singhbhum town that we learned the art of grating a seashell on a rock with a rough surface to fashion a peeler for the green mangoes we would surreptitiously collect from Mrs Chowdhury's garden. She had a dog whom she fed Ovaltine and milk for breakfast; Badshah slept all the time and wagged his tail furiously while we stole Mrs Chowdhury's mangoes. She would be busy dusting her house -- which she kept spotlessly clean -- after the storm. Even if Badshah barked, which was a rarity and I can't recall having heard him bark even once, she wouldn't have heard him. As soon as a Kaal Boishakhi would pass, Mrs Chowdhury would switch on her gramophone at full volume and listen to Rabindrasangeet on 78 rpm records. Her favourite was 'Esho hey Boishakh, esho esho...'
On Kaal Boishakhi evenings, dinner would be predictable -- and, I guess, they still are predictable in Bengali homes that have not traded their Bangaliana for tandoori chicken and daal makhni. It would invariably arrive on the table in the form of steaming khichuri, begun bhaja and papor bhaja. The highlight of the meal would be an omelette. On some nights, the omelette would be replaced by fried hilsa from Kolaghat. Many years later, I was invited to a dinner hosted by a professor at University of California, Berkley. He and his wife had sought to recreate the ambience of a post-Kaal Boishakhi dinner. There was 'Esho hey Boishakh, esho esho...' playing on his hi-fi system, curtains had been drawn to shut out the bright evening light, and there was much rustling of brocade and Banarasi silk. Instead of hilsa, they served crisply fried American shad with khichuri made with aromatic Basmati rice. The professor recalled his childhood in Birbhum, of how he would run wild in paddy fields with his friends as a Kaal Boishakhi raged. Later, he wept copiously into his tumbler of bourbon. The charms of America had obviously proved more seductive for him than the harsh climes of Birbhum.
Just as the ersatz benefits of living in Delhi stops me from going back to the land of Kaal Boishakhis where I could teach my daughters how to make peelers from seashells and they could smell the fragrance of rain-sodden earth while collecting green mangoes and chasing dragonflies in the purple light of east India's dusk before settling down for a steaming meal of khichuri, begun bhaja and omelette, listening to the strains of 'Esho hey Boishakh, esho esho...' playing on a neighbour's gramophone.
(April 6, 2008)
***
After breathlessly watching the rescue operation mounted by the Army to save five-year-old Prince from the 60-foot-deep pit into which he had fallen two days ago, the maashimas and pishimas of Baltitola Lane in Howrah decided to chip in their bit. Leaving their husbands and children to monitor the 24x7 news channels and keep them posted with the latest update, they gathered at the paara Shiv temple to pray for the child, a scene replicated in cities, towns and villages across India on Sunday.
Probably a lot of people missed out on Sunday lunch; at least we had to forego mangshor jhol-bhaat (mutton curry and rice) to which we look forward to throughout the week, and make do with watery daal and bhaat. Our housekeeper-cum-cook, on whom we depend for our daily bread, sat glued to the television set from mid-morning till late evening, following the human drama minute by excruciating minute.
Tired of listening to her running maudlin commentary - "Ahaare, bechaara toffee khaachche, nishchoi khoob khidey peyche... thakur, doyamoy, rokkhe koro" (poor child, look at him eat a toffee, he must be hungry, god please save him), etc - and with little hope of getting so much as even a cup of coffee at home, I decided to visit the local optician, a visit I had been putting off for months. The entire staff at the swank upmarket store was gathered around a television set, watching wide-eyed the direct relay of the attempts to save the child.
With some difficulty I managed to cajole the chap who does the computer test to take time off and check my eyes. Making little effort to hide his annoyance, he asked me to stick my face into the contraption that works out the power of the lens you need for your glasses, my chin resting on a stirrup.
"Look at this finger," he said, annoyance dripping like acid from his otherwise honey-coated voice. I looked at his right finger. "Keep on looking," he instructed, fiddling with some knobs and dials. At that moment, a loud cheer went up outside the room: "Nikal liya, Nikal liya..." And the chap rushed out to catch the climactic scene of the drama from which I had dragged him away.
For the next many minutes, there I was, face stuck in a contraption, chin resting on a stirrup, eyes staring at a blinking Christmas tree, while the chap and his colleagues chatted animatedly, thumped each other's back, shouted Jai Mata Di, oblivious to everything else but Prince, now nestling in the loving arms of an Army officer whom Tuesday's papers identified as Banerjee.
The show over, the chap returned to his job and did scribble out a prescription. But I am not too sure whether getting a new pair of glasses made according to it is a terribly good idea. I could end up in one of Delhi's many uncovered manholes.
Snigger as you may, this was reality TV, or what the industry prefers to call 'popular factual TV', at its best. The 'Prince Show' beat Indian Idol hands down; it was more riveting than Zee's mock panchayat with Gudiya, the hapless woman whose husband, presumed dead, returned to claim her from the man whom she had re-married.
The hush that descended in housing colonies on Sunday revived memories of the silence that would reign during the telecast of Ramanand Sagar's Ramayan. For a while, life came to near standstill as entire families gathered to watch a gripping real life drama, praying, cursing, and shouting encouragement to the jawans digging a tunnel to reach the trapped child. A collective sigh of relief went up at 7.47 pm.
At home, dinner was more wholesome than lunch.
(July 25, 2006)
