WEST BENGAL: GEOGRAPHY
West Bengal is strategically placed with three international frontiers - Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan. A hinge between the bulk of Indian territory and the north-east of the country, West Bengal is located at 21o31' and 27o14' North Latitude at the head of the Bay of Bengal and 86o35' and 89o53' East Longitude, with the Tropic of Cancer running through it.
The great Himalayas start a distance of only 300 miles from the Bay of Bengal and the coastal tropical rain forest, Sundarbans.
BENGAL AT A GLANCE.
At the time of Partition Bengal was spilt into East and West Bengal. East Bengal became the eastern wing of Pakistan and later, with the disintegration of that country, Bangladesh. West Bengal became a state of India with Calcutta as the capital. The state is long and narrow, running from the delta of the Ganges river system at the Bay of Bengal in the south to the heights of the Himalayas at Darjeeling in the north.
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HISTORY : Referred to as Vanga in the Mahabharata, this area has a long history that predates the Aryan invasions of India. It was part of the Aryan invasions of India. It was part of the Maurayan Empire in the 3rd century before being overrun by the Guptas. For three centuries around 800 AD The Pala dynasty controlled a large area based on Bengal and including parts of Orissa, Bihar and mordern Bangaladesh.
Bengal was brought under Muslim control by Qutab-ud-din, first of the sultans of Delhi, at the end of the 12th century. Following the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, Bengal an independent Muslim state.
Britain had established a trading post in Calcutta in 1698, which quickly prospered. Sensing rich pickings, Siraj-ud-daula, the Nawab of Bengal, came down from his capital at Mushirdabad and easily took Calcutta in 1756. Clive defeated him the following year at the Battle of Plassey, helped by the treachery of Siraj-ud-daula's uncle,
Mir Jafar who commanded the greater part of the nawab's army. He
was rewarded by succeeding his nephew as nawab but after the battle of Buxar in 1764, the British took full control of Bengal.
CALCUTTA :
Densely populated and polluted,Calcutta suffers from lot of drawbacks. Calcutta has been plagued by chronic labour unrest resulting in a decline of productivity capacity. Despite all these drawbacks Calcutta is city with a soul. It is the city, which is the seat of art and cultural developments. All greats like Rabidranath Tagore, Bankim chandra, Vidyasagar, Vivekananda, Satayjit Chatterjee, Kalidas were from this very Bengal. Great freedom fighters like Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Chittranjan, Khudiram Bose were born here. Most of the world-renowned personalities like Mother Teresa to Amartya Sen belongs to the land of Bengal. Bengal welcomes all with its charm and gracious Hospitality.
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HISTORY : Calcutta isn't an ancient city like Delhi, with its impressive relics of the past. In fact, it's largely a British creation, which dates only some 300 years and was the capital of British India until the beginning of this century. In 1686, the British abanonded Hooghly, their trading post 38 km up the Hooghly River from present day Calcutta, and moved downriver to three small villages- Sutanati, Govindapur and Kalikata. Calcutta takes its name from the last of the three tiny settlements. Job Charnock, An English merchant who married a Brahmin's widow whom he dissuaded to becoming a sati, was the leader of the British merchant who made the move. At first the post was not a great success and was abandonent on a number of occasions, but 1696 a fort was laid out infront of the present -day BBD Bagh (Dalhousie Square) and in 1698, Aurangzeb's grandson gave the British official the permission to occupy the villages.
Calcutta then grew steadily until 1756, when Siraj-ud-duala, the Nawab of Mushirdabad, attacked the town. Most of the British inhabitants escaped, but those captured were packed into underground cellars, where during the night, most of them suffocated in what become known as 'the black hole of Calcutta'.
Early in 1757, the British, under Clive of India, retook Calcutta and made peace with the Nawab. Later the same year, however, Siraj-ud-duala sided with the French and was defeated at the Battle of Plassey, a turning point in the British- Indian history. A much stronger fort was built in Calcutta and the town become the capital of British India.
Much of Calcutta enduring development took place between 1780 and 1820. Later in the 19th century, Bengal became an important Centre in the stuggle for Indian independence, and this was a major reason for the decision to transfer the capital to Delhi in 1911. Loss of political power did not alter Calcutta's economic control, and the city continued to prosper after World War II.
Partition affected Calcutta more than any thing else. Bengal and the Punjab where the Hindu and the Muslim populations were living in harmony, a drawing line was drawn between them. The result in Bengal was that Calcutta, the jute procuring and export centre of India, became a city without a hinterland, while across the border in Bangladesh, the jute was grown without anywhere to process or export it.
The massive influx of refugees, combined with India's own postwar population explosion, led to Calcutta becoming an International urban horror story.
Calcutta has many places of interests like the Indian Museum (biggest in India), the maidan, Fort William, Ochterlony Monument, the famous cricket ground Eden Gardens, St Paul's Cathedral, Birla Planetarium, Victoria Memorial, Kali temple, Horticultural garden (biggest in India), Botanical garden, Howrah Bridge, Marble palace, Belur math and offcourse the New Market - the biggest shopping complex where almost anything under the sun could be purchased.
New Market has also the largest wholesale market for vegetables both grown locally and got from different states-specially Nasik and Pune. Here also, one gets to see whole carcass of beef, mutton, pigs being skinned and jointed into huge cuts ready for being sold as wholesale or retail cuts. One also has a separate fish market where various kinds of fishes, both locally grown in bheries (inland fish farming where different species of fishes are cultivated together, at the same time in a cultured environment so as to give a higher yield.), and also fresh catches from the rivers and the seas are all got here and then segregated. One is amazed by the total quantity of daily catches that are got in the market if one goes to the market early in the morning.
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PHILOSOPHY OF FOOD : Just as man is said to be made up of the three gunas or quality which are reflected in his appearance and his appetites, food too is divided into three kinds. Satvic food is light, bland, usually vegetarian and white and gold in colour. The finest rice mixed with ghee(clarified butter), milk and the milk products, honey and fruits- fresh and sun-dried - are the foods for ascetics. Rajasic food is gold and red in colour, consists of meat, fish, eggs, wines and beer and are supposed to arouse passion in kings and warriors. Tasmasic food is red and black in colour, consists of flesh of small animals, pork and beef, scaleless fish and food cooked the day before.
The Brahmins at the apex of the socio-religious order are largely vegetarian and eat satvic foods. But the Bengali Brahmin found the flavour of Bengal's sweet water fish irresistible and fell to temptation and called the fish as 'fruit of the ocean'.
Food is classified into kancha (uncooked or unripe) and paka (cooked or ripe). Anna is the sanskrit word for rice which when cooked is bhaat in Bengali and is a central fact of Bengali cultural existence.
Dairy products became increasingly a part of the trappers and gatherers diet. Paramana was among the first food and the name given to rice and milk boiled together and has been the traditional offering to god for thousand of years.
Sweetened milk with sugar cane, the strength-giving properties of paramana makes it the auspicious food on important occasions. Popularly called payeesh, it is the solid food a child is offered at the annaprasan, the rice eating ceremony.
The vivid picture of the kitchen in medieval Bengali literature collected in Mangal Kavyas. A woman's culinary activity makes her a participant in the sacrificial aspect in which cooking is closely connected to religion. Preparation of a meal is also linked to Karma (desire). A young woman must study the rules of culinary erotica and develop them into an art to win over husband's attention- a universal feminine strategy. The best role model for a Bengali woman is Draupadi as it is believed that she used to keep all her five husbands happy and none used to return from her kitchen hungry.
The rules of do's and don'ts governing personal cleanliness and when to eat was effectively reinforced by religious sanctions and celestial occurrences. Bathing and changing into clean clothes dried
in the wind were perquisites for the daily puja. Women did not enter the kitchen at all times and before doing so head bath was mandatory. Before a solar or a lunar eclipse, the hearth is not lit. Food, cooked or uncooked is not eaten. After an eclipse, the kitchen is washed before it resumes its normal operations. The reasons given are that the absence of the main illuminating body - the sun and the moon- it is believed that contamination by insects and other harmful bodies may go unnoticed.
Calcutta is the rice bowl that stretches Eastward from China to Japan. The major festivals centre around rice. The goddess Durga's annual visit is the city's biggest festival. She comes riding on a lion with weapons in her ten hands. Another popular representation of Durga is Annapurna or Annada, the giver of rice. There are two kinds of rice depending on the method of dehusking the paddy - atap or sun-dried and siddha or parboiled rice. Each kind has many varieties known by different names and used for different occasions. Among the sun-dried varieties grown mainly in the adjoining district of Burdwan, are the small-grained scented Kamini, the fragrant Gopalbhog and Gobindabhog. Gopal and Gobindabhog are affectionate appellations of the god Krishna. Most people here are familiar with the famous basamati rice which is best used in pulao.
In Vedic times, dal is mentioned and identified by the word supa, similar to the English word soup. The cook was called supakar. Dal was the main source of vegetable protein and is the second most staple diet of Bengal.
The philosophy of food also gets deep entrenched into everyday lifestyle where food is still being used as prophylactic and antiseptic. Kalaidal or biuli dal are used as a contraceptive, and dumurer dalna (fig stew) was given to diabetics. Turmeric was used as an antiseptic and honey with ghee proves to be a throat soother and a laxative.The Bengali learnt to season his foods with many more spices that became available and he readily devised their own particular order, proportions and combinations in using the aromatic imports of asafoetida, cumin and saffron.
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BENGALI CULTURE: ITS HISTORICAL HERITAGE WITH ITS INFLUENCE ON FOOD.
If you ask a Bengali for the shortest description of Bengali food, the answer is likely to be rice and fish, unless he is a vegetarian, in which case he may say subji (veg.) and rice. An invitee to a Bengali house for an elaborate, well-cooked meal includes varieties of fish, vegetables and meat, with off course sweets.
In this fertile, tropical delta that serves as a basin for innumerable rivers, rivulets and tributaries, it is rice that has been the common sustaining staple from pre-Aryan times until today. Thus the commonest way of enquiring if a person has had a meal, especially lunch is to ask if he has "taken rice". Mostly a basic
Bengali meal will consist of rice, pulses, vegetables, fish and sweets.
But once you get into the details of cooking, a starling polarization of ideas and approach begins to emerge. To talk, to someone from West Bengal, a Ghoti, he is likely to tell, that the uncivilized Bangals, from East Bengal know nothing about cooking, and that they ruin the food by drowning it in oil and spices, that they eat half-cooked fish and even the best of fish can be ruined by their peculiar habit of adding bitter to vegetables.
For, there part the East Bengali or the Bangal would decline, that the Ghotis are the greatest philistines on earth, who can cook nothing, without making it cloyingly sweet, or render all their dishes bland and colourless, and that they are hardly true Bengalis, for they prefer to eat wheat – flour chapaties instead of rice, especially at dinner. This distinct polarization is very, very dominant and vibrant especially in joint-families where Grandmother and Grandfather holds the crux for the family.
But if you have the mind, the heart, the taste to explore, you will find an enormous variety in a cuisine where richness and subtlety are closely interoven. With an array of ingredients ranging from water lilies and water hyacinth or even potatoes and gourd peel (Yes! Only the peel), to fish, meat, crab, tortoise and prawn, the Bengali has also devised a combination of spices, that’s very delicate and subtle. From the simplest mashed potato and mustard oil, green chillies or fried, crushed red chillies, raw onion and salt, to the exquisite ‘prawn malai curry’ to ‘bhapa Ilish’ – Bengali takes an equal delight in whatever he happens to have.
The gentle rotation of the seasons, the garnering of the earth’s resources have generated a large number of local rituals, some secular indicated in Bengali proverb of ‘thirteen festivals in twelve months’. For the pleasure of savouring the taste of fish, he needed to have his portion of rice. The spectra of an empty with no rice is dreadful to the Bengali, mind that he cannot even bring himself to articulate it. To indicate that the stock of rice is "increasing" – almost hoping the avert bad luck by the use of opposite word.
To the rural Hindi Bengali, rice is almost synonymous with Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and prosperity. Even today, many sophisticated urban Bengalis, who don’t directly participate in the cultivation or processing of rice, finds it irrationally difficult, to waste a single grain of rice. Even, when the portion of the plate is too much, they will try to finish it because wasting rice is almost tantament to insulting the goddess.
By medieval times, Bengalis literature began to contain elaborate description of available and cooked food, thus unfolding a picture of a leisurely lifestyle among a certain class who loved good food and devised many elaborate and subtle ways of cooking it. The noticeable thing was that most of them sweet-water or brackish-water fish, not any marine varieties – and the preference still remains.
The dual entity of rice – fish that is at the heart of Bengali cuisine is reflected in a thousand and one ways in the rituals and ceremonies of the Bengalis. Unhusked rice, called Dhan, is an inevitable part of any ceremonial offering to the gods. In parts of West Bengal there is a custom, that when a new bride drives with her husband to his house, she is welcomed with a platter of offerings containing dhan. For her part, she would have to hold a live fish in her left hand. This fish would later be released into the family fishpond to breed and multiply. During the ceremony of eating the shadh or derived foods, which takes place towards the end of pregnancy, probably based on the assumption that if the mother has no unsatisfied carvings left she will produce a healthy child, rice and fish are the compulsory items. From the preferences of living it is
not such a big transition to the preferences of the dead. The spirits of ancestors are appeased at funerals by a final offering called the pinda, cooked rice and fish mixed together in a lump.
Apart from rice and fish, Bengalis have always taken advantage of the green vegetables and tubers that grow all over the land. Historians, base their conclusions on a study of linguistics, think that modern vegetables like aubergines, several types of gourds and taro, as well as the bitters leaves of the jute plant, figured in the pre – Aryan Bengali diet. Even, the rice plant and the banana tree has strong mythical significance in Bengali life. A young specimen, is always placed outside the front door, together with a green coconut sitting a top an earthern pitcher, when a weeding or any other auspicious ceremony takes place.
But, one of the striking difference of staple between ancient and contemporary times is the absence of any kind of pulses in the food of ancient Bengal. The Charyapada, the earliest example of Bengali literature dating back approximately to the eleventh century, depict fishing and hunting for game, and mention rice, sugar-cane and many other crops. But there is no reference to the kind of dal. It is only in post-fifteenth-century literature that several kinds of dal, as well as ways of cooking them, begins to be mentioned. It seems that in this respect ancient Bengal had more in common with South-east Asia and China, where pulses are virtually unknown than the Bengal of today. Even now, most of dals consumed in West Bengal comes from other states in India.
Apart, from the natural cropping factor, the super abundant supply of fish made dal as a source of protein unnecessary.
A stable agricultural way of life also meant the presence of cattle. Milk and milk products become an important part of Bengali food from very early times. Apart, from being drunk by itself, milk was often served at the end of a simple meal, when it was mixed with a little cooked rice and white sugar or date palm sugar. In rural households nothing could be more welcome symbol of plenty than the cows standing in the bynes and the pitchers of foaming milk they produced.
Yogurt too, has been an important part of daily food, especially in the summer when the thought of aid the digestion. Aryan culture attributed auspiciousness to it. Well wishing mothers or sisters make a tikka or dot on the forehead with yoghurt whenever the child is setting out for an important undertaking. Unsweetened yoghurt was used in cooking from fairly early times. The Naishadhacharita, probably written before the Sena dynasty took over in Bengal, mentions a dish spiced with mustard and yogurt served at royal wedding. The Muslims later used yogurt as a wine substitute. They developed a drink called barhani, which is yogurt mixed water and whipped with salt and ground pepper. This continues to be served even today at Muslim feasts where a lot of rich meats and pulaos are supposed to be digested with the aid of the barhani. Many of their meat dishes require a little marinating in yogurt and the Korma and the nigella seeds of Bengal.
The long period of Muslim rule from the eleventh century to the demise of the Mughal Empire and the take-over by the British in the mid-eighteenth century firmly established Islam as the second most important religion of Bengal. Mass conversion took place and the lower castes of Hindu society whose members had been oppressed and exploited by the higher castes under the well-entrenched forces of orthodox Brahminism.The remnants of the Buddhist who had servived the tyranny of aggressive Hinduism under the Sena dynasty, were also tempted to accept the faith of the Muslim rulers. This process continued until, by the later half of the nineteenth century, Muslims contributed almost half the population of Bengal. In northern and eastern Bengal they were the majority, but they had little besides their strength of number. Land, power,
good education and professional opportunities were all mostly for the Hindus. This inequality and geographical concentration saved the seeds of discontent, which eventually led to East Bengal becoming East Pakistan, when the Indian subcontinent gained independence in 1947.
Culinarily , the impact of Muslim cooking was at first mostly to be seen among the leisured and affluent classes, especially the Nawabs who represented the Mughal empire in Bengal. But, however restricted initially, it led to development of a Bengali Muslim cuisine of Northern India and the Nizami cuisine of Hyderabad. It is less rich and subtler than both of them, tending to substitute yogurt and lemon juice for cream and solid kheer, of other Muslim cooking. Beef and chicken were also introduced into the diet; the former a bitter bone of contention even today, the latter becoming a part of the Hindu households, one of the best-known specialties developed by the Bengali Muslims is the Rezala made with Khasi(castrated goat), in which lemon, yogurt, milk and spices and chillies. Fragrant and sharp, the chillies produce an uplifting sensation for a potato cloyed with an excess of ghee or other ground spices.
The last Nawab of Bengal lost his throne and his life after the Battle of Plassey in June 1757. But the two centuries of British presence in Bengal not really made much difference to the way urban or rural Bengal continued to eat. In common with the rest of India, the colonial presence have resulted in an Anglo-Indian cuisine which remained confined by and large to the ruling race and the mixed breed of Anglo-Indians. The one noticeable contribution this had made to the everyday Bengali food is the inclusion of two extra ordinary misnomers, chop and cutlet.the English words, which have now become Bengali, were probably adopted by the cooks who worked in British households to denote their crossbreed. The chop today means a round or oval potato cake, with a fish or meat stuffing, which is dipped in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried crisply. The cutlet, which can meat, chicken or prawn, usually means one of those elements seasoned lightly and pounded to form a long flat,oval which is then coated and fried the same way. From the kitchen it did not take long for these two items to end up in urban eating joints, and there are many shops in Bengali towns that specializes in ‘chop-cutlet’ as a snack outlet. Mustard, that is inevitably served with these is not the Colman’s mustard favoured by the British; it is Bengali Kasundi, mixture of pungent mustard paste, mustard oil, lemon juice or sour green mango.
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Eating and Serving Bengali Foods.
The Bengalis are perhaps the greatest food lovers in the Indian subcontinent. A long leisurely meal of many items which requires long hours of labour and ingenuity in the kitchen to be produced, has been as much a part of Bengali culture as ceremonious eating in France. The traditional way of serving food is on the floor where individual pieces of carpet, called asans, would be spread for each person to sit on. Infront of this seat would be placed a large platter, made of bell metal or silver depending on the family’s economic status. Around this platter would be arranged a number of small metal or silver bowls in which portions of dal, vegetable, fish, meat, chutney, and dessert would be served. In the center of the platter there would be a small mound of piping hot rice flanked by vegetable fritters, wedges of lime, whole green chillies and perhaps a bit of pickle. Finally, in the center of the mound, a little hole would be made to pour a spoonful of ghee or classified butter to flavour the initial mouthful of rice.
The star of the eating scene was inevitably the male: husband, father, son, son-in-law and others. The women would move around, anxiously serving extra helpings or directing the servants to bring them. Some of the women would sit and ply palm-leaf fans to cool the heated male as the pleasure of intake intensified. But, in traditional homes, there would always be the secondary-eating scene where the women could finally sit down and enjoy their meal. But, the best portion of fish and meat would be gone, devoured by the superior sex, but that did not detract significantly from their enjoyment. The long-establish female tradition of savoring the ultimate pleasure from concoctions of vegetables and fish bones or succlent stalks cooked with tiny shrimps of various kinds of pickles and chutneys is rooted in this practice of making the best of secondary resources.
The approach to food is essentially tactile as in all of India; Bengalis eat everything with their fingers. Neither table sliver nor chopsticks are used as aid to convey food to the mouth. What, after
all, could be better than one’s own sensitive fingers to pick out the bones of fish like hilsa or koi? Quick apart from the functional aspects, the fingers also provide an awareness of which becomes as important as that felt by the tongue. The fingers appreciate all the various mashed vegetables or the different kinds of rice or varieties of fish we eat before they enter the mouth.
Each individual has a peculiar style of dealing with his food. Some people pick up their rice and accompaniments very daintily, their fingers barely touching the food. This is supposed to be the style of elite. Other prefers to mash their rice in their fingers before mixing it with the other items. Yet, other will forms balls of rice and other items in their palms before popping it in their mouth. Their mothers inevitably feed children in this way. And then there are those hearty, somewhat course eaters who can be seen licking their palms, all the way to their wrist. The other peculiarity about the Bengali-eating scene is the unashamed accumulation of remnants.
Since succlent vegetables stalks, fish bones and fish heads, meat and chicken bones are all meticulously chewed until a drop of juice is left inside, heaps of chewed remnants, besides each plate are an inevitable part of a meal. The custom of immediately and scrupulously wiping clear the part of the floor – now the table – where food has been eaten is probably related to the presence of such remnants.
Bengalis associate too much of there foods with festivals and a popular saying goes that Bengalis has 13 festivals in 12 months. Hence, all the year round, something to do with food is always in air. All the major Bengali festivals (household) are held in the dalan, which serves as informal gathering, place for the family and old friends. The flooring of the dalan is quite artistically painted or alpana draw, incredibly with flowers, fruits, leaves and couch shells drawn with a rag dipped in rice flour butter. Well, after the event is over, they lingered as a memento of festivity.
But apart from festivities a routine of daily shopping for fish and vegetables, grinding of spices, cutting of vegetables and cooking of rice, dal, macher jhal makes up for the day. Vegetables are got from the market, with extreme scrutiny, as to there freshness, shape, size and off course the price by the head of the family, most usually early in the morning. If the vegetables were not the right shape, the dish would never taste, such was the long flat slices for the fish jhol; tiny cubes for the dry bhaji spiced with salt, dry red chillies and a pinch of panchphoron; the combination of five whole spices so dear to the Bengali nose and potato; slanting but small pieces for the mixed vegetables, halved for the meat and or chicken curry, quarters or whole new potatoes for the cooked slowly in a thick spicy sauce. Another quite striking fact of Bengali household, is being the absence of refrigerators, as most of the food that are cooked for the day are consumed in that day itself, and any left-over are had early-in the morning as panta-bhaat. The very, idea of not having a refrigerator is to buy fresh vegetables and fishes from the market, which are in abundance. Bengali culture has a set of rules which is every much intertwined with a set of rules regarding food habits, called ‘achar-bichar’. It was a set of taboos centered around the basic item, the pot of rice. Anything that touched the pot or grains of cooked rice, became entho, and had to be washed to be reusable. Serving spoons, glasses, serving dishes of vegetables, even hands and mouth, all had to be rinsed after contact. Even a sick-person is
not allowed to eat rice, or anything that touched cooked rice, while sitting on bed, for that would mean washing the bed-clothes and sprinkling the holy water of the Ganga on the wooden frame! And, in keeping with the irrationality of the whole system, uncooked rice as well as puffed rice or popped rice was not considered entho. Bengali, is probably one of the few languages that has two different words for raw and cooked rice: - chaal and bhaat.
With the influence of urbanization, now the Bengali households have chairs and dinning tables. But still few years ago dinning was essential on floors, with few asans (mats) spread in a row and banana leaves (in festivity) or the brass plates laid in front of the guests. Before the guest sat down, the leaves would be embellished in the corners with a bit of salt, and a wedge of lime, fried aubergines split lengthwise in the middle, and with the stem still attached, a little dab of fried spinach and some fried potatoes. As the guest sat down, the serving would begin, each server carrying brass buckets in which the cooks had heaped the food. Hot rice, cauliflower and potato dalna, the moong dal cooked with the heads of carp, followed by the carp kalia and the fries. Then came the meat curry served with those flaky, puffy luchis. And, finally the dessert or ‘misti’, with ‘Rossogollas’ almost being compulsory! It is a real feast to watch the little drama that inevitably resulted with some of the guests, who really loved to eat but had to pretend, for the sake of good manners, that they did not. Whenever seconds or thirds helpings were offered, they would extend both hands over the banana leaf, look panic stricken and deny vehemently that they couldn’t eat another morsel. The server, who used to be in dhoti and gangee (vest) with a gamcha (muslin rag) tied to his waist, would off course refuse to accept this and threaten to pour the food over his hands until, good manners having being observed, the guest would remove their hands in mock dismay and allow the food to be served and consumed with relish. After the meat came the chutney, a common winter favourite, and hot crisp salty papars. These were supposed to cleanse the mouth and prepare you for desserts.
The most important aspect of a joint family in Bengal is eating together, food from same handi (cooking pot) prepared in the same henshel (hearth). The bunch of keys to the bhandar ghar
(storeroom) was secured tied to the sari of the ginni or chotelaine – controller of household. Depending on the size and station of family, there were one or more storerooms. The staple rice, was stored for the year in enormous terracotta jars and allowed to age.
Pure golden mustard oil, the pungent Bengali cooking medium is stored in zinc lined tins. Ghee (clarified butter) was usually stored in large glass jars. Spices are kept fresh in glazed brown and white jars. Also, some identical jars were used for storing chutneys and pickles.
Before cold storage days, some of the shelves were lined with a layer of sand on which the new potatoes were laid in neat rows. During the mango season spaces was found for baskets of these summer delights from the mango orchards of North Bengal.
Clay pots of molasses, casein and homemade sweetmeats were suspended on giant hooks from the ceiling safe from marauders of all kinds.
Times have changed and the storerooms have shrunk to a cupboard, tucked away in a corner of an apartment in multi-storied complex anywhere in the concrete jungle. The contents remain the same on a diminishing scale with addition of varieties of patent sauces, pastas, soup cubes and packets of pre-cooked foods.
Use of brass, copper and bell metal has gradually replaced the lighter aluminum until health hawks began to pontificate on the hazardrous reaction of the containers and contents. The convenience of packed spice powders has almost silenced the gourmet’s cry for the finesse of freshly ground spices. But, die-hards insist on hard-grinding mustard with chilli and a little sugar and salt to dispel the bitterness and bring out the real punch. While, food processors and blenders have wiped away the tears from chopping and grinding onions, the twin corner stone of most Calcutta kitchens is the sil-nora.
It is really amazing that in a mega-city at the end of twentieth century heads pop out of the windows whenever the cries of bikriwala (rag-and-bone-man), the quilt-maker, the knife-grinder and the grinding stone cutter are heard in the street below. The stone cutter re-notches the geometric patterns and the lucky fish motif worn smooth by use of the heavy sil, the pentagonal stone slab. The Nora is the smooth black stone moving partner. The inseparable pair is often handed drawn from mother-in-law to daughter-in-law. With the nuclear family gaining ground, a housewife setting up her home will take along an experienced matron to buy the best silnora at the fair.
Calcutta’s annual religious melas (fairs) are among the many rural vestiges that the city will never outgrow. Many of the villages in West Bengal are identified by a particular craft, usually utilization and always beautiful. Crafts persons come into setup shop at the charak mela at Poddoppukur in South Calcutta and on Beadon street in the north. The accent is on traditional kitchenware of stone, clay, wood and bamboo. Old wooden chaki-belan (round party-board and rolling pin) are replaced. And one of the crazy item of these fairs or melas is munching of bhajas, starting from begun bhaja, to papor bhaja and all sorts of varied bhajas.
In traditional joint families, the ginni sits cross-legged before her own personal boti. The cutting of vegetables is an important facet of her preparation. Each dish, demands that its vegetables be cut in a particular shape. Gourd, brinjal, wax gourd and potatoes must be cut uniformly cubed for chhenkki, quartered for jhole and halved horizontally for dalna, with a mental calculation, as to how much for jhole, and how much for bhaja.
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http://jng_chef.tripod.com/Bengali_Culture.htmJAFAR IQBAL
091-27-128
Department of Real Estate
Daffodil International University
