I have always grown up with food all around me – that is the norm if you are growing up in an Indian household in India. My earliest memories of food are my Sunday shopping trips with my father around when I was 3 – typical bazaar in West Bengal, with aisles of vendors selling fresh seasonal vegetables and fish, mostly fresh water.
I remember feeling the buzz and excitement from the hum in the bazaar, the jostling crowds, the haggling, the careful examining of the produce, inspecting every pod of pea and every green chilli. My father, now I realise, had the ultimate eye for the best produce. He would not consider buying any produce that did not meet his standard of beauty or health. He stayed away from vegetables that were not in season, questioning their existence and well-being. Same with the fish, which is a Bengali staple. All the produce that we shopped went into little cloth shopping bags which my mother would have sewn in her sewing machine from fabric odds and ends. And they or anybody in their generation in 70s India had never heard of terms like eco-friendly, green, natural etc. It was a way of life – could it be any other? And the grand finale of this trip was when my baba (father) came home and emptied multiple bags of his finds from the Sunday market for the big reveal. I knew what would follow – my mother’s usual reaction of why so much of okra and no spinach(or some such)- a mostly feigned housewifely annoyance and how she would manage to cook all that, trying to disguise her real excitement, and my father’s lament of how he wasn’t early enough to get a certain kind of fish or that he looked for unripe jackfruit in vain. Then my father would get busy instructing the maid how to clean the fish and planning the menu for a late lunch and a special Sunday dinner, which very often he would cook unlike the rest of the days of the week.
This was the familiar comfortable Sunday routine of my childhood. I would absorb this dance of my parents, helping my baba sort the vegetables. As I grew older, I started helping in the kitchen because I just couldn’t get over the wonder of these beautiful ingredients, the touch, smell and color, and how they could be magically transformed into something delicious. Food, its thoughtful preparation and how to use it to express your love and care for the people around you, I realise, was a gift my parents and elders gave me. So this first blog, which my 11 yr old son helped me get started, is dedicated to my baba and ma, without whom I would not have known this passion and joy.
*Originally written March 3, 2011
