Gastronomically challenged, I

Here’s a typical scene from my dinner outings with friends. They know exactly what they want, which is usually something that was dead at one time, while I sit there scratching my…er…head and going through exactly five vegetarian options listed in the menu for the eighty-eighth time.

Most of my friends are non-vegetarians, which is fine since I have no hang-ups with people tearing away at meat, red or white, so long as it doesn’t smell like dead meat. Right enough they order something that looks pretty appetising and fulfilling. And they are completely relishing it, while my vegetarian dish is sitting idle, looking pretty.

With every bite they take, I feel as if I have been eating ash all this while and not known it! The fact that almost 90 per cent of these people are complete non-vegetarians while my personal choice has been to stop at mushrooms doesn’t escape me. It makes me wonder whether the taste of blood – so to speak – whets the taste buds.

So have I been missing out on one of the greater joys of life? At the threshold of my thirties now, I have often wondered if my lack of interest in either trying out different cuisines or a total lack of interest in cooking is something of a disorder, where instead of ingredients and their measurements on paper all I can see are dancing alphabets swimming in vegetable soup.

My social conditioning since childhood has been that, to be a loving wife and a good daughter-in-law – in short a complete woman, I have to be a great cook first. So as a child I started out by helping mother on the side with cutting salad or buttering the bread for sandwiches. I was later encouraged to watch cookery shows on the only channel there was - Doordarshan – and I soon graduated to doing my own little show in the kitchen after it closed post lunch. I became my own little celebrity chef.

So here I was, a midget version of myself, explaining to a phantom audience plastered on the kitchen wall how to make a biscuit and jam sandwich or a mixture of all that was left from lunch. Sometimes it was just how to make that perfect tea. I found a rather unwilling taster in my older brother who was nonetheless willing to take the risk. Unfortunately, he never went beyond the second bite.

Since then I have constantly heard my mother complain about my lack of cooking. And all her attempts to make me take on the ladle with equal zest as I take the television remote have failed. I do cook today, but only the basic stuff and only when I must. It didn’t help that I wasn’t even much interested in eating. I eat to live and as long as my stomach isn’t secretly eating itself, I’m alright. 

My indifference to gourmet food was to the extent that I couldn’t eat anything the time a friend took me to try a real fancy restaurant in a five-star hotel in Bandra. My food looked so elaborate that I couldn’t tell what I was eating: it looked complicated and it turned me off. Give me Nutella and cream crackers any time.    

There’s another thing that I simply love. Nigella Feasts on TLC. It is by far the most intriguing, deliciously appetising cookery shows on television I have ever seen. And I’m not even a foodie!

Nigella Lawson, a British best-selling author and host of 'Nigella Feasts' and 'Nigella Express', takes cooking to a whole new level. Described as “a delectable series from the domestic goddess herself” by Food Network, the show had me hooked instantly – like so many men all over the world. And she really made me want to cook. And eat. 

What you can’t miss about her is that she looks absolutely happy and completely satisfied simply cooking. Nigella knows how to keep her viewers interested. She doesn’t just ‘throw in’ the pomegranate in the curd but ‘gently crushes the lovely ruby drops so that the curd looks a beautiful pink’. That’s the kind of cooking she does. My favourite part is when she tiptoes to the fridge in the end to make a midnight snack. It’s good to see a celebrity cook taste their own cooking. So what if I can never get myself to do that.

Amar shonar bangla

As children, we are always eager to grow up. But it is only as adults that we realize that the icing from the cake has been licked and the best part is probably over.

So has it been with me. I came into this world, on a day when folks on the other side of the world were busy enjoying fireworks to celebrate Independence Day, in a not-so-snazzy part of Kolkata – the north. I grew up in Mumbai and it is the only place I call home. But the city where I was born – where my maternal home is - holds a special place in my heart. It is where I have spent every single summer vacation, with or without my family.

For me, ‘quaint’ will always bring to mind the bottle green doors and green shuttered windows on each and every house dating back to the British Raj nestled comfortably alongside narrow lanes. It is a neighbourhood of now-crumbling 18^th and 19^th century buildings that are painted either yellow with green doors and windows or in a white-and-light blue combination.

I still remember the times when my maternal grandfather in his trademark white starched dhoti and kurta took me to buy either milk or sondesh every morning holding my tiny hands and declare with unmistakable pride to acquaintances as we passed by ‘aamar may’r may’ (my daughter’s daughter).

North Kolkata has a beauty of its own that often goes unrecognized and therefore unacknowledged. It is still largely populated with Bengalis and Marwari families that settled many generations ago to set up businesses here. One can still spot Tant saris – cotton embroidered saris that are so characteristic of Bengal - drying from pretty wrought-iron balconies, the controversial hand-pulled rickshaws and the lazy trams.

This kind of beauty may as well be an acquired taste for I know many south Calcuttans who remain unaware of this side of the city. It is of little surprise then that most tourists who are looking for a typical Kolkata experience rarely go beyond British-style buildings in Park Street and elsewhere in South Kolkata. Even the guide books have yet to discover it.

But there are a few to whom this kind of heritage matters. A foundation called Cruta – Conservation & Research of Urban Traditional Architecture – founded by a tiny group of conservationists has started organizing heritage walks through streets to educate people about the eclectic architecture at hand.

It is of course difficult to lure the youngsters from all the malls that have sprouted up in the south (that is leading to a whole new mall culture among Bengalis) to get them to walk through filth and impromptu public baths near the water mains. But it is a start.

For me though, the after-effects of spending a large part of my early childhood in Kolkata will never wear out. I remember as a second grader at the age of eight or so I dressed up in a white dhoti-and-kurta for a fancy dress competition at school looking every bit like a true Bengali Babu. I even sang an epoch-making poem by Rabindranath Tagore which was later made popular by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose - 'Ekla Chalo Re' (Walk alone).