Food and Family Over the Years

In my family, cooking as well as eating constituted a major part of one’s life and it has certainly influenced my way of eating. One to have had a major influence on us regarding food was my grandmother. She led a very simple life but when she stepped into the kitchen everyone knew that they were in for a feast. Unfortunately I was only able to experience her cooking for about 15 years as she passed away in 2001. Before that she had made everyone’s taste buds so sensitive that they were almost allergic to bad food. For example, whenever my father gets invited to a party nowadays the hosts become really nervous as to whether he will like the food or not. If my father approves of the food to be good, they breathe a sigh of relief. My father has never backed away from openly criticizing the cook. For him everything else could be wrong but the food had to be right.

In the nineties our house in Calcutta, India, was the spot for social gatherings such as festivals and celebrations. We had a joint family system where my family, my grandmother and the families of my two uncles would live in a large house. Therefore we were the center point for special occasions such as the Durga puja ritual. On these occasions there would be about 10 to 15 other cooks trying to assist my grandmother in preparing the huge feast. Here the festivals go about for up to 10 days which meant good food every single one of those days. People from all over the locality would come and enjoy the food.

Bengali delicacies mainly include fish. There are innumerable types of fish in the rivers and bays of Calcutta which has led to this taste for fish. Most of them are sea water fishes such as rohu(“rui”), climbing perch(“koi”), catfish(“magur”), prawn(“chingri”) but the most popular and my favorite one is the sea water fish called hilsa or “ilish” in Bengali. The fish would be cooked in the form of a curry which would be eaten with rice. It could also be fried which could be served as an appetizer. On special occasions and often during dinners, there would be at least 4 or 5 different dishes of only fish. Other than this there would be mutton, egg and few vegetable dishes.

I had been having fish for many years but I also had a taste for chicken which was extremely rare in our family due to religious reasons. The rule was that you could not cook chicken in the house but it could be cooked and brought from outside. Personally it never made any sense to me. Mutton was the main source of meat in the family because beef and pork were also forbidden due to religious reasons. I had the rare taste of chicken once in a while when I went to my aunt’s house or to a restaurant. This separation from chicken made me rebellious towards mutton which I was having since birth. The fact that chicken was rare it made it more enticing to my taste buds. That did not mean that the mutton was not good. In truth it was the best mutton I had ever tasted in my life. All that stopped after the passing of my grandmother.

By this time my family and I had moved to Dubai and ever since my grandmother died I have never tasted mutton again. The reason for this maybe because no one else could cook mutton as well as my grandmother. But it was kind of a freedom. In Dubai I could eat all the chicken I wanted because there were no such restrictions. At the same time the amount of fish cooked in the house dropped considerably. This was to my father’s dislike. He preferred fish and unlike me hated chicken and loved mutton. This is one reason why my father is always criticizing people if the food is not good. Whenever we went to the house of a Bengali family in Dubai my father would compare their cooking to the cooking of my grandmother which was kind of harsh and unfair because honestly my grandmother was the ultimate when it came to cooking Bengali food. Till now my father has never truly appreciated anyone’s effort to try and cook Bengali food.

I hardly ate at home. During my school days I would drink a glass of coffee before going to school. The lunch would be served at school. It was not ideal but it would do. In the evening I would sometimes go out and eat some snack – probably the famous Arabian food called “Shawarma”. Dinner was very uncertain. Out of the seven days, 4 of the days there would be cooked food which included 1 vegetable dish, 1 non-vegetarian dish and rice. Two of the days we would order and one of the days I would eat out. One can argue that cooking was comparatively harder in Dubai due to lack of correct ingredients for the dishes. Another reason would be that my grandmother had at her disposal 2 to 3 assistants who would cut the vegetables, go to the market and assemble the silverware but in Dubai my mother only had one assistant and that to for 4 days a week. My mother is an engineer and reaches home from working earliest by 7 pm so it is hard for her to prepare elaborate meals. Only in the holidays do I get a taste of proper home made food.

This was the situation for me throughout my time at Dubai. At college I experienced a complete change in food. For the first time in my life I experienced complete freedom. I could eat anything I wanted and my parents did not discourage that fact. I had my first real taste of beef and pork which if heard by my relatives in India would not go down too well.

To conclude I feel that throughout my life I have had a continuous exposure to new kinds of food and my options of food have increased considerably to my favor and now I am free to eat anything but sometimes I miss the cooking of my mother and my grandmother.