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. Over the years my food habits and experiences have gone through various changes. When it came to food, my grandmother had a huge influence on us. 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 fifteen 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 as 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 has to be right.
In the nineties our house in Calcutta, India, used to be the junction 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 ten to fifteen other cooks trying to assist my grandmother in preparing the huge feast. The festivals go about for up to ten days which meant good food every single one of those days.
Bengali delicacies overwhelmingly comprises 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 four or five 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 have a taste for chicken which was extremely rare in our family due to religious reasons. In Hunduism, generally we are forbidden to have beef and pork. The rule regarding our family 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. Hence mutton was the main source of meat in the family. 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 had been eating 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.
When we moved to Dubai in 2001 I experienced more changes in food habits. It spelled the end for me and mutton. The reason for this maybe because no one else could cook mutton as well as my grandmother. But it was a kind of freedom. In Dubai I could eat all the chicken I wanted because there were no such restrictions. The number of food options dropped in the house. At the same time the amount of fish cooked in the house also dropped considerably. This was to my father’s dislike. He preferred fish and mutton over chicken. 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 could have been considered as harsh and unfair because honestly my grandmother was a maestro in cooking 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 – largely the famous Arabian food called “Shawarma”. Dinner was very uncertain. Out of the seven days, four of the days there would be cooked food which included one vegetable dish, one 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 two to three 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 four days a week. My mother is an engineer and reaches home from working earliest by seven 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 would come as a shock to my relatives in India if word went out.
For now I can eat anything I wish. I have tasted various types of food throughout my life and have experienced many changes to my food habits from my grandmother’s fishes to the various types of meat at college. Even though I am enjoying this relative freedom I sometimes long for those pleasant days in the nineties.
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