I have heard that my great grandparents’ house in Jhinaidah, Khulna, Bangladesh, was in a quaint neighbourhood nestled within taro gardens and betel leaves. But neither I, nor my parents have ever been there. Yet, I feel my roots are there. Some nights, at the dinner table, my family reminisces the memories of a home we’ve never been to. Most of the stories inevitably revolve around the nostalgic food of Opaar (the other side of the border).
Between September and October of the tumultuous year that was 1947, refugees flooded West Bengal from East Bengal. It is usually the festive season in Bengal, the homes adorned with lights and busy in preparation of various marvellous dishes. From the wealthiest households to the lower middle classes, the time of hope reminds us that good always triumphs over evil. But following Partition, the uproot witnessed nothing but bloodshed, violence, and fear.
Walking barefoot with luggage, the elderly and children, without food or water for days, under the sun, and encountering death on the way, looked for the essence of home after reaching the refugee camps on the ‘other’ side. The women of the household, the ginni, tried cooking the food they used to have back home using the little ration they could procure.
My grandmother’s soliloquies consist of how the Ghotis (original inhabitants of West Bengal) would ridicule the refugees for their choice of food and the unconventional ways of making it. But the Bangaals clung to their innovative dishes, their kochur loti (taro root) and khosha bhaja (fried vegetable skin), the only remnants oftheir homeland of unusual abundance.
This abundance of the homeland is reflected in our cooking to this day. Bangaals make dishes from a lot of foraged vegetables, roots, stems, leaves, vegetable peels, and fish offal.
As my mother and grandmother cook hand in hand in the kitchen, they share how our unique vegetarian dishes have reached our table through the legacy of home of Opaar Bangla. Over time, the immigrant Bangaals mastered the art of utilising every part of a vegetable- the skin, stem, roots, leaves, seeds, and whatnot.
A few cumin seeds, fennel seeds (Mouri), mustard seeds, or grounded large cardamom sprinkled on the sizzling oil could easily bring out the smells of a home long left behind. The ginnis remember, they record, they cook authentic.
