19. tasting memories

and the emotions around food

For as long as I remember, food has been an integral part of my life. I have loved eating with a passion, not without ridicule, not without the constant scrutiny from friends and family. As a fat person consuming food, I have often been questioned about why I eat so much, why I can’t just eat a little less and if I eat the way I do, I would surely combust one day.

But fatphobia and lack of boundaries aside, how could I not? This world has so many beautiful flavours, so many fantastic combinations of unique ingredients, so many foods with intricate cultural significance, how could I possibly not make a concerted effort to love and enjoy them all?

I have always been sure that one of my life’s biggest projects would be to document all the food that I have grown up eating – to demystify the idea of Indian food, to look beyond saag paneer, naan bread, biryani and the butter chicken, to put a gleaming spotlight on the foods of my culture, of Bengali cuisine, on the food that came out of my grandmothers’, my aunts’ and my mothers’ kitchen and how intricately intertwined their life experiences and their stories are to the foods they make.

Like the mutton curry that was a constant fixture in my mum’s kitchen when I was growing up. I can taste its rich, spicy aroma intertwined with the succulent goat that has been pressure-cooked after my mother had prepped it slowly and carefully all morning.

Or like the chilli chicken that my Dimma, my maternal grandma, always cooked for me every time I visited from Bangalore. Before Parkinson’s made it hard for her to even sit up straight for extended periods, she would stand in the kitchen all day, marinating the meat, coating it in cornflour and setting aside a bowl of the crispy fried chicken for me and preparing the rest in a spicy, soy-sauce rich gravy.

Or the ‘potoler dolma’ that my Thamma, my dad’s mother, cooked on special occasions and saved the best pieces for her eldest son’s children. I discovered that this recipe, now lost with my grandma’s passing, shared its roots with Middle Eastern and Turkish cuisines down to the name, but with a unique Bengali twist.

Shared between plates, fought over for the last pieces, missed once the cook behind these recipes has left, these foods have become an important part of my memories, of what life meant to me growing up in Kolkata, spoilt by the women in my family and beyond. Sometimes, I feel the strong urge to reinvent these recipes, find them online, or in recipe books to cook them in my German kitchen, to retain a taste of home.

But my mother had instated a ban on kitchen duties for me as a kid, which means when I learnt to cook, I learnt it to survive. The dishes I come up with are a mishmash of every cuisine I have ever tasted, never according to any recipe and with frequent replacements so that they turn into Frankenstein dishes, though they never end up tasting too bad. I don’t know how to cook food from my cuisine and I am terrified that one day, everyone who cooked the foods I love will be gone, and I will only be left with memories of tastes and the attached emotions.

I don’t want to be like Michelle Zauner, who after her mother’s cancer diagnosis was driven by compulsion and nostalgia to learn Korean recipes from Maangchi’s videos to preserve some of the emotions that stem from familiar foods. I want to learn these recipes of my own accord, with my mother and my aunt, before it is too late before somewhere I lose them slowly (like my Dimma) or swiftly (like my Thamma).

And maybe someday, you will see a book in a bookstore in a strange land with my name on it, full of recipes and memories and sensations that only food from your very own home can create and elicit.

Until next time, dreaming of my home and the Chicken Kobiraji from Maloncho,

Sanj 🫨