Every festival in the Indian calendar comes with its own food memories
After nearly a decade, I completely missed all the festivities around Navratri/Pujo, having flown off abroad to celebrate my birthday. But even though my European trip was amazing, I still experienced a pang as my social media lit up with posts about Pujo pandals and Ashtami celebrations. Even as the blue of the Ionian Sea merged into the cloudless azure of the sky to create a mesmerizing scene, I found myself longing to be back home, so that I could take part in the festivities revolving around the Goddess.
Strangely enough, though, all my memories and associations with Durga Pujo and Navratri were centered on food. I remembered with a wistful pang the channa, puri and halwa combination that my mother used to cook on every Ashtami morning, as we celebrated Kanjak day. This entailed calling in all the young girls of the neighbourhood and treating them like incarnations of the Goddess, washing their feet, doing their aarti, and then feeding them copious quantities of prasad. Only after this ritual was over, were the rest of us allowed to feed on the feast tantalizingly out of reach until then.
The taste of that channa-puri and halwa will live in my memory forever. The kala channa, cooked with no garlic or onion, but only dry spices, had a nice tangy edge to it thanks to the addition of amchur. The puris were soft, fluffy and perfectly puffy. And the halwa was heady with the aromas of desi ghee and caramelized sugar. Each bite – of puri, channa and halwa combined – was just the right combination of sweet and savoury. Nothing in my life, I suspect, will ever taste so good.
Growing up in Calcutta, I was blessed to get a double dose of festivities during this time. During the Navratras, as the entire family fasted, my mother had developed a whole range of recipes involving kattu ka atta. She would make stuffed puris with it, use it as a batter to make pakoras of boiled potatoes, and so much more. We would gorge on these delights and then head out to the local Pujo pandals to get our fill of the bhog that was served up every evening. It was simple fare: gobindobhog khichuri, some chorchori, and if we were lucky, some begun bhaja, all of it followed with mishit doi. But I have never since had a gourmet meal that could quite duplicate those earthy but clean flavours.
I guess it says something about my gluttony that other festivals also conjure up similar food memories. In my mind, Janamashtami is synonymous with the caramelized grated coconut cake that my mother used to spend days making, and which was ceremonially cut at midnight to celebrate the birth of Baby Krishna. The crunchy coconut shards, the sweet rush of sugar, leavened by the crushed nuts that decorated the top, all of it came together to give us a taste of heaven (surely, as the good Lord Krishna intended). Similarly, Holi was associated with gujiyas, the deep-fried stuffed puffs, going down a treat after the exertions of dousing the entire neighbourhood with gulaal.
In the run-up to Diwali, our kitchen would be perfumed with the scent of mathis and shakarparas, which would be made in industrial quantities, to be distributed among friends and family. And on the day of Diwali itself, motichoor laddoos were on the menu, comprising tiny sugar bombs that would create an explosion of delight as you bit into them. The Punjabi harvest festival of Lohri, which signals the end of winter, came with till laddoos, gajaks, and my all-time favourite, peanut chikkis.
Christmas in Calcutta (as it was then) was never complete without a Nahoums cake, all the more precious because you often had to queue up for hours to get it. Eid was heralded by the mountains of biryani (and seviyaan) that our Muslim friends would send us. It is a testament to their goodness that they would take time out to make a vegetarian version out of respect for my parents’ dietary requirements.
Is it any wonder then that every festival, as far as I am concerned, is a veritable repository of food memories. And that I can never get enough of those tastes of festivity.
