Fasting, feasting

Without worrying about what was on the plates of our neighbours  

I write this column on the first day of the nine-day period of Navratri, a festival that has always had special resonance for me and my family. But, for the life of me, I can’t remember a time when we began the Navratras (as we Punjabis tend to call them) by policing the streets to check if meat was being sold in the shops. Nor did we ever worry about our Bengali neighbours (this was in what was then called Calcutta) eating fish or mutton during this period. 

 

For us, Navratri never meant keeping a watch on what other people were selling, buying or consuming. No, in our family, it meant a joyous celebration of Ma Durga, as we fasted during the day and congregated in our family pooja room in the evenings to sing bhajans (tunelessly, I must concede) and eat the delicious prasad that my mom made every day. It was a time when the entire family came together to worship at the altar of the Goddess. And the only thing we were concerned about was our prayers being accepted; not what was on the dinner menu of our non-vegetarian friends.

 

I still remember the excitement with which all of us children gathered around my mother and grandmother as they sowed the wheatgrass – called Khetri – which was supposed to symbolize the Goddess Durga. We vied with one another to help in the process and would begin every day by running to the pooja room to see how high it had grown overnight. My mom and aunt had a running competition to see whose Khetri flourished the most; and I am happy to report that my mother won resoundingly most years. 

 

While the adults held proper fasts which entailed eating just one meal a day, us kids had a special dispensation to eat both lunch and dinner, but with no wheat or rice allowed. We didn’t really mind because my mother was a genius at creating tasty variations using kattoo ka aata (which was allowed during Navratri). So, we had aloo parathas made with it on one day, perfectly puffed pooris with arbi ki sabzi on another. And as a special treat, in the evenings, my mother would make aloo pakoras using this atta, which were so delicious that our friends would find some excuse to drop by so that they could gorge on them as well. 

 

The grand finale came on Ashtami, when the fasting came to an end and we celebrated Kanjak Day by inviting all the little girls in the neighbourhood to our home for a special pooja. The Kanjaks would be made to line up while my grandfather washed their feet with water. Then they would enter the pooja room, where they would be worshipped as if they were incarnations of Ma Durga herself, and given token presents to take home with them.

 

For us kids, though, the highlight of the day was the kala channa and puris that were served alongside some atta halwa as prasad. After more than a week of (so-called) fasting, we fell upon this repast as if it was ambrosia from heaven – and believe me, it tasted exactly like that. 

 

And no, we didn’t worry if our neighbours were eating chicken as we chowed down, either…

 

Taste of heaven

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.

 

It's that time of year again...

When the sweet smell of Pujo is in the air

When the mornings turn a tad cooler, the shiuli starts flowering, and evenings begin to set in earlier every day, my thoughts inevitably turn to the city of my birth. Even though I haven’t lived in Calcutta (sorry, it’s always going to be Calcutta, or even Cal, to me; unless I am speaking Bangla, in which case it is always Kolkata) for two decades, there’s something about early October that always transports me back there, as the memories of Pujos past (that’s Durga Puja to all you non-Bongs/non-Calcuttans out there) bubble up to the surface.

Even as a child, I knew instinctively that there was something special about Pujo. It wasn’t just that our household, holding on tight to our Punjabi roots, celebrated the Navratras by planting ‘Khetri’ (wheat) in a terracotta pot in the puja room, feeding ‘kanjakas’ (young girls who are believed the symbolize the Goddess Durga) on Ashtami, the eighth day of the nine-day period of Navratra, and fasting during this period. It was also that something shifted in the air of the city itself, making it seem more festive, more celebratory, and more excited (and excitable).

The first hint that something was up was evident from the roads, jammed with people heading out for their Pujo shopping, making the traffic even more insane than usual. Next, activity started in the communal maidan near our house, where a pandal seemed to spring up almost overnight. And then, one day, all of us kids would be roused at 4 am to listen to the Mahalaya broadcast on All India Radio, which signaled the beginning of the festivities.

Our household, for its part, turned schizophrenic during this period. Till Ashtami, we were Punjabis, tending our ‘Khetri’ faithfully, staying away from onions and garlic, and eating ‘fast’ food once a day. And then, having broken our fast on Ashtami with our puri-halwa and kala chana, we mutated effortlessly into Bengalis, doing the rounds of the pandals on Mahanabami and Vijayadashami, marveling at the decorations, the lights, gorging on the street food stalls doing business near the pandals, having ‘bhog’, and watching goggle-eyed as the ladies of the neighbourhood performed the ‘Dhunachi nritya’ to the beats of the Dhak, in front of the Goddess on Dashami.

But while we were a religious family, performing all the rituals and reciting all the mantras taught to us by our grandparents, it wasn’t hard to figure out, even as a child, that Pujo in Calcutta transcended religion. It was as much about faith as it was about fun. It was as much about community as it was about culture. It was as much about prayer as it was about partying.

For me, though, one of the best bits about Pujo was that we got new clothes: a set each for the five days of the festival (beginning with Shashthi and ending with Dashami), so that we never had to repeat an outfit when we went pandal-hopping. That meant endless trips to New Market, many excursions to the local tailor, and a mandatory visit to the Bata store on Chowringhee before my Pujo wardrobe was complete.

It was during Pujo that I tried out my first pair of high heels as a teenager (suffice it to say that it did not go well!). It was during Pujo that I first discovered the joys of flirting, safe within the embrace of my giggly girl gang. It was during Pujo that I attended my first Rabindrasangeet recital (and was blown away by the how much better Tagore sounded in the Bengali original than in all the banal English translations I had read until now). And it was during Pujo that I attended my first music concert (Bappi Lahiri was the star performer, accompanied by his gold jewellery, but thankfully even that was not enough to turn me off live performances for life).

Even after I grew up and began working as a journalist, my inner child would emerge triumphantly every time the Goddess paid a visit to her mother’s place. It helped that the newspaper house I worked for, in true-blue Bengali style, would give everyone four days off for Pujo, so that we could go pandal-hopping at leisure, stay up at late-night addas with our friends, gorge on luchi-dal for breakfast and dine on the most scrumptious of biryanis.

And then, one day, I moved out of Cal and was left with only memories of Pujos past to sustain me over the Navratri period. Which is why for me October always comes with sepia-tinted images of Pujo festivities in Calcutta playing in a constant loop in my head.

There is something special about Pujo in Calcutta. No matter how hard the Bengali community in Chittaranjan Park tries to recreate the ambience of Durga Puja in Delhi, it never quite feels like the real thing. I don’t quite know how to explain it, but I can tell the difference whenever I stop by to get my fill of the Pujo spirit. The pandals are just as beautiful, the Goddess looks as amazing, the beat of the Dhak sounds as powerful, the bhog is just as delicious. And yet, there’s something missing.

And that certain something is Calcutta. The city metamorphoses into a magical place when the Goddess comes calling.

So, all of you celebrating in Cal, remember to have an extra rossogolla for those of us exiled from the City of Joy, and forced to observe the festivities from afar. And a very Happy Pujo to all!