ForkTales Social Tables- Kasundi, Reliving the Rituals

The Social Tables Mini had as auspicious and fun a start as we could have ever hoped for. We brought together people around the tradition of making kasundi – the famous Bengali mustard condiment. Kasundi has always been shrouded in intrigue, bonding and a lot of love. We wanted to bring back all of that of people.

I come from a family that was one of the few who made kasundi, but gave up on it decades ago and sought comfort in the bottles off the shelf. Not the same thing, we would lament but the effort was just too much. Not so much, when you make it into a ritual about bonding, fun, laughter and love of food. As all of us discovered while we took turns to do a ‘boron’ of the washed mustard and spices as it was brought into the room with blowing of the conch shell and ululation. And down fell the first social taboo around kasundi that it is a bastion of only married women.

Everyone took their turns over the sil-batta, a beast which many encountered for the first time within confines of modern homes, to grind the mustard and spices. The only thing that trumped the gusto at grinding was the turns taken at sledging each other. All in the name of egging each other on. If there was ever a mother-in-law who was snide at her young daughter-in-law for not grinding the mustard right, she would have been put to shame by this group.

We ground the mustard, sieved it and put it lovingly into the ‘sacred’ pot with hot water. Happy with a job well done and the heavenly aroma of ground spices wafting through the room, we sat back over some food and long chat.

There were also nibbles to go around, and all the grinding and chattering was bound to work up some appetite. Everything on the table had some elements of kasundi in it. The spinach and rice balls with dollops of kasundi on it was the inspired by the most traditional way in which Bengali households eat kasundi. On the other end stood the aubergine and kasundi tartlets which my grandmother’s generation would find difficult to reconcile a kasundi with. Straddling the ground in between where the fish paturi bites and aam kasundi chicken wings. To satiate the sweet tooth, there was sticky rice with mangoes and sweet kasundi. There were glasses of mishri-mouri (aniseed and rock palm sugar) and tentuler (tamarind) shorbot to beat the sweltering April heat.

While the earthen pot will sit in the sun for the next two and a half days, guarding the mustard as it turns to kasundi, we at Social Tables hope that we have been able to recreate a lost ritual of social bonding. After all, this Akshay Tritia, it was exactly how it must have been decades ago.