Pujo is a spider web of memories and longings for people who enveloped my life in love. The love stayed behind as a lot of these people exited the realms of tangible. Baba, Dadumoni, Thamma, Dadubhai, Bimalanghu Jethu, Jethimoni…there are so many memories that these wonderful people made with their ready wit, zest for life…
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Continue ReadingMa would make kosha mangsho once in a while. Especially in the winters or when she got bored of having chicken every weekend. We were pretty much a minimal red meat, less salt, less oil household, owing to Baba’s cardiac problems. And I loved chicken so much that Ma blamed it on the fact that…
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Continue ReadingWading through the often difficult Indian summers, how could Social Tables by ForkTales not find solace in company of the king of fruits that make the subcontinent’s summers worth drudging through! So, there we were celebrating Indian mangoes in their complete glory with basket full of mangoes to taste and a whole spread, from drinks…
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Continue Reading‘In a small village next to a deep forest stayed a poor mother and her little son of four. Their small thatched hut was right at the edge of the village, just before the forest began. The mother was a househelp and could barely make ends meet but she wanted to educate her son, just…
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Continue ReadingWhat do i know about Dhaka and its food beyond the bookish and webish (if there was ever a word like this!!!) information? Well, may be a little more than that through my discussions with Didubhai and her knowledge of it. She wasn’t born there and as far as I know, went there just once…
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Continue ReadingA Bengalis love for sweet is legendary, and why shouldn’t it be so. After all, the 5th century physician Charaka argued that the word ‘gur’ for jaggery in many Indian languages comes from the word ‘Gaud’, the ancient name of Bengal. That says a thing or two about the antiquity of Bengal’s love for gur.…
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Continue ReadingRed Sandalwood, known as Raktachandana, doesn’t come from the sandalwood tree but from an entirely different species (Pterocarpus Santalinus), related to the legume family, and grows in India, the Caribbean and Indonesia. In Ayurveda, it is used to balance pita dosha, digestion and skin health, and also helps aids purification through the sweat glands…
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Continue ReadingRice, especially our heirloom rice varieties, has been a passion for a long time now. The passion led to two and a half years of research on tracing the antiquity of rice through our Vedic era texts and folk lores; and following the work of a few rice conservationists who have been doing remarkable work…
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Continue ReadingA day that almost sneaks past in the shadows of Naba Barsha is Chaitra Sankranti, the last day of the Bengali calendar and infinitely more interesting in symbolism than today’s gluttony-infected celebrations of Naba Barsha. Since childhood, Chaitra Sankranti was personal and comforting. It is the last day of Chaitra, the last month of…
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Continue ReadingThe Gora Sahib’s Table – Food from the Raj and Cup of Tea There is not a better day than to have come back from the most fulfilling and emotional event that I have done and to sit down to write this post. Today is Didubhai’s birthday, but her identity should not be confined in…
