Those Delicious Letters by Sandeepa Datta Mukherjee

Author:Sandeepa Datta Mukherjee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Publisher: HarperCollins India
Published: 2019-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

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Ya Devi Sarbabhuteshu, shanti rupenu sangsthitha. Goddess Durga is the omnipresent one. She is the embodiment of power, peace and intelligence in all beings. And so are we women. #durgapujo #mightygirl

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Ashwin

(September – October)

I take a small detour while driving back from the hair salon and stop at our local Patel grocery store on my way home. Patel Bhai has developed a new-found respect for me these days. The huge bill that I keep racking up buying ingredients as I try and retry dishes has no doubt garnered his admiration for my culinary prowess. Today he comes rushing towards me from the freezer aisle at the back and says excitedly, ‘I got that rice you had asked for. The one with the same name as the spice we use for tadka in moong dal.’

‘Kalijeera!’ I am excited that he has found the substitute for the short-grained fragrant gobindobhog rice I need for today’s preparation.

‘Yes, the same. Arre, you Bengalis have a strange way of naming stuff!’ he says and then rushes off to procure a 2lb bag of kalijeera rice for me.

I want to try out a new dish for dinner tonight. I mean new for me to cook. Sameer will be home after almost a month, and whatever happens later, I want to at least celebrate his homecoming. So that years later when I look back and think of this day, the pain will be masked by the musky brown garam masala scent and subtle sweetness of the rice pulao.

I didn’t have to think much; the letter yesterday carried a recipe straight from Ma’s kitchen. All these years I had not dared to open my Pandora’s box and let jewels like this spill out. I wasn’t sure I could ever do justice to Ma’s mishti basanti pulao, a pulao studded with cashews and plump golden raisins. Each grain of the rice glistening and separate. Pale saffron yellow in colour, ‘basanti rong’, like the sari which Ma would dye with stalks of the shiuli flower.

Ma would make the best mishti pulao in our entire neighbourhood, just the perfect balance of sweet and spice. The garom masala – pale green cardamom, woody clove, crackling bay leaves like the fallen leaves in autumn – would always be just the right amount, never overwhelming with their excess nor underplayed by scantiness. I can still recall the rice grains washed and set out to dry on the folds of a week-old newspaper in preparation for the pulao. The white grains of rice were smeared with turmeric so that they looked a pale yellow like the robes of an ascetic. But I knew that was just a decoy, it was only a short interval before they would all come together in a passionate embrace, in their one pursuit of making a beautiful dish, each cooked grain glistening in the same shade of yellow and each morsel of those grains fluttering between sweet and savoury.

I loved that mishti pulao so much that I could eat it just by itself every day.

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