Ever since she died, I am drawn to the kitchen. I was never one to cook really. I’d have my signature dish of Paula Dean’s couscous salad, or the chicken pakoras (which is just fried chicken that was dipped in chick pea powder instead of flour), but I never really explored beyond that. If I wanted that kind of cooking, the big Bengali dinner, I could just go home for Mom’s home cooked meal.
But I can’t anymore.
I can’t see her. I can’t hear her. And even in my dreams, when she appears it is fleeting and not strong enough to stay remembered. I can’t even write about her. The words choke in my throat before they can make it to fingertips. So the kitchen draws me. I think maybe, if I can make that dish of hers, then somehow it’ll be like she never left.
I went to India with my Mom and Khala when my Nani died. I bought my Mom’s plane ticket. We spent the three weeks after the funeral hanging out in the house, cleaning through her things, watching Bengali soap operas. Mom spent a lot of the time sleeping. My grandparents had a “khagar lohk,” a guy that stayed at the house and cooked all the food. Rahul was only a couple of years younger than me, a guy that came from Asam to Delhi to work in the “embassy” household. My Nani would always scold him, in that way that cantankerous old people do. But he watched diligently and learned how to cook all of my Nani’s dishes. As far as I can remember, Nani was always in the kitchen with Rahul, not really ever trusting him to prepare the dish alone in there. After she died, for those three weeks we were there, Rahul cooked every one of my Nani’s signature dishes. Each meal - breakfast, lunch, tea time and dinner – was an elaborate showcase of the skills he had learned under my Nani’s tutelage. Rahul would take his bike across Delhi searching for the perfect maghur mach, data shag and the most colorful vegetables.
With each bite, my Mom would get so excited. “This is just the way Nani used to make it! I can’t believe it,” she’d exclaim. I know now that it wasn’t just a form of grieving that Rahul was sharing, he was giving my Mom a gift, what little he could, by sharing what Nani had shared with him. Sharing a legacy.
I sit here in my living room, the smell of beef curry pouring out of my kitchen. I’m skeptical that it won’t tastes like Mom’s and I know it won’t. Every ten minutes I go to the kitchen and lift up the pot lid to give it a skeptical look. I find that I spend hours where I should be working but instead I’m scouring the internet for Bengali recipes, hoping to find anything that resembles something that she would have made in her kitchen. Near the end of her life, she was tired and sad. She stopped cooking with joy and relied on the yellow boxes of pre-mixed spices from the Indian store’s shelves. But the Mom that I remember, the one that was vibrant and alive, she loved to cook. And she refused to use “garam masala” and “curry powder” and coriander powder. She rarely toasted her spices, and definitely never ground them. And she put fresh dohnia – coriander leaves – in everything. She’d make shaag which was just another term for “greens”. But her greens always came out right, even though she just sautéed in oil, garlic and onions. Whenever I try to do it, it never tastes the same.
Tears welled up as I chopped the onions, ginger and garlic. Why did I not ever learn how to cook the basic beef thokeri from her? I had watched her countless of times chopping meat in the kitchen – but never learned because I was so insistent on cooking simple and healthy meals. I could make a great salad. Traditional Bengali food was drowned in oil. But, here I was, with two pounds of halal beef defrosting and a recipe off the internet to guide me. It didn’t even sound Bengali – it sounded Indian. It wanted me to grind the spices in a spice grinder. I’d never seen Mom cook with a spice grinder and had no clue where to even look for one.
When Mom was alive, I used to call her for recipes as I was in the kitchen. “I want to make your salmon stew! What should I do?” I’d ask. She’d walk me through the process in a very casual manner. “It’s very simple! You get some onions, fry them in a pot. Throw in some fish, and some turmeric and that’s it!” she’d say. “But how much?” “You know, some. Measure it with your eyes. Andagi khorah,” she’d say to my frustration. Andagi is just another way of saying intuition, but having never cooked this dish, I had no trained intuition for the dish. So now I have a cupboard full of Desi spices and no andagi to go with it.
It has been 2.5 years since Nani died and .5 years since Mom died. And all I could think about as I chopped was how jealous I was that Mom had Rahul to cook for her. Jealous because here I was all by myself in my Oakland apartment trying to piece together some resemblance of what Mom used to cook for me. I wished so desperately that I could call her, to ask her what I was supposed to do next in the recipe because I was certain, so certain that I was doing it wrong.
So I called my Khala instead, who’s personality was more precise than Mom's. She walked me through step by step, ¼ teaspoon of this, ½ teaspoon of that. Yet still, I looked skeptically on as I watched the spices get thrown on the spattering oil.
The beef is done now, having simmered over the writing of this entry. I almost don’t even want to eat it, sadness having engulfed my appetite. It’s almost as if I wanted to cook just to fill the house with aromas that reminded me of Mom and that’s it. But I know I will, poured over the rice made in a bag. And it won’t taste like Mom’s. But maybe, it’ll be close. Maybe she’s watching me and maybe she’ll be guiding me. And maybe, just maybe it will be close. Maybe she’ll be close.
But I can’t anymore.
I can’t see her. I can’t hear her. And even in my dreams, when she appears it is fleeting and not strong enough to stay remembered. I can’t even write about her. The words choke in my throat before they can make it to fingertips. So the kitchen draws me. I think maybe, if I can make that dish of hers, then somehow it’ll be like she never left.
I went to India with my Mom and Khala when my Nani died. I bought my Mom’s plane ticket. We spent the three weeks after the funeral hanging out in the house, cleaning through her things, watching Bengali soap operas. Mom spent a lot of the time sleeping. My grandparents had a “khagar lohk,” a guy that stayed at the house and cooked all the food. Rahul was only a couple of years younger than me, a guy that came from Asam to Delhi to work in the “embassy” household. My Nani would always scold him, in that way that cantankerous old people do. But he watched diligently and learned how to cook all of my Nani’s dishes. As far as I can remember, Nani was always in the kitchen with Rahul, not really ever trusting him to prepare the dish alone in there. After she died, for those three weeks we were there, Rahul cooked every one of my Nani’s signature dishes. Each meal - breakfast, lunch, tea time and dinner – was an elaborate showcase of the skills he had learned under my Nani’s tutelage. Rahul would take his bike across Delhi searching for the perfect maghur mach, data shag and the most colorful vegetables.
With each bite, my Mom would get so excited. “This is just the way Nani used to make it! I can’t believe it,” she’d exclaim. I know now that it wasn’t just a form of grieving that Rahul was sharing, he was giving my Mom a gift, what little he could, by sharing what Nani had shared with him. Sharing a legacy.
I sit here in my living room, the smell of beef curry pouring out of my kitchen. I’m skeptical that it won’t tastes like Mom’s and I know it won’t. Every ten minutes I go to the kitchen and lift up the pot lid to give it a skeptical look. I find that I spend hours where I should be working but instead I’m scouring the internet for Bengali recipes, hoping to find anything that resembles something that she would have made in her kitchen. Near the end of her life, she was tired and sad. She stopped cooking with joy and relied on the yellow boxes of pre-mixed spices from the Indian store’s shelves. But the Mom that I remember, the one that was vibrant and alive, she loved to cook. And she refused to use “garam masala” and “curry powder” and coriander powder. She rarely toasted her spices, and definitely never ground them. And she put fresh dohnia – coriander leaves – in everything. She’d make shaag which was just another term for “greens”. But her greens always came out right, even though she just sautéed in oil, garlic and onions. Whenever I try to do it, it never tastes the same.
Tears welled up as I chopped the onions, ginger and garlic. Why did I not ever learn how to cook the basic beef thokeri from her? I had watched her countless of times chopping meat in the kitchen – but never learned because I was so insistent on cooking simple and healthy meals. I could make a great salad. Traditional Bengali food was drowned in oil. But, here I was, with two pounds of halal beef defrosting and a recipe off the internet to guide me. It didn’t even sound Bengali – it sounded Indian. It wanted me to grind the spices in a spice grinder. I’d never seen Mom cook with a spice grinder and had no clue where to even look for one.
When Mom was alive, I used to call her for recipes as I was in the kitchen. “I want to make your salmon stew! What should I do?” I’d ask. She’d walk me through the process in a very casual manner. “It’s very simple! You get some onions, fry them in a pot. Throw in some fish, and some turmeric and that’s it!” she’d say. “But how much?” “You know, some. Measure it with your eyes. Andagi khorah,” she’d say to my frustration. Andagi is just another way of saying intuition, but having never cooked this dish, I had no trained intuition for the dish. So now I have a cupboard full of Desi spices and no andagi to go with it.
It has been 2.5 years since Nani died and .5 years since Mom died. And all I could think about as I chopped was how jealous I was that Mom had Rahul to cook for her. Jealous because here I was all by myself in my Oakland apartment trying to piece together some resemblance of what Mom used to cook for me. I wished so desperately that I could call her, to ask her what I was supposed to do next in the recipe because I was certain, so certain that I was doing it wrong.
So I called my Khala instead, who’s personality was more precise than Mom's. She walked me through step by step, ¼ teaspoon of this, ½ teaspoon of that. Yet still, I looked skeptically on as I watched the spices get thrown on the spattering oil.
The beef is done now, having simmered over the writing of this entry. I almost don’t even want to eat it, sadness having engulfed my appetite. It’s almost as if I wanted to cook just to fill the house with aromas that reminded me of Mom and that’s it. But I know I will, poured over the rice made in a bag. And it won’t taste like Mom’s. But maybe, it’ll be close. Maybe she’s watching me and maybe she’ll be guiding me. And maybe, just maybe it will be close. Maybe she’ll be close.
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