It is said by the movies (and psychology textbooks, presumably) that women tend to go for men who remind them of their fathers. Being a middle-aged Bengali man with a love for Discovery and National Geographic, Ayan definitely fits the bill. But he also reminds me of other members of my family. He is as finicky as my sister, balking when I fall in bed while still wearing clothes, I have gone out in. He reminds me of my mother when he is being chatty with random strangers in the metro, at the mall, or in the voting queue. Sometimes, he even reminds me of my grandmother.
My memories
of her, Dida, are inextricably linked to the seasons. And, as in any self-respecting
Bengali family, with food. It isn’t even the elaborate cooked meals that come
to mind now – except her prawn malai curry perhaps, but just the snacks we
shared over evenings of adda and laughter, and the afternoons that went
in preparing them.
Summers
were spent sitting next to her as she sliced mangoes over her bothi, while
I assiduously finished up the fruit on the seed. Later, when guests came around,
plates of the diced fruit would be served up with glasses of Coke.
Monsoons
were sweetened ‘labour tea’, with the milk boiled to an inadvisable extent, along
with crispy shingara or chop supplied from VIP Sweets. Sometimes
there was batter covered slices of onions and cauliflowers she fried at home.
Winters,
mild as they were in Calcutta, involved more work. There was a whole process of
boiling jaggery with water, then when it cooled down, using it to bind crisp puffed
rice, into her famous moa. To be honest, it wasn’t a hit because of the
taste. The USP was that tins of the moa could be brought back to Delhi,
at the end of the winter break. And then nibbled at through the weeks, with milk
in the evening, or offered up as proshad during the Saraswati Pujo my
mother performed at home.
Eventually,
Dida’s health deteriorated, the adda diminished, and the moa
became store bought. I rarely sought one out to eat and thought about it even
less.
Till one day
at the movies. As I sat bored, munching on salted butter popcorn, my hands
touched a sticky piece and I looked down, to notice a caramelized piece that
had entered my tub by mistake. Unthinkingly, I put it in my mouth and immediately
fell in love. The deliberate purchase of tubs of mixed caramelized and cheese
popcorn is a movie going ritual now. But I didn’t make the connection with the
homely comfort of moa for a few more months.
I was
working from home in Bangalore on a listless summer afternoon, missing home,
and dreading the multiple calendar-blocks I still had to cross before calling
it a day. Ayan asked me if I wanted to eat a snack to ward off the boredom –
that reliable way of putting back all the kilos lost at the gym. I agreed, but
then shrugged at all the options he listed – grapes, makhana, momos. Finally,
he saw my unenthused face and left me alone. But came back in 15 minutes with a
bowl of –
“Popcorn”,
he said.
I frowned ungratefully
in response.
Then he
placed the bowl in my hands, and it was not the usual pressure-cooker popped
corns we had at home. He had decided to caramelize sugar and then lather the
regular popcorn in that brown, gooey syrup. For caramel popcorn at home.
