Chicken Curry
Volume 4 | Issue 3 [July 2024]

—Debmalya Bandyopadhyay

Volume 4 | Issue 3 [July 2024]

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“What spice is that?”

“It’s garam masala.”

“What’s in it?”

“A bunch of things. Cloves, cumin, cardamom, peppercorn– ‘’

“Why is it called garam? What’s hot about it?”

“It’s supposed to warm your body up from the inside.”

He watched closely as Dida measured out the garam masala by her eye and added it to the chopped vegetables sizzling in hot oil. He took a step back almost instinctively to evade a potential blister. Dida smiled and kept stirring.

“How are you ever going to learn if you run away?”

“I wasn’t! I just didn’t want to burn myself.”

“Are you going to learn if you don’t burn yourself?”

Spring had come to an abrupt end; the heat had started to plummet. Trees sparkled with mango blossoms – bright yellow heads bobbing in the odd breeze as March tumbled onto April. It was almost time for him to leave. Perhaps they do have garam masala in England, he wondered. Dida caught wind of his thought.

“How many years is it for?”

“Until my funding runs out.”

“And when you come back, the Mr would have become a Dr, right?”

He chuckled dryly. The come back came with its little sting, a small snag between them. It was way too soon to be thinking of returning after the PhD. Besides, the task at hand was to learn the secret to a perfect chicken curry. Trying to divert the conversation towards less pressing things, he asked about the way she maneuvered the flat ladle or adjusted the heat. Patiently answering all his queries, Dida wiped the sweat off her forehead with the hem of her saree. His eyes followed the swift movement of her hand and stopped at the wrinkles on her forehead. An ache bubbled up like a gravy simmering, the come back having added to the stinging kitchen heat. Dida handed him the ladle and asked him to stir, making sure the veggies didn’t burn.

The first move was disastrous. When he almost tipped the vessel over, she laughed and handed him the steel pincers to fix its posture. After a minute or two, he managed to stabilise the movement. “You’ll get better with some practice.” He was sceptical about some, but there was little choice. If he was to survive alone in a foreign city, it was about time he learnt to douse flames on his own.

There was no better place to learn. Dida’s kitchen was the most organised place on Earth. She was not just the greatest chef he had known, but one who was surprisingly modest about her skills. Every single visit to her place presented a culinary surprise. Her dishes invoked epiphanies— as a child when he had realised fish could be turned into a dessert it had blown his mind. “Mourola is such a versatile fish,” she listed seven different ways in which it could be highlighted. This was a ritual sacred to them: she watched him lift the first morsel to his mouth.

“How is it?”

“It’s crazy how your success rate is 100%.” He spoke slowly between chewing, as her face giddied up in joy.

Each summer, she made achaar and chutney with a variety of fruits. Tok was the special post-lunch delicacy, always served cool from the fridge. Following the first sip, as its sweet candour washed over his palette, he would have to guess the fruit she had used this time. He went through a list of potential candidates – names of fruit falling in him like fables – chalta, kul, kamranga. It was always the more obscure ones. He could never remember what each of them looked or tasted like, except when the tok hit the back of his throat they were amplified to something more than themselves. The flavours sang and danced, as were asked of them, a tangy tango on his tongue.

Once, her guests had asked her the secret to a recipe. What’s the special spice? They were curious. Of course, it’s love! She had dramatically exclaimed, raising a wave of laughter across the room. He had smiled on one end of the table, having known how special the spice was. How often she thought of who was her audience, who was at her table. Her way of translating warmth into a plateful had become her foremost love language.

As a trained classical vocalist, she had learnt to listen to the ingredients. As a refugee’s daughter, she had carried her roots from East Bengal into her kitchen. Some of her Bangal cuisine out fanned the flames of his imagination. A mouthful of the Chitol Muitha would make him imagine an ancestral home he had never seen, a borrowed memory traced with turmeric. Children played on the courtyard as he tried to identify her among them. When the mustard in Ilish Bhapa punched at his nose, he walked barefoot with her as she crossed the Bangladesh border holding her father’s hand.

For his final birthday at home, Dida cooked every single one of his favourites. He had once joked about sitting for a regal platter on his birthday, and she had secretly taken note of it. In the week leading up to his birthday, she had been preparing in secrecy. What ensued for that lunch was a meal too majestic for one. Not a thing was forgotten – his eyes swerved from the huge portion of Jhal Pabda all the way to the Shahi Paneer at the other end of the table. Unbelievable— he mumbled, still in shock, as she served him a little of everything and watched him savour the meal. Later as usual, she would sit with a ridiculously small helping of rice for herself, just enough to fill a bird.

A couple of weeks later, it was time for him to leave. A few hours before the flight his mouth had turned sour. For the first time in his life, he felt the throbs of uncertainty jolting through his chest. The weight of what he was leaving behind at home felt just as substantial as the anticipation in what waited beyond the door. He couldn’t believe how heavy it was. Watching his final sunset from their balcony, he imagined the faces of family and friends, acquaintances and exes, the many streets where he had walked alone. A few hours later all of this would melt into the past, become an exercise in remembrance. When it was time to leave, Dida held his head to her chest for a minute longer, trying to drag out the moments between them. Then her grip eased and her fingers ran through his hair, her face turned briskly away. Wordlessly, he pushed the gate open, trying not to look behind.

The weeks that followed were a blur. He floundered through a pandemonium, cooking up a life from scratch. When the packed food had run out, the first recipe he unpacked from memory was Dida’s chicken curry. “The colour doesn’t look right, should have chopped more tomatoes” she quibbled over the video call. “Tastes okay to me” he defended himself although he knew she had a point.

It turned out they do have garam masala in England. He entered the kitchen once or twice a week, trying to balance the flavours as he juggled with his new responsibilities. On the phone, Dida laughed as he scrubbed utensils to clean up their burnt stain. “Put some lemon on it” – she had a fix for everything. What would I do without your kitchen wisdom? And thus, life ebbed and flowed, one watching the other grow wiser from his mistakes, him watching her grow older on rectangular screens.

Until early one Friday, when he woke up to a call from his parents. Dida had fallen on the bathroom floor and had passed away from multiple strokes en route to the hospital. Someone was speaking to him out of a half-dream. “We tried our best, she was already gone” – the matter-of-fact voice on the phone made him pinch himself in disbelief. Following the brief call, he sat upright on his bed, his head still reeling from what had just happened. A vast silence spread its wings inside, a gentle calm like that of cold water just put to boil. Then he got out of bed and went about his day nonchalantly, hoping nothing leaked out. They had spoken only a couple of nights back, their WhatsApp chat still holding two unheard voice notes – songs she had recorded and sent. He had been waiting for the weekend’s tranquillity to give them the attention they deserved.

The following day he entered the kitchen to prepare for another week. He chopped the onions next to a wet tissue, just as he had been taught. As he added them to the hot oil, a furious sizzle rose from the frying pan and hit him. Holding his face in his hands, he fell to his knees, a sob erupting out in short bursts. A floodgate flung open by smoke. An avalanche of memories, each hacking away at the heart like a butcher.

What epilogue was he mourning? Which ingredient had overpowered others on the recipe of lamentation? The nickname only Dida called him by – a version of him that was gone with her. Dadu and Dida’s house that found him at his happiest. The many rooms painted abundantly with love. The fragrance of spices wafting out of the kitchen, knocking on hunger’s fragile door. The calendar’s windy sway, the harmonium’s mute ache, the heavy air once seasoned with laughter.

“And when you come back …”

He watched the funeral on his phone, browsed her photos until his vision got fuzzy like kitchen smoke. For weeks after, she lived in the haze of his dreams. A familiar voice out of the kitchen asking him to taste the kolmi shaak bhaja, to check the spiciness of the mutton. A familiar hand passing him a bowl of muri–chanachur. A familiar song rising up the evening air, between the to-and-fro of harmonium bellows, waves sifting sand on some distant shore.

Then one day, he measures the salt by his eyes, remembers not to add water to the chicken, sprinkles the garam masala’s warmth over his dish. Exactly how she would have made it. Garnished with freshly chopped coriander, its fragrance is comparable to the one he remembers vividly. Raising a spoonful, he blows on it gently and chuckles at how she had once asked if he would ever learn without burning himself. Then the taste breaks across his tongue, and a smile breaks across his face.

*All photos were provided by the author