Pujarinee Mitra
Volume 4 | Issue 7 [November 2024]
Naarkel- naadu[1]
Photo – Abhishek Jha
The smell of coconut oil
on the silvery strands of my dida[2]’s hair, after
her timely bath, strictly
on schedule, like everything
in her North Kolkata home, wafted
far into the Himachal town where my family lived,
in the Horlicks[3] glass jars, tightly sealed,
inside brown balls of grated coconut, fried
in dark molten jaggery, and sprinkled with
just enough camphor, to bring the fresh morning
of a durga puja[4] all the way to me and my little sister.
Naarkel-naadu, my first Bengali sweet dish, my only connection
to the smell of dida’s hair, her wrinkled
and tottery embrace, the folds of her frothy butterscotch-yellow sarees,
miles and miles away in Kolkata.
My dida’s squeaky “hello”s on video calls
to America, where I live now, as my mother positions
the phone screen in front of her face, while dida
tries to figure out how her granddaughter so far away, could see her,
and she wonders if she had the strength to make naarkel-naadu again,
would they reach there too?
[1] Bengali word for grated coconut balls, mixed with jaggery, eaten as a dessert in some parts of India.
[2] Bengali for ‘maternal grandmother’
[3] An Indian energy drink brand.
[4] A Hindu religious festival, famously native to Bengal.
Likaar-cha[5]
Photo – Abhishek Jha
My mother is very particular
about two things in her diet:
Fish every day and tea every evening, but
she is more particular about how her tea is made:
Not too much sugar, not too much milk, and
sometimes with no milk at all.
It is very difficult to get the no-milk tea right,
The liquor tea, or what she calls in her Bengali accent:
Likaar-cha.
You cannot use the wrong tea leaves, the ones
for the milk tea, and you cannot use the
ones for the special day tea,
The leaves have to be ordinary but not
too dry to redden the water, and you
certainly cannot boil the tea for too long
But if it is boiled for a short while, my
mother would crumple her lips and scrunch
her nose at your utter incompetence,
Because who does not know how to make likaar-cha?
But last year, after coming to the US,
I sent her a pack of Earl Grey tea, packaged
In a shiny tin box, hand-picked and well-dried,
She told me over the phone, that she was afraid
to brew it too often, in case she runs out of it.
So when she makes likaar-cha with the leaves
of Earl Grey, she saves the soggy tea leaves
and puts it in the fridge for the next flush
Until she has drained them out completely, and
her likaar-cha tastes weak like her slowly aging
body, remembering her daughter.
[5] A Bengali accented pronunciation of liquor tea (cha is Bengali for tea).
A coffee order
Photo – Abhishek Jha
While ordering a coffee in America, I struggle
To spell my name and end up starting
with “P- for- Parrot” which comes down as ‘B,’
sketched in marker on my cup, I realize
parrot is not a bird Americans might
have ever seen or grown up seeing, it
is neither their fauna nor their pet friend, so when
I say “P-for-Parrot”, they hear “B-for-Barrett,” probably their friend, so
I would then say “P-for-pumpkin”, the carved lanterns of Halloween, the
cynosure of Thanksgiving desserts, and the cashier would nod
in comprehension.
Then I spell the last letters of my name: “double E”, and I see
a shiny little ‘W’ in Sharpie staring back at me on my cup, realization
hitting me again: Americans do not spell double letters like
us, no “double <insert letter>,” so with
a frustrated apology, I correct myself, and say “E-E,”
like when I used to show my teeth to my mother
after I learnt to brush on my own.
For ordering a coffee in America, you need to relearn the alphabet.
