Those delicious letters, p.11
Those Delicious Letters, page 11
‘Would you like a colour with the keratin? It would look good on you and I could get you a discount. Purple and gold, what say?’
Purple and gold sounds very risqué. But then this whole keratin business sounds very risqué. Should I go for it? I debate in my head. ‘Okay. Why not?’ I am surprised at the sound of my own voice rushing out hurriedly. What has come over me?
‘That’s like a good girl.’
‘Wait, I am not a purple and gold girl, am I?’ I add hastily, trying to get out of it.
‘You are definitely one, my darling. You have glitter and shine written all over you. Let me take care of this,’ he says as he brushes out my hair in quick strokes. How can I say no after that? If I am glitter and shine, then I definitely need to go purple and gold. I feel all perked up by his words.
I must have gone to sleep through the whole two hours that had felt like eternity – the time it took for the entire treatment to finish. How did I manage that though – falling asleep with a million aluminium foils sticking out of my hair?
But I surely must have as I am jolted awake only by the whoosh blast of the hair dryer. Kaila looks immensely proud of his handiwork but I am really tense. What if I don’t have glitter and shine written on me after all? What if it’s dull and rust instead? He unwraps all the foils, blow-dries out the last bit and spins me around in the chair. I finally look into the mirror and draw a sharp breath. Although it’s me I am looking at, I cannot freaking recognize me. If I had met myself around the corner I wouldn’t have known who it was.
I am not even sure if it is good. It is just very different. My face looks smaller, the top of my head flatter, the volume that my frizz added to my face is gone and it looks young and vulnerable. My hair is smooth indeed and reaches my shoulders. The purple and gold is not as risqué as I had imagined it to be. The purple colour does not show that much on my black hair, the gold does. It looks sparkly, like tinsel, shiny and glittery. Oh wait, that is not my hair but bits and pieces of the foil that is still stuck on. The gold is like straw yellow woven in my dark hair.
Now that I am observing it carefully, the whole effect is pretty good. Very stylized. I look this way and that. This is a different person who’s looking back at me, someone more au courant. Next weekend is the community Durga Pujo that we go to and I can’t help imagine the look in the women’s eyes. ‘Did you see Shubha’s hair? It is so freaking glamorous!’ they would say. Sameer would be swayed by this new glam hair and lock me in a passionate embrace. I chuckle at the thought. Feeling confident, I start walking towards the lobby and then I see Anju.
Anju in a pinstriped trouser suit and stilettos, which go clack-clack on the tile floor. She looks disoriented and I can see lines around her mouth. Her hair is not in the perfect style that I am used to seeing. I don’t really want to talk to her and so I look the other way. But Anju has seen me and is looking at me. I suddenly feel very proud of my new smooth hair with strands of the straw yellow colour.
‘Hello, babes!’ Anju squeaks in that voice of hers. ‘What have you done to your hair? You should have asked me na, I would have recommended my stylist. See, they put a newbie to work on your hair, and now it will take you days to get back to style, tch, tch!’
I don’t know what to say. My hand automatically flies to my head and pats it protectively. A part of me wants to squeeze Anju’s slender neck but that part is all imaginary. The real part of me does nothing like that and gives an apologetic smile. I am not too bothered by Anju’s comments, of course. The girl has some gall but I don’t care because I know she has too much on her plate balancing Italian and Bengali. My confidence is a bit shaken, but otherwise I like my new look. I am sure Sameer will be surprised when he sees me. He is coming back late tonight, after midnight. In fact right now, his flight must be taking off on the Heathrow runway.
I am both excited and nervous about his homecoming. I am not yet sure what he meant when he said ‘I want a break’. Sameer has been on a whirlwind trip the last couple of months. From London to Helsinki, then Hong Kong, Brunei, Japan and then back to London, his time zones and latitudes have been super chaotic. There have been a few dozen one-line texts but they were just mundane exchanges.
‘How was Piyu’s SAT?’
‘Riya auditioned for school chorus.’
‘The garage door got stuck again. We should install a new one.’
‘Call the handyman to see if he can fix it.’
I never quite dared to ask about the ‘break’. He never mentioned it again either. But the thought still burns like a slow flame in my mind. I keep recalling that one text with a sense of foreboding.
What if he really wants a separation? Like a trial run? What will happen to my children? Will they see their father on Wednesdays or Fridays? Which holidays will be mine? Will Durga Pujo be considered a shared holiday? I sway between feeling angry and humiliated, to stupidly hopeful, like when I think my new hair will solve all problems. But it is not the hair. It is never the hair.
If you churn a momentous issue over and over in your heard, after a while it almost always numbs the problem, taking away the sharp edges. I think this is what happened with me. I have pondered over it a million times in my head and have decided to act very cool and composed if he indeed suggests to break up.
So, this is my POA. I will try to work this out. I will hear what he has to say. If Sameer is honest with me, if ‘Love, F’ is nothing but the old HR lady filing alphabetically, I will give him another chance. Else, there is no point in holding back a man who wants to break free. Sooner or later the asshole will find a way.
Sameer is not an asshole though. He never was. And he can’t just become one, unless there has been some genetic mutation, in which case I will have to either murder him or just let go!
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
64 hearts. 25 likes.
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. But it was not an everyday dish. Ma made basanti pulao only on occasions that demanded such delicacies, which meant birthdays and anniversaries. Since Baba’s birthday was always on the fourth day of Durga Pujo, in the month of Ashwin, she always made pulao and a niramish kosha mangsho for lunch on Nabami. To accompany it there would be a ruby red tomato chutney, sweet and soured with a tiny bit of tamarind. What would I not give to return, if even for a day, to that lunch, throwing back my head and laughing at Baba’s jokes, sucking the marrow out of a succulent piece of goat meat cooked to perfection by Ma.
It will take me a lot of courage to cook and serve the same dish today. But when the recipe same as my mother’s came tucked inside the letter yesterday, I knew the time had come.
Dear Moni,
Do you know what month this is? Ashwin! My favourite month. After the humidity, the early autumn weather of this month is such a welcome change. The sky is scrubbed a perfect clear blue and even the clouds are fluffy white like those in a painting. By the lake, reed like kaash phool with their beige and white head are growing in abundance. Ma Durga is about to arrive in a week!
The loudspeaker in our neighbourhood Pujo pandal has been blaring ‘Mahishasur Mardini’ since last week. In my time, it was only heard live on radio early morning on Mahalaya – Birendra Krishna Bhadra’s baritone voice piercing through the ether early at 4 a.m.
Ashwin is also special to me for another reason. So, you know the year I was engaged to Rajat, what year was that … I think 1938. Anyway, that Durga Pujo, Rajat’s mother invited me to accompany them on Nabami to see the Durga protimas around the city. They had a big Land Rover and would be going all the way to south Kolkata, where a new club Mudiali was doing its first community or Barowari Pujo. My parents were very excited about it and my mother had been giving me lectures for days as to how to behave in presence of my in-laws.
I felt no such thrill of course. I was desperate to get out of that relationship. I did not like the way Rajat behaved with me sometimes. He could be all nice and fancy until you disagreed with him on something and then he would flip, as if a switch was thrown somewhere in his brain. His jawline would turn hard and his eyes would take on a ruthless look. I was afraid that he could even harm me when he was like that. One evening he took me to the restaurant Blue Fox for dinner, and there when I refused to dance the foxtrot, he created a huge ruckus and just stormed out of the restaurant leaving me all by myself. I wanted to tell my mother about that but I knew she wouldn’t pay heed to me.
In the meantime, I would often see your Dadu stroll by our street every evening when I stood at the veranda. He would stand at the telebhaja dokan – the fried food stall, where our narrow by-lane dipped into a curve to meet the main road. At first, I found this very strange as this was clearly far out of the way from where he lived. Gradually, I understood why he came all the way and my heart blossomed in love. We hadn’t spoken much and I wasn’t sure if his love was strong enough. But I took that as a sign. Maybe he did love me! By then I was desperate. I needed to make a decision by the end of that month.
Should I suppress all my emotions and marry Rajat? Or did your Dadu love me enough to stand by me?
On Ashtami, the second and most important day of Durga Pujo, my mother was entrusted with the job of cooking Pujo’r bhog for our neighbourhood Pujo. She was making bhog’r pulao – an exquisite dish made with rice, roasted cashews and plump raisins. This sweet pulao was made with pure ghee and studded with dry fruits like cashews and raisins. My mother made this dish with utmost devotion and didn’t eat a morsel until the bhog had been cooked and offered to the goddess. The aroma of that bhog was so divine that I was sure Durga would never leave my mother’s kitchen.
To serve with the mishti pulao she made five kinds of bhaja eggplants chopped in rounds and deep fried, potato fries, sautéed spinach, florets of cauliflower fried golden and potol fried crisp. With that there was also a thick ruby red tomato chutney made with plump tomatoes and sweet dates and paramanna – paayesh made with milk, short-grained rice and jaggery.
On Nabami, she would make niramish mangsho – a succulent mutton curry for the Goddess cooked without onion and garlic.
While the neighbourhood ladies were busy helping my mother with the bhog preparation, I quickly draped a new saffron-coloured dhonekhali sari and slipped out to the pandal. I had a hunch that your Dadu would be there too. If he wasn’t, I told myself I, would accept my fate and marry Rajat. And guess what? There he was. His palms together, his eyes closed, his lips silently murmuring, bowed before the Goddess. He looked so handsome and humble standing there that my heart fluttered in nervousness. Ma Durga’s face was glistening and I thought I saw her smile, smirk rather.
I pushed forward to stand beside him. The rhythmic beat of dhaks mingled with the shrill sound of conch shells as the priest uttered the mantra for the anjali. I leaned towards him slightly and whispered, ‘I have to ask you something.’ He was so startled that he almost jumped. I didn’t care. This was my only chance and I wanted to give it my all. My heart was beating faster than the dhakis could beat their drums.
‘Do you think you love me enough to marry me?’ I whispered under my breath. The sound of drums had reached a crescendo and I wasn’t sure if he heard my words.
Your Dadu was so shocked that I could see the beads of perspiration on his forehead. You know those were different times, girls didn’t go around proposing marriage like that. It was natural for him to be nervous. He looked at the Goddess and then at me, and stuttered a ‘YE-E-SS’.
I did not wait for anything more and rushed home, my heart beating faster than my feet could carry me. I decided I would tell Ma to call off my wedding and if she didn’t agree I would elope with your Dadu. My face was flushed with happiness. I didn’t even notice the car outside or the chatter of excited voices as I went flying through our front door.
‘Ma, slow down, and stop running around in the hot sun like this. See, Rajat’s parents are here. Rajat is going away to London and they want you two to at least have a registry marriage before he leaves day after tomorrow!’
Ah, the hand of fate works in ways we can never foresee!
I will tell you the rest of my story later, now my fingers are aching, I think it is the arthritis. Lately, the pain has increased and none of the homoeopathic doctor’s potions are working. I am sending you the recipe of mishti pulao and niramish mangsho – goat meat cooked without garlic and onion. Try cooking them during Pujo. For the mutton curry, set aside at least two to three hours of your time. It is best when cooked on slow heat until the morsels of meat soften like butter. For the best things in life you often need to wait to get your reward.
Bhalo theko,
Didan
I am so engrossed in thinking of the pulao and Didan’s letter for the entire drive that I don’t even realize I am just two houses away from my own. That lady must have had some nerve to take the first step and propose like that. I wonder if she got away from marrying that egotistical, rude Rajat eventually. But who are they? Will I ever be able to find the writer of these letters? I question myself in vain knowing well that the answers are no longer easy to find.
As I pull up, I can see the gold and orange maple trees in our front yard have caught the setting sun and are glowing like smouldering embers. The house, framed by the flaming trees, looks magical with its green-shuttered windows and old-fashioned chimney. It was those high windows and flaming maples that had sold the house to us. I can see a car in the driveway too, a navy blue Toyota sedan. The sun is in my eyes, I squint and look again.
Is it my house? Yes! Is it our car? No!
I am trying to figure it out when a man in a charcoal-black suit steps out of the car. He takes out a suitcase from the trunk and bends down to talk to someone in the driver’s seat. His posture is a bit slouched, the seat of his pants creased and unkempt.
Oh my God! It is Sameer and that is his Uber ride. Wasn’t he supposed to come later in the night? Like after midnight! He probably took an earlier flight then. Why is he home so early?
I gently pull my car to the curb instead of my usual spot in the driveway. The Uber driver is backing, his hand raised in a friendly parting gesture. I wait for him to pull out and then step out of my car. Sameer is already on the porch fumbling for the door keys in his pocket. His gait is slow and uncertain.
‘Sameer, you are early,’ my voice croaks. I am not prepared for this. Not yet. My plan for the evening was different. I had imagined a pulao in the backdrop of our conversation.
‘Shubha,’ Sameer turns around to face me. I don’t know if he notices my hair. He isn’t really looking at me, his eyes just glaze over to the sky beyond. And then for just an instant, a fraction of a second, our eyes lock and I see weariness and fear in his.
As I walk up the few steps, I notice how different Sameer looks today. Not his usual sharp confident self at all. There is defeat and tiredness writ over his face. Cast in the afterglow of the sun, his face looks so vulnerable. I want to hold him and stroke his hair and feed him before anything else. One part of me wants to mother Sameer, to cradle him in my arms, and shoo away anything that is bothering him. But the other part is nervous and angry, not sure how to react if he brings up the ‘break’.
