TRANSLATED FROM THE BENGALI BY MANJIRA MAJUMDAR
It’s been two weeks since Bimanesh Majumdar has arrived in America. With him is his wife.
Bimanesh has come on a 4-month tour of the Unites States. They have put up with their son, a professor in a mid-west town called Fort Wayne, residing in a duplex apartment, with his wife and baby daughter.
The itinerary was fixed beforehand by his son and daughter -in-law. In June, their first month in the country, they would go to the nearby places. In July, they would head out to New York, Washington, etc. on the eastern coast, returning to visit Chicago in August, and finally the tour would conclude with a trip to the Niagara Falls in September, before heading back home.
In the past two weeks Bimanesh has seen imposing malls which remain open day and night; University of Indiana and the Public Library. After waking in the morning he is served tea, breakfast and then lunch in due course. A short nap after lunch follows. The evenings are earmarked for a drive around the town and they return only after dining out.
Back at the apartment, the television viewing continues well into the night and Bimanesh is surprised to discover well over 100 channels.
Bimanesh considers himself to be a foodie. He is piqued by desi and videshi cuisine. He is curious about how pork is prepared into ham and clearly knows that there is no ham in a hamburger! He already knows a bit about, having tasted the various ethnic fares of several countries that is widely available in the US.
True to expectation, he finds the Chinese cuisine bland when compared to what it is back home in India. He is delighted to find the different ingredients that go into Indian dishes in some of the local department stores. What is even better is that he has already found like-minded enthusiasts among the local Indian community with whom he can engage in long discussions on food related matters.
With the kind of variety available Bimanesh cannot but marvel at his daughter-in-law’s dexterity in churning out a plethora of dishes for breakfast and lunch daily. If the breakfast is English or Continental, lunches are thoughtfully Bengali, and the dinners are almost always at a Korean, Mongolian, Mexican, or Italian restaurant. Not to leave out the junk food by way of pizzas and burgers wedged between.
Among Americans, Bimanesh observes that there is one big meal in the day and that is an early dinner; lunch is almost non-existent. Bimanesh, however, is not disappointed. He and his wife are served a full-course Bengali lunch, almost daily. He is happy to discover a new type of fish such as carp, perch, catfish, and chad which came closest to hilsa, in his fish curry.
Their first dinner invite to an Indian home came soon enough.
It was from one Dr Moulik, a senior colleague of his son’s. The latter informed him over dinner on a Friday. It was to be in honor of his visit the following evening. Everything was neatly slotted: an hour or so of adda over drinks, then dinner and an hour of post dinner chat.
Bimanesh was excited. It was going to be his first dinner that promised to be home-cooked. He was curious about it.
The day arrived and exactly at 8 pm, the family set out in his son’s 7-seater sedan. Bimanesh was, at first, quite confounded at Dr Moulik’s 3-car garage 2-storied huge house, with a spacious lawn in front. By the time they arrived various top models of Japanese cars were already parked in the driveway.
After the warm greetings Bimanesh settled down and was offered a can of beer when he refused a bottle of coke. The adda went on for over two hours before they were called at the dining table groaning with various colorful dishes.
Dinner was served in buffet style. Bimanesh was blown away by the number of items on the table. From Mexican tortilla to zucchini cooked with poppy seeds, lamb curry, smelt fish gravy, mint chutney – the list was endless. He was so intrigued with the fusion that no sooner had he finished, his ‘thank you’ speech was already forming in his mind. Food talk ensued and oh yes, as he learnt, the zucchini and the herbs were freshly grown in the host’s back garden.
When finally requested to comment on the dinner and say some words, Bimanesh could not but marvel at Dr Moulik’s wife Oindrilla’s housekeeping abilities, and above all, her culinary skills. He even compared her to Draupadi who is eulogized in the Mahabharata for her multi-tasking skills!
As the last of the cars drove away Bimanesh waved back at the host and hostess who waved back as fervently. On the way back he could not help but keep talking about the wonderful dinner and the hostess’s cooking skills, till his daughter-in-law dropped a bombshell.
“But baba,” she said, “None of it was really cooked by her!”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“It’s nice that you enjoyed each and every item of food on the table but the dishes were all cooked by the others. Each guest had cooked a dish and brought it along. I prepared the rosogollas. It was all planned.”
“So what did she do?” Bimanesh asked a little perplexed. .
“Oh, she only made the rice”.
Bimanesh wondered why the word potluck was not mentioned anywhere.
For the rest of the drive back home he did not utter a single word!
The story appeared in the book “Chutki Ebong” (published Baksahitya Kutir in July 1999)
Also, read That Precarious Gait by Roberta Mazzanti, translated by Brenda Porster, and published in The Antonym.
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