notun
Calcutta in the winter is always delicious – the crisp bite of cold air a welcome contrast to the humid hell that it is for much of the year. It is especially cool this year because of a severe cold wave across the northern Indian plains, and I am enjoying it very much indeed. But more than the weather or the music season, winter trips to Calcutta for me is about one glorious creation: notun guR. This is the fresh (literally, new) jaggery drawn from the date palm tree, that is available only at this time of year in these parts: a rich, molten mass of sweet divinity, a winter tan that lends a deep, golden hue to all the milk-based sweets that Bengal is famous for.
Of all these, the notun guRer shondesh (the crown-like piece with raisins to the top right) is, in my firmly unbiased and scholarly opinion, the best dessert in the whole wide world. Shondesh is of different soft and dry textures and shapes, and this one has a soft inner core with sugar syrup; in winter, along with its tan, is filled with notun guR instead. Truly, a bite into a fresh, soft piece is to transport oneself directly into heaven. (In the foreground is a notun guR infused roshogolla, also a milk-based, spongy thing that is very famous but, trust me, a poor competitor to the shondesh, and the darker rolls at the back are standard issue pantua-s, which look like gulab jamuns, but which every Bengali will hurriedly assure you are NOTHING like them.)
So, with this plate of goodies I wish you all a (belated) happy new year, one that is full of fresh, golden sweetness.
Last year I had asked only that 2009 bring me no surprises, and be uneventful. Naturally, it did not heed my request. 2009 took away many people I loved and respected, and knew since my childhood. I lost Bandu mama, one of the few likable people among my mum’s siblings, whom I had only recently begun to get to know as a fellow traveller in the world of Marathi letters, politics and history. He had no time during his work life to indulge many of his literary interests, but after retirement he had taken to learning Kannada and Urdu with great gusto, and wrote regularly and eloquently in the local daily Sakal on a range of topics. It is an irony that despite having been around him for so many years, I will have to use my skills as a historian and pore through this archive he left behind to deepen my acquaintance with this, unfortunately abbreviated, side of him.
Two formative, and ubiquitous figures – known to all of us in school as Singh-sir and Gijare-sir from my earliest memories – also left us. Singh-sir taught us Hindi in school, and was a good friend of my father’s; Gijare-sir lived right next door, in a divided bungalow, and his kids were our friends. Our families were quite literally close. We lived on a residential school campus, and so they were much more than just teachers – they were people you hurriedly wished on the way to class, dodged when playing truant, harangued for advice, chatted with, and made a point to meet when visiting back from college. I shall always remember Singh-sir with his slow, tall gait, popping nuts into his mouth as he made the rounds or dropped into our house for some tea, with some Hindi wisecrack or school gossip on the ready. So many years after leaving school and campus, I never stopped nodding my head and saying a singsong “goodmorningsir” to Gijare-sir, who lived right above us in a happy continuation of our school quarters arrangement.
Also taken, well before her time, was my first friend at work in Berkeley, Linda. She was funny, smart and warm; she helped settle me into the new workplace and we soon discovered common interests in yoga, fabrics and knitting. I used to like taking my tea cup in the afternoon into her office for a little chat and catch up on various campus news, and of all the reasons that made returning to work after my sabbatical so dreadful last semester, Linda’s absence and sudden death was the worst.
I have resolved to hold my breath with 2010, focusing only on the newness, and seasonal bliss of the jaggery.
