Book marks

My new friend J is a Bengali. Which could conceivably translate, on a good day, to being somewhat mad, somewhat eccentric and totally, completely and wholly (I bet you that means different things in legalese, which is what I will be reading reams of if he sues me after he reads this) passionate about everything that he says he does, has done, will do and wants to do, now and whenever he gets around to doing it. And he talks, like a Bong – as the Bengali community collectively and individually is called – with fervour, with involvement, with – best of all – laughter. Of course, if he didn’t do it at the dead of night, I could be awake and aware enough the next day to concentrate on work, but that is an occupational hazard that one deals with when one is making friends. Or, at least, I do.

But in all the chatter, his and mine, histories exchanged, compared and analysed, there is a wonderful commonality that has convinced me to add this man to my list of almost-friends. “Almost”, since I have seen him for all of 30 seconds, if that, and have no clue whether he has onion breath, his feet are cracked or he burps wrenchingly after he eats, which would sort of make any further and future acquaintance rather strained. He tells me about his life, he reads about mine from this blog, and we hope to do some work together at some time when we both have our lives sorted out in our different worlds.

J is a collector – of art, of artefacts his father left him, of people as oddball as he sounds to be and of books. It is that last that is most interesting to me, since I have met few people that I can not just talk to, but talk to about stuff that I like, a certain genre of books most relevant in this melee of words and punctuation. J collects books on food, which does not necessarily mean recipe or cookery books. It means books on food, just like it says. I do, too, and have done for a few years now, though not too intensely or passionately, for various reasons I do not need to go into at this time.

My collection started with the Penguin Cookbook, which my parents had bought years ago. I used it often to find out how to make mayonnaise and jumbles and Christmas pudding, but never really read it until I was bored out of my little mind one long weekend many years ago. Then I whooshed my way through all the family collection, from the Mediterranean Cookbook to Fannie Farmer, Cakes and Cookies to Meenakshi Ammal’s Samaithu Paar. Then I started rooting around in bookstores and collected everything from Larousse Gastronomique (which roosted on my bedside table most of the time I lived in Delhi) to Achaya on Vedic food. But perhaps the treasure of my collection, with my interest in science and cooking, is Harold McGee’s On Food and Cooking, which taught me why an egg cooks the way it does when it boils and how not to cry when you cut onions.

J spends a lot more time on his collecting of books on food than I do or can do. A few days ago he told me that he had acquired the biography of Mrs Beeton, the lady who wrote the bible of household management. I am not sure if I want to be envious of this one, because I have a few names up my nicely shaped sleeve that he won’t know of, let alone find too easily. Until he catches up, I can keep hassling him with these swipes taken via my blog!