A Bengali friend and colleague brought lunch for the team today, lovingly made by his mother, who was visiting him in Mumbai. It was actually supposed to be an at-home meal Sunday afternoon, but for various reasons people preferred to do it on a working day. So we trooped down to the office cafeteria and sat ourselves down, napkins tied around our necks and cutlery brandished, ready to get down and dirty with the starring cast of the lunch menu. After some to-ing and fro-ing with plates, spoons and dishes that needed to be collected and cleaned, and arguments about whether the food should be heated or not, who wanted rice and who, rotis, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
And then it was time to eat. We sat solemnly around the table, knee to knee and crunched into our chairs to avoid the drips from the air-conditioner pipes that ran along the ceiling overhead. Native politeness classed with greed as each container was pried open, the aromas of the seafood overwhelming the usual canteen miasma of floors stained with spilled oils and coffee, stale air trapped inside a closed room that held too many over-stressed people who sweated madly with repeated visits to the heat of the outdoors and the pressure of meeting targets, both marketing and editorial.
A plate of rice was placed tenderly in front of me, a spoon balanced precariously on its rim. A dish of fish curry, its fragrance tempting even my temperamental tastebuds, wafted past my nose and I gingerly picked out a small piece and bathed it gently in gravy. I mixed, I prodded, I scooped, I ate. I licked the last little grain of rice from my spoon and did a repeat of the mix-prod-scoop-eat routine. It was delicious, all the care with which the food had been made reflected in its smell, its taste, its look, its appeal.
As Bengalis do, we all ate in courses. Rice with fish curry, rice with prawns in gravy, rice with more curry and fish. A little at a time, a few spoonsful with each mix. There is a delicacy in that, a certain finicky meticulousness that demands careful attention to every morsel that is eaten. It is not like the way that most people will wrap themselves around a meal – sambhar, rice, vegetable and papad, all in one sumptuous bite; or naan and kebab and onions and chutney, with a little extra mirchi thrown in for relish; or even bread and steak and gravy and salad and dressing, assembled to complement each other and fill the senses with a melange of flavours adding up to an entirely new one.
The next course arrived with a special message for me. Since I am not very adept at dismembering fish and am never sure how to spit the bones out politely, I tend to avoid it. But I will attack any prawn that may come my way, never hesitating to grab it from under anyone else’s nose, however fond I may be of them. After all, I am rather fonder of the prawn than of the person vying for it! And these were divine. Bathed in a wonderfully sweet-tangy-spicy gravy unctuous with oil and studded with cinnamon and cardamom, these prawns did a gentle waltz with raisins, cooked soft and oozing sweetness. They made perfect one-spoon bites with rice – a small puddle of rice, topped with a few drops of gravy, hiding a tight coil of prawn and a tiny treasure of honeyed raisin. Is this what they meant when they called it manna from heaven?
And, redolent of a good meal well eaten, savouring the last tinge of flavour in my mouth, I wandered back to work, thanking my colleague for the lunch, thanking his mother for the feast that I had not cooked and thanking the powers that be for the gift of a prawn, perfectly finished…
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