I Prefer Nuclear

Or let me put it this way: I cannot conceive of ever living in close quarters with a dozen close family members and preserving my sanity. And by close quarters, I mean, like, a radius of 100 km.

Three continuous days of serious overexposure to in-laws was enough to have me praying to be back at home – a most unusual sensation while on holiday. And it’s not that there’s anything wrong with in-laws in general or even with these in-laws in particular: some of them are even quite nice people. It’s just that I’m not the sort of person who enjoys being surrounded by 25 people at any point in time time and certainly not for three days at a stretch.

We stopped at Cal and deposited The Aunt safely at home on 14^th. We had a late lunch and an early dinner at the family home and – since I spent the entire time in my grubby jeans – it was not too uncomfortable. The only incidence of any astonishment was when a cousin-sister-in-law observed with horror that I was intending to mix fish curry into my rice-dal-potato mixture and indignantly snatched the latter off my plate and admonished me in an extremely no-nonsense way that I should do no such thing. She then proceeded to dump fresh rice on my plate and pointed out that I hadn’t scraped the curry together in an acceptably appreciative manner. Under her eagle eye I quietly mopped up every last molecule of curry and proceeded to swallow the fish without diluting it with dal and potato.

The holiday in Darjeeling and Pelling was a welcome interlude – more on that in another blog.

Then, on 21^st, well before breakfast, our train pulled in and we were back in Calcutta. On this day a real ordeal awaited me: a Family Gathering. Diwali had not been enough of an excuse to lure people to this dreaded event, so Amit’s birthday was thrown in as an added attraction for the occasion. This was something people would find hard to avoid, because he is virtually the apple of The Aunt’s eye – and everybody listens to The Aunt. Soon after breakfast (which was at 11.30 a.m.), the house began to be flooded with visitors.

Amit’s father had ten siblings, so things were pretty complicated for me. All the father’s brothers could be addressed as uncle (kaka) and their wives as auntie (kaki); but this would not hold for the father’s sisters and their spouses! Elder first cousins would be addressed as dada and didi, usually with the first name pre-pended; younger first cousins would be addressed by name and, if much younger, using the least formal manner of address. But. Age gaps between generations tended to blur and relationships shifted depending on who was speaking. So I had to be constantly on my toes to figure out not only whom I was speaking to, but also whom they were speaking about. I mean, if I was speaking to an uncle and he referred to “babloo” I needed to know whether this was a sibling of his, a nephew, a son, or a grandson; and if he were a son or nephew, whether he was younger than me or older; and then I had to figure out who that person was and how I should respond to a simple question like “where is babloo?”

After eight-and-a-half years of marriage, I could hardly say, “who???”

To make matters worse, not all who came were directly related to Amit’s father. Some were relatives of cousins-by-marriage. Some were off-spring without parents, wives without husbands (and vice versa) and sons of fathers who had been excommunicated from the family and who were, therefore, to be ignored. At one point, a Senior Member of the family looked grimly at a young girl sitting close to me. “Who’s she,” he hissed at me suspiciously. Since I was entirely clueless, I ignored the question, but later on I learnt that she was – hold your breath – the daughter of the brother (or was it sister) of the wife of the son of The Aunt. In short, a cousin’s niece by marriage. I trembled to not know of such a close connection!

Things were *not* simplified by Amit. Whenever I looked for him, he had disappeared into a cozy nook with a favourite uncle or cousin, leaving me to fend for myself. People would walk up to me and say, “remember me?” and I would smile blankly and say “of course! How could I forget?” and not have a clue who they might be and whether I should ask after their spouse (or had I already spoke to him/her; or were they unmarried; or had the spouse died recently, or, worse still, years ago?), their children, or their parents! At one point I cornered Amit and asked him about two women who had walked in together and here’s what he told me: “They’re married to two brothers who are the sons of one of my father’s four sisters. The brothers’ names are X and Y and you will meet them tomorrow. I don’t know the wives’ names, I don’t know which brother each wife belongs to, and I don’t know which are their children, their names or ages, or what they do.” Very helpful.

When I did meet the brothers the next day (without their wives) it turned out that my other half did not even know which brother was which!

I was further gratified to be present when The Aunt roundly scolded my father-in-law for not recognizing people and entirely dismissed his somewhat school-boyish plea that he did not do it on purpose. “It’s well-known that you don’t recognize people. Why, you didn’t so much as greet ABC!” she said with great annoyance. “Who is ABC?” replied my father-in-law in some bewilderment, and on being further admonished promised to make it up by talking extra to him the next time.

One thing was simplified: the business of touching feet. Amit said that he touches nobody’s feet except for The Aunt’s. Great! When we got married I had gone around touching everybody’s feet – even one of the servants who looked quite well-dressed! At that time, everyone laughed, but I would not be excused for making any mistakes this time round.

There’s a subtle protocol to touching feet in a crowd: you go from senior-most to junior-most and stop when you reach your peers. Imagine me getting through that maze of protocol without offending half a dozen people! So as the elders from various branches of the family filed in and took their places, the youngsters from all other branches of the family went from person to person, bending and touching and bending and touching. When the eldest surviving sibling appeared, even all the old people queued up in front of her. And I sat and watched in stony silence. Amit had tactfully disappeared again, damn him!

Then, the next day, things took a dramatic turn. You see, it was bhai phota, otherwise known as bhai dooj. To those not in the know, this is a festival that comes two days after diwali and involves sisters praying for their brothers and getting gifts from them in return. To the accompaniment of many sweets and a fantastic meal prepared by the sisters for their beloved brothers. Accordingly, at the ungodly hour of 9.30 a.m. before I’d had a bath and shed my thoroughly disreputable nightclothes for some glamorous day clothes, the house was crawling with brothers. One of these – for complicated linealogical reasons that you don’t want to know about – was the brother of Amit’s mother, who is not – shall we say – on very good terms with Amit’s father. This alone made him an extremely Important Personage.

To begin with, I could not be relied upon to recognize this Important Personage despite having visited his house eight years ago, so the Aunt took care to “introduce” me to him. As I approached him, this Important Personage straightened himself in his seat in a way that clearly indicated he was expecting to have his feet touched; and I just casually strolled past him nodding politely. Well, it would have created a total ruckus if I had given in to the body language and stooped in front of him (of all people!) when I hadn’t done so for any of the respected elders hitherto. And it would have seriously put my beloved father-in-law’s nose out of joint as he told me later that he had had every intention of calling us and warning us to do no such thing for this particular person! Phew.

The festival rolled on along its way and I took refuge in the kitchen, where, even after I was decently attired in the new salwar-kameez gifted to me by the Aunt, I slaved over the hot stove happy to be away from the Diplomacy, Protocol, and Polite Conversation of the living room. This act of abject cowardice was misinterpreted as dutiful-daughter-in-law conduct and earned me brownie points with all who noticed!

Afterwards, I hung around while the senior members were being waited upon at the dining table. The younger lot were still being blessed and exchanging gifts and as I (luckily) had no brothers in this milieu (brothers-in-law, apparently, don’t count, though cousin brothers do), I was spared that ritual. I was happy to lounge in the background of the kitchen, occasionally moving a dish from point X to point Y, or turning on the microwave to heat something.

When there are many guests for a meal in this household, there’s no question of everyone eating together. Meals are served in batches; the elders and the men and children are waited upon by the younger women; every item is dished up in plates or individual tiny bowls and seconds are ladled out as required. The meal proceeds in several courses with rice as a staple from start through to desert. In this case it started with ghee, dal, and fish cutlet, proceeded through chilli fish, mustard fish, coconut prawn, on to a dry masala chicken, and was followed by rice pudding, sweet curd, and sweet tomato chutney. Eight courses in all – and all homemade that very day!

While the guests tackled the fish, my favourite cousin sister who always supervised the cooking and the serving suddenly disappeared to take her place in the second round of the blessing ritual, instructing me to proceed with the serving. This was catastrophic! Half a dozen Senior Family Members chomping on fish and she expected me to oversee the next several courses? Me, with my broken Bengali and total lack of the formal form of address? Me, with only The Aunt to guide and advise? ME???

I must have done alright, because the Important Personage went so far as to praise the “serving”. Huh? If you eat at someone’s house, you praise the food, the décor, their clothes and appearance – who praises the “serving”?

Anyway, shortly before 3 p.m. the rituals were over and the last batch of lunch was in progress. The last batch included Amit and me (and, by the way, the interchangeable brothers). The previous batch, including the Important Personage, sat in the living room, replete, dozing lightly but refusing to go lie down in one of the many bedrooms. Now as the clock crept around to 3 p.m. Amit’s eyes were holding a silent but urgent conversation with The Aunt. His father was to come by at 3 p.m. and the Important Personage, far from retiring to a bedroom behind a closed door, was entirely present in the living room, thoroughly visible from the front door. It was – he explained to me later – a potentially explosive situation. Who knew what would happen were they to set eyes upon each other? I was deeply involved in the several layers of fish and had no processing power to spare for these delicate family dynamics, so I missed the early signals altogether. But even I could not miss it when Amit almost jumped out of his chair staring at a message on his cell phone. “He’s reached,” he shouted to The Aunt, abandoning the silent methodology. The Aunt, galvanized into action, swept hurriedly to the door and could be seen whispering through the metal grille. I did – at least – notice that it was strange that she did not let him in but sent him away without so much as opening the door!

There was a release in tension so palpable that even the dead fish on my plate noticed it and went limp with relief.

All of which is why I say: give me nuclear any day!

Fish in Tamarind, Tomato, and Coconut Gravy

That’s what I’ve made for dinner - an attempt to redeem myself in the aunt’s eyes in terms of specifically my fishy culinary skills. I think there should be a Mallu name for this dish, cos it tastes like something I’ve eaten in a restaurant (and just as good, though I say so myself) - but if there is, I’m not aware of it. It was orignially intended to be a plain fish curry. Then I added the tamarind - but it was waaaaaaaaaay too much. What to do? The choices were sugar, potato (supposed to absorb flavors and can then be chucked out; but I didn’t have any at home) or dessicated coconut. I opted for the coconut and voila - it turned Malabar! Hopefully this concoction with some wonderful basmati rice should do the trick.

Any which way, we’re off to Darjeeling and Peling tomorrow! Happy Diwali All!

In Flying Colours

The weekend is almost over and the pending invitation to the distant rellies is conspicuous by its absence. What a relief! Meanwhile, I’ve been working hard to rectify extremely negative first impressions generated by the disastrous welcome meal. Since Friday evening, the kitchen has been my domain and I have churned out masterpieces one after the other, starting with chicken soup from a packet improved by adding real chicken stock and scraps of chicken, and progressing in gradual stages through fried arbi, to prawn in coconut curry.

Yesterday evening was torture, though, because it involved making a bong horror story called Shukto, which consists of many inedible ingredients such as egg plant, bitter gourd, raw banana, flat beans, white radish (or whatever Mooli is called in english) and drumsticks. While my trusty cook and I were in the midst of putting together this nightmare dish under instruction from the aunt, three other items were also in the frying pan, namely, slimy dal (urad dal made slimy - don’t ask me how, I’m still trying to figure it out), malpooa (a sweet - something of a cross between shahi tukra and gulab jamun), and chicken curry. At least I was the sole owner of the last named… but with four people crowded into my tiny kitchen putting together four items in parallel, the evening could best be described as chaotic.

This morning, we of course had enough food left over to feed a small army, but I was feeling done out. Last evening having been spent receiving instruction, I needed to do something to redeem my reputation - or perhaps to establish one - as a capable cook. Mutton curry, I felt, would do the trick. Not to be unduly modest, mutton curry is one of the things - apart from cakes - that I do know how to make and make well.

So, Sunday being a lazy sort of day, mutton was ordered home by phone and at 10.30 I disappeared into the kitchen with it. In my opinion, cooking is best done in a slow, leisurely fashion. So it was 12.30 before the mutton was ensconced in the defective pressure cooker, and 1.3o before it was declared done. Meanwhile I had been busy filing my nails, oiling and washing my hair, and making polite conversation on the phone and fending off intrusive personal questions from another bunch of distant rellies.

Needless to say, the mutton curry was a hit. It went down so well, that I’m sure the aunt ate more than she should have from a red-meat and blood pressure perspective, and less than she would have liked. She asked searching questions about the preparation, which I answered openly as I have no culinary secrets from her (except for the small matter of sambar powder, which, had I told her, might have shocked her to the core). From the tenor of the conversation I gathered that this mutton curry was about to go down in the extended family history as my culinary masterpiece - being the head of the family and a discerning gourmet to boot, her opinion counts for a lot. She even invited me to repeat the dish at Amit’s birthday party, at which 20 plus of the family’s most important members would be present. I wormed my way out of that one…  while I do make a pretty scrumptious mutton curry, what if just due to performance anxiety I were not able to pull it off in those circumstances? It would not be my own kitchen, after all, nor my own defunct pressure cooker. And besides, where would I get sambar powder???

Anyway, only a dinner to go and then we’re done… and there is a little bit of mutton curry left, to reinforce the impression made at lunch. Everything going well, I might pass the culinary test in - to borrow a phrase from a comment to the previous blog - flying colours.

In-law Update

Despite what some of my friends may think, I do not fare well in a crowd, specially if it is a crowd of strangers, or not-very-well-known people. Throw in a communication barrier such as a heavy dose of Bengali, which, contrary to expectations is not my mother tongue (though it could possibly be considered my “father tongue”), and I’m at my quiet best. I have been “acquiring” the language for the past eight years, but beyond some stock phrases and a limited “daily-use” vocabulary, my powers of expression have not progressed.

So most of my interactions with my extended circle of in-laws have been brief and superficial. Since I usually meet about two dozen of them at a time for a period of not more than two days at a time, communication by way of a smile and a nod worked just fine on most occasions.

This time with Amit’s aunt, the head of the family, it’s been different. I’ve actually been trying to hold regular conversations on advanced subject matters such as trekking – and though I’m sure my pidgin Bengali is a pain to any sensitive ears, at least we are communicating. It’s quite nice!

After spending one short day with us, she went off to stay with another branch of the family. The exchange was carried out over a family lunch. This other branch of the family stays quite nearby but we haven’t met them more than once in all the years we have been in Bangalore. The reason: family politics. Somebody’s father insulted somebody’s brother several decades ago.  Since this aunt is closely related to both branches of the family, meeting them was inevitable. We went over there for lunch and were subjected to exquisite formality and polite interest in our lives and vocations (and, for that matter, vacations). Everything was warm and friendly and nice. Their apartment was lavish, posh, extravagant, huge (there was a living-room-sized verandah adjacent to the ballroom-sized living room) and pristine. The lunch was scrumptious and handmade by the two women of the house. As we left (minus the aunt) promises to meet again were sincerely exchanged by all.

Now social convention demands that we invite this lot (ten people and two kids!) to our place for a lunch and soon. But Amit has very little intention of obliging this particular social convention. Today he will stop by at their place to his way home from work, to pick up the aunt, but unless she holds a gun to his head, he doesn’t intend to invite them over this weekend (or any other weekend for that matter).

This suits me fine. You see, I welcomed the aunt last weekend with a meal that was a complete disaster. The traditional potato preparation was anything but traditional, and the fish curry was only just short of poisonous. Bengali cuisine just does not run in my veins. If we had to entertain them to a meal, what would I serve? Non-bengali food is not likely to find favor with this lot. To make matters worse, my mutton curry, which I consider my strong point in my culinary skills, would be totally put to shame by the dry mutton masala preparation that they had served. Of course I can make cakes like nobody else can, but one can hardly just serve cake for lunch.

So now it’s Friday morning and the aunt arrives this evening for dinner. Instead of concentrating on work – of which I have plenty, for a change – I’m only worrying about what to do for the next five major meals of the weekend (breakfasts don’t count). Any advice?