Despite being technically born into a Brahmin family (a classification which both my parents conveniently ignore) I have been a confirmed non-vegetarian from a young age. In those days, we could not afford non-veg more often than once a week, and that made the weekends really special. Back then, mutton was cheaper than chicken, so chicken automatically became the most preferred form of animal protein. I must have inherited my preferences from my dad, though, because after the cost-consciousness wore off, I found that I really preferred red meat to white, and the redder the better.
Regarding slaughter, it was a pleasure I was largely spared watching. Only once or twice have I had to avert my eyes while a live chicken was slaughtered. On one occasion a couple of years ago, I took the still warm and quivering bundle home and had to stuff it in the fridge till it cooled down and was truly dead, before I could bring myself to handle it. On a recent trek to Ladakh, a goat was slaughtered at our campsite and I made every effort to neither see nor hear any part of it. I even feel terrible when I see a van-load of live chickens being driven across town. But nothing stops me from enjoying the meal, once it’s ready.
As my parents weren’t too hung up on brahminism, in addition to mutton and chicken, I was introduced to beef at a young age – in the shape of corned beef straight from Argentina! Again, being a rarity made it special, so beef enjoyed a vastly elevated status in my esteem, which was in no way diminished by the discovery that it was so much cheaper than mutton - and quicker to cook, too!
Nor did we draw the line at pork. Though a little particular as to the origins of the meat, my parents enthusiastically indulged in salami, sausages, ham, bacon and the like, purchased from reliable outlets like Keventer’s, Central Dairy Farm, and PigPo (!) in Delhi. I still remember the mad excursions to middle circle, Connaught Place, which involved fighting maniac traffic jams and praying for a nearby parking slot, just for that precious 250 gm of salami and 250 gm of breakfast sausage once in two weeks or a month.
My mother sometimes used to get carried away and attempt rather fancy dishes with chicken, such as boneless whole chicken stuffed with something exotic, or chicken a la kiev (stuffed chicken breast). She was an expert at ripping out the aorta, heart, lungs and other internals of the chicken in one smooth yank - a skill she was quite inordinately pleased with. Other times she would simply boil the whole chicken, skin and all, and then debone it or shred it. And when she made grilled chicken, it had to be cut just right, legs carved off at the joints, breasts split into two large pieces and no more, and the wings and carcass dumped into the pressure cooker, to make soup. From her, I learned to love crispy, golden-brown chicken with skin. I also learned a fine disdain towards chicken pieces brutally hacked in all odd places and chucked into a hot, spicy curry.
Spare parts and internal organs never found pride of place in our home. Paaya and brain is something I have seen on menus only in Bangalore, and never worked up the courage to taste. Liver was ok in small quantities, and intestines in the shape of sausages were always welcome, but heart, kidney, giblets, lungs, the backside of the chicken, or the head of goat (which I have sometimes seen in the markets in Leh and which never fail to give me the heebie-jeebies) we never ate.
The other thing that did not often find its way into my mother’s kitchen, was fish. And, though my father occasionally prevailed upon her to venture into seafood, my mother would relent only on finding extremely large fillets of an entirely boneless fish, usually bhetki, and even then she would shun curry-type dishes in favour of western recipes, such as, crumb fried fish with mayonnaise, or fish menuiere (or something like that – a French preparation, essentially grilled with lemon and butter).
So, carnivorous though I was, in the small matter of fish, I was totally untutored until the major calamity that was my wedding.
Of all people on earth, why I should have chosen to marry a Bengali is something that completely mystifies me, but I must have been genetically programmed that way and willy-nilly I found myself having to tackle not only the language that should have been my mother tongue (I mean, my father tongue), but also, a much greater horror: fish!
In a Bengali family, intimacy with fish is not restricted to the kitchen. You must get acquainted with a live fish even before you step over the threshold and thereafter fish (in one form or another) flows with easy familiarity into the conversation, the living room, the dining room and doesn’t even always stay out of the bedroom. I should have been warned when the elaborate gifts that were presented before the wedding were accompanied by barfi in the shape of a fish… but how could anyone have imagined that stepping into my husband’s house would require grappling with a live and squirming fish? At least I was spared having to hold the creature directly – it was presented to me in a plastic bag with some water in it… but it still squirmed and wriggled in a most alarming fashion.
At first, every meal was a nightmare, an obstacle course of several kinds of fish, all with millions of tiny, forked bones, and some with head, tail, and exoskeleton intact. In the Bengali lexicon, the more indisposed a fish is to being eaten, the greater a delicacy it is considered. Thus, my greatest nightmare of the dining table was the main “bridal” meal, when, as the ceremonial main course, the bride and groom are presented with the head and tail of a fish that is altogether unsuitable for human consumption. If memory serves, it is the bride who gets the head – and this particular bride was not in the least little bit pleased about the whole affair, I can assure you.
Added to the psychological burden of eating an animal’s head, was the additional problem of eating rice and curry with my fingers, a task I had never attempted before without knife, fork, and spoon.
I’m not sure quite how I survived that ordeal, but I think I just chalked it down to the greater ordeal of getting married, and, assuring myself that this was something I would never ever subject myself to again under any circumstances, I survived.
And things just got worse! Because, after the wedding itself, followed “married life”. And in “married life” I was expected not only to cook fish, but in the Bengali style if you please, and DON”T CHUCK OUT that fish head!
The fish head arrives along with the fish, cut cleanly in half such that you have one eye in each half, and its internals all visible and ready to spill. In this state, you have to fry it. While frying it, you have to split the halves into small pieces, breaking up bones, brains and all. Then, you have to cook it. With dal.
And, at last, you have to eat it.
At first, I staunchly refused to so much as look at the fish head. It took me many attempts to be able to fry it and even now, nine years later, I have not been able to completely overcome those fish eyes. It really is quite something to dump that cold, clammy head into the hot oil, break it up and fry it and all the time see those cold, dead eyes watching you, watching you, watching you…
No Comments » | 
humour, personal | Tagged: anecdote, family, humour, personal | 
Permalink
Posted by poupee97
