I write with a heavy heart today as I do so in Kolkata rather than Delhi. I usually love Cal– the cafes, the bookstores, the potential for mischief-making, but this time it’s just not the same. It is actually, if you can believe it, hotter than Delhi here and the air is thick with the smog of Hindustan Ambassadors clogging the roads. The Ambassador car is quintessentially Calcuttian; the illegitimate Cold War love child of a Rolls Royce and a Soviet tank, it is the symbol of Cal’s dogged hold upon the vestiges of its colonial past. It harks back to the heyday of the Raj here where Russell and Park Streets were filled with bright white people of the same (or equally Anglo) names.
Being here is like being in a different time, if not a different place from Delhi. Despite being a part of India’s violent surge into Western notions of modernity, Cal remains distinctly unmodernized most visibly in the wrought iron balconies, colonial architecture, cycle-rickshaws and deep all-pervading nostalgia for the Good Old Days. Now, keep in mind, those Good Old Days are the days of also the Days of Colonial Oppression and Days of Widow Burning and Child Marriage but let’s not be too judgmental, those were apparently also the days of great opulence, influence and delightful high teas. And Cal has not yet recovered or come to terms with their loss. But I can’t pretend that Cal isn’t really just a manifestation of that mini-Colonialist that so many of you have noticed in me before. Few things in the world are as nice as a tea with proper fairy cakes at Flury’s on Park Street. And you can only find it in Cal.
Now, for a land that is so famed for its starving masses– whether those of Sally Struther’s fame, “For just pennies a day, you can ensure Ram doesn’t go hungry again,” or the more personal variety that haunted so many of us picky eaters when we were children “Eat! Eat! There are starving children in India. Poor little Babu, and Pappu and… “– India has proved the land of gastronomical plenty so far. I’ve been eating, quite literally, like a Moghul king in Delhi. My Delhi pals have ensured that every delightful delicacy in the city finds its way into my stomach– kebabs in every imaginable form, ice cream sundaes delivered in the middle of the night, chaat (from a mall stall because of T’s fear that my delicate American constitution might not withstand the unwashed hands, tap water, food sitting out in the heat all day long and heavy fly patronage of chaat on the streets), parathas, biryanis, and my new favorite thing in the world: the kathi roll. My innate Bengali chauvinism demands that I point out that they were in fact invented here in Cal but they have been perfected in Delhi at Nizam’s where mutton, chicken or paneer kebabs are wrapped in a egg-fried paratha with picked onions.
Words cannot describe the perfection of two of my favorite things, kebabs and parathas, mating to create the perfect super-food. But I will say that eating such ghee-fried, meat-laden deliciousness as I have makes real the source of the ubiquitous bhuri, potbelly, of all the Indian Uncle-and-Auntiejis out there. And why the once ferocious Moghuls were so easily ousted: it’s hard to rouse yourself out of a kathi roll food coma, even to save yourself and your kingdom from hordes of invaders. Believe me, I’ve tried.
