This Wednesday marks the beginning of a Bengali new year. Year 1433 to be precise
There are many rituals that mark the end of one year and the beginning of the other. A great tree trunk is being set up in the middle of a market in north kolkata
TREE SET UP NOISE
Men, in orange robes, foreheads smeared with ash will tie themselves by rope and spin around the pole in religious ecstasy.
SPINNING
Outside the streets will fill with stalls selling little handicrafts, palm leaf puppets, flutes drums clay dolls.
FAIR SOUNDS
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata
But the real way we celebrate a new year in these parts is by food. Restaurants are offering platters of Bengali food. And at little new year festivals that have sprung up in many neighbourhoods the star attraction is food. The more deep fried the better.
Like fish fries and fish fingers which are basically fish sticks,
FISH FRY
diamond shaped fish fries, deep fried chicken breast cutlets, crumb fried mutton croquettes, and little fish fingers also deep fried of course. Not a salad in sight.
The place smells like a giant vat of bubbling oil. And despite the sticky heat everyone loves their food deep fried.
My friend from Berlin was delighted to discover pumpkin flowers in the markets of Kolkata.
“You eat pumpkin flowers too?” She asked. “How do you prepare them?”
“Oh we dip them in batter and deep fry them,” I replied cheerily. She seemed rather crestfallen. She had been thinking she was about to discover the Bengali equivalent of Italian zucchini flowers stuffed with ricotta cheese. Just dunking them in besan and tossing them in a kadhai of hot bubbling oil seemed less inspiring.
But Bengalis like to deep fry everything - pumpkin slices, eggplants, greens, even the crunchy seeds of overripe parwals. Everything is fair game - vegetables, flowers, tiger prawns, fish roe, chicken lollipops. I am surprised our fairy tales aren’t filled with wicked witches who try to deep-fry little children.
Deep-fried is an adjective in English. In Bengali it has acquired the solidity of a noun - telebhaja, literally things fried in oil. There’s even a shop that proudly says its been serving deep fried snacks for over 100 years. Freedom fighters bought deep fried goodies there once.
Tea time snacks or jolkhabar are an orgy of deep fried excess starting with the humble singhara, simple kalonji-speckled kucho nimki munchies and vegetable chop, that curious ball of grated beetroot with raisins and peanuts. Then we quickly climb the food chain to diamond fish fries, mutton breast cutlet, fowl cutlets, fish fingers, the lethal butter fried fish orly. Many of these have colonial roots, though now thoroughly Bengalicized. A deviled egg in the rest of the world is a cold snack made with a boiled egg, its yolk mashed with mustard and mayo. An egg devil in Kolkata is a boiled egg wrapped with minced meat, dunked in breadcrumbs and deep-fried.
DEVILED EGG
The Bengali romance with the deep-fried is not new. Pragyasundari Devi’s seminal cookbook of Bengali recipes from 1902, has over 100 recipes under “Bhajibhuji” aka this and that fried. She fries things I did not even know existed - gaandaal leaves, delo and punko saag - as well as things I would have thought defied frying like pineapples, green papaya and jackfruit. Do not skimp on the oil, she warns. It will become limp instead of crunchy. Fry in batches. Don’t overcrowd. Haste makes soggy.
The only vegetables in sight at the new year food festivals are raw onions and slivers of cucumber pretending to be a salad. I did not touch them. You can get E. Coli from cut raw vegetables after all.
Perhaps that is the scientific reason behind the Bengali love for all things deep fried. They might clog the arteries but at least no pesky germ can survive that pot of boiling oil.
My great grandmother was a huge fan of all things deep fried and her appetite for them remained undiminished till the very end. Once in her nineties she felt down and bust her head. As the family scurried around trying to staunch the flow of blood, she called out plaintively to the old maid “Jamuna, remember to soak the dal. I want to have dal badas tomorrow.” At that time my mother scolded her for her insatiable appetite for all things deep fried. Now whenever we eat dal vadas with our lunch she remembers that story wistfully.
In these parts even our nostalgia is deep fried.
This is Sandip Roy in Kolkata for KALW