A Taste of Nostalgia
Eating certain food can send you on a one-way trip to memory lane faster than you can say, “more, please!”
The kind of warm, comforting feeling I get when I see a bowl of rice, fried fish and platters of delicious and colorful bhortas. Growing up second generation Bangladeshi in Canada, my parents made every effort to instill Bangaliyana (Bengalihood) — eating Bengali food, speaking Bangla fluently, reading Bengali literature, listening to Bengali music. This in turn emphasized how important it was to recognize and remember my roots.
In our household, Pohela Boishakh was just as significant as birthdays and Eids. It meant my mother and I would have matching sets of “shada sharee laal paar” (white sarees with red border) while the men would get their matching white/red panjabis. My father would bring home the biggest and tastiest ilish mach to make ilish bhaja and shorshe ilish, just in time for a festive dawat inviting all our family and friends. The age old saying “Machey Bhatey Bangali” means that rice and fish form the culinary base of Bangladeshi cuisine, and “Gola Bhora Dhan Ar Pukur Bhora Mach” as in “granary full of rice grains, and ponds full of fishes” implied the abundance of both in Bengal. In Canada, my parents couldn’t have either but they had “Bagan Bhora Shobji”, a huge garden filled with every Bangladeshi vegetable. This was their way of holding on to Bangladesh, remembering meals and moments shared with our loved ones back home filled the void of being almost 8,000 miles apart, strengthened my parents’ feelings of belonging and maintain their roots.
After I got married and moved to the USA, I finally had a deeper understanding that all this time I wasn’t JUST consuming Bengali food. Growing up in my parent’s household, I was consuming my identity through food – what you eat is what you are and what you eat constructs who you are. I started to associate Bangladeshi food like rice and fish with my childhood, warm feelings and good memories tied to my families both in Canada and in Bangladesh. Remember that scene from “The Namesake”? In a fit of craving jhal muri, Tabu sprinkled spices on rice krispies, yeah, that was me! Instead of chicken noodle soup, my comfort food suddenly became plain rice with a dollop of ghee, dim bhaji (spicy omelette) and alu bhorta.
Being able to remake food the way my mother cooked at home became means of coping with homesickness but also a symbol of pride. Our parents did everything they could to instill Bengali roots and heritage without admonishing or sacrificing our western values and beliefs. My husband and I have taken it up as a personal project to celebrate Pohela Boishakh with the same grandeur every year, so one day we too can raise our future children with the same values our immigrant parents inculcated in us.
