A foray into Bengali cuisine- The Hour of The Goddess by Chitrita Banerji

The Hour of the Goddess by Chitrita Banerji is a uniquely delightful and inventive book that looks at the vast array of Bengali cuisine, the politics of its landscape and the representation of women in the traditional Bengali kitchen setup. The author mixes her own memory, her personal recollections and juxtaposes all of them into her delicately carved work that would fall short of praise. The Hour of the Goddess is one of my rare forays into non-fiction, a genre that I am much apprehensive of given its tendency to sell a particular brand of ideology. Banerji’s book comes as a refresher as it never overtly glorifies Bengali Cuisine, especially the author being a part of the diaspora. Instead the book attempts a scholarly work of looking into the cultural, religious and political signifiers attached with Bangla cuisine. However, her scholarly medium of analysis never reaches the jarring point of the book becoming a snooze-fest. Once you start reading the book, each page comes alive in so many different ways with its countless tales of personal memories of love, loss, grief, strength, shock, anger, empathy etc.

Banerji starts with a dedication- “For all the generations of Bengali women who created, enhanced, and preserved a culinary tradition of excellence and innovation.” As readers with minimal time, we often skip the dedication but to me, Banerji brings a personal touch in the dedication, of the shared history and narratives of women whose stories are often lost in the pages of history. Through her dedication she gives a glimpse of what is to follow in the next 142 pages, taking her readers into a surreptitiously beautiful journey of personal stories, her association with food and an insight into the politics that shapes the Bengali kitchen.

Each chapter is focused on a particular subtheme which comes together and forms a larger picture in the book. The first chapter, The Hour of the Goddess, starts with the author sitting in her New England home, a place thousands of miles away and far removed from the aromatic scents of the Bengali kitchen. It’s the time of autumn, a season when Bengalis are known to celebrate their most awaited utsab, Durga Pujo. It’s the time of the month when the kash fuls sway in full white and Bengali’s wait for their nostalgic voice of Birendra Krishna Bhadra to fill one such morning air. Opposite to this, autumn also known as fall in the West , is a time to start getting busy as school years and business starts in full swing. She looks at the golden colour of the leaves and reminisces of the vibrancy and colourfulness that her homeland is getting pumped up for. She then draws up the different images of food prepared in the season and how such dishes embody the fervour of the season. She writes, “Whenever I think of the autumn festival of Durga, and of the subsequent ones honouring the goddesses Lakshmi and Kali, I am overcome by the aroma of hot, puffy luchis, of alur dam nestling in a glistening dark tamarind sauce, of golden chholar dal spiced with cumin, coriander, cinnamon, and cardamom, its thick texture flecked with tiny coconut chips fried in sizzling mustard oil.” Such nostalgic and sensual writing will only leave a pleasing aftertaste once you have finished the book. Further in the first chapter, the author presents an often-heard but a personal imagery of diaspora, as she portrays her vulnerable side and writes how she wishes to belong, going to the extent of wishing to ring a bell of a stranger’s house on a Christmas eve so that she can come and eat. To her, eating is belonging, a powerful sense of hope and glimmer in all the darkness of the world.

The author shares personal anecdotes in her next chapter, Feeding the Gods as she remembers and recollects all the preparations that went from the morning, all the elaborate preparations and dishes that were undertaken in her childhood home as her grandma took the responsibility of feeding the Madhav of the house. She also adds layers to her narrative as she lends a mythical imagination to such chapters. She recounts the familiar Harir Loot that took place every evening in the lawns of her home, of her gathering the Batashas one after another as if it was the only thing that mattered in the world, of the Khichuri, sukto prepared for Madhav’s feast.

She goes on to explain the reasons behind such beliefs, some superstitions and made- up stories that has gained popularity over time. Food and religion are shown as inter-connected as she shows how people believe that sharing and eating the proshad after it has been served in the thakurghor would bridge the gap between the gods, goddesses and their mortal devotees. It reminded me of my familiar childhood imagery of gathering the batashas after the kirtans that took place most evening in my home, of the fruits that I carefully ate taking care not to drop any of it, believing to be mortally struck by the hand of the god if I did so and all the gujiyas and nokul-danas I stole from the thakur-ghor while averting the gaze of the gods. This is the rare quality of this book where you can identify your own lost memories with the writer’s own narration. The author writes an account of myth, religion and food which can be seen hidden in every nook and corner of the Bengali household. She writes,

“on special occasions, such as Krishna’s birthday, there were more elaborate offerings. Huge vegetarian meals were cooked at lunchtime and offered to Krishna before being served to family and guests. One of the most delightful offerings of this day was made from the extracted pulp and juice of the ripe taal, the large, strikingly fragrant fruit of the palm tree. The intensely sweet, saffron pulp is mixed with ground coconut and rice flour and made into crispy, sweet fritters- a supposed favourite of Krishna’s adoptive father in Brindaban, Nanda. All of us, adults and myself, knew the song about Nanda dancing joyfully as he ate these delicious fritters.”

It is only the quality of a few writers who can make you feel in tandem to the emotions of the author and her book. It is by this what I meant when I wrote that the pages come alive. For someone like me who hates the sight of taal and its strong sweet and bitter scent, I felt a sense of gustatory pleasure in the author’s recollection of this prized dish. The book successfully attempts a discussion on a less-explored topic without sounding monotonous and lends a quality to the books which novice as well as expert- readers can accumulate the taste for.

Another aspect of the book that lends a striking quality is its power to jump into different narratives but without making the reader pause and jump into conclusions. The third chapter of the book, Patoler Ma, quite different from the first two chapters offer a lesser-known perspective of the house-maid’s daily routine of grinding the spices and cooking various dishes for the household to munch upon. Patoler Ma is the house servant who inspite of her thin figure takes up the mammoth task of using the humongous Sil-Nora and making an assortment of spice- pastes like the holud-bata, lonka-bata, ada-bata, rosun-bata. Her hands have taken on the tinge of a yellow colour and while the writer during her childhood was delighted to see such a colourful palette, it is only later that she realizes the larger implications that this carries. In a sensitive moment in the chapter, the author’s childhood self asks Patoler Ma about her favourite spice, to which the latter replies, “ People like me can’t afford to buy garom mashla…we only handle and smell it in the homes of people like you.”

In the subsequent chapters like A Dose of Bitter, Food and Difference, Crossing the Borders, Banerji provides a personal perspective of her journey with food. She writes about the politics of bitter, a taste which many Bengali people prefer at the start of their lunch , of its myth of the quality to supposedly supress anger and vulnerability in women as told by her grand-ma, or of the religious significance of eating neem leaf before entering a mourning home after immolating the dead. She recounts of the Neem tree that grew in full bloom around her house, looking so beautiful yet tasting so bitter. She talks about dishes like Neem Begun, Sukto, dishes which primarily have a bitter under taste but so loved in the houses of Bengal. She provides a fascinating perspective as she says Bengalis who are known for their sweet dishes all over the world also has a unique fascination with the biter taste, going on lengths to prepare inventive items unique to each household. In Food and Difference, she writes about the Ghoti- Bangal dichotomy without making it a topic of political and toxic argument. In Crossing the Borders, she again writes about the different perspectives a dish can have as she marries a Muslim man from Bangladesh. She is shocked to find Ilish being prepared with onion, or with coconut but revels in the taste as she understands and starts appreciating the pluralities existing in the world.

She recounts her experience with Beef, an item that can cause a scandal in the Hindu household or with her experience with Bangal dishes that always surprises a foodie for its inventiveness. There are more such chapters in the book which offer such dynamic takes on food, religion, women and culture.

A surprisingly powerful take is on her description of the woman and the bonti, found in almost every Bengali kitchen, as she explains the evocativeness of the demure female body that comes with the posture of sitting on the bonti, with her head bent, one leg raised and another horizontally laid on the ground. Other chapters also raise the discussion of ascetic widowhood in the Bengali context and how her diet would consist of bare minimum so as not to get her indulged in lust, gluttony etc. Another politics behind the widow’s diet which hardly had any protein food like meat or fish was to starve her to death so that her remaining prospects like property, land could be enjoyed by the in-laws. The author uses a personal story that of her mother, after her father’s death when her aunts take her aside and ask her sternly if her mother has decided to give up on amish or not , on the very day of niyom-bhongo. The further chapters are no less powerful and interesting as she dwells on the politics of sweet as intermingled with a mythological and then a colonial past. In whole, The Hour of the Goddess, is a book that asks to be read and listened, not just to the accounts of the writer but to the countless stories of women who spend more than half of their life in the confines of the kitchen. I rated the book a solid 5/5 on Goodreads and would soon be reading another book by the same author. In case you read the book, feel free to leave a comment. Happy reading 😊

Goodreads link - Check out this book on Goodreads: The Hour of the Goddess: Memories of Women, Food, and Ritual in Bengal https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1540266.The_Hour_of_the_Goddess