Amitabha Mukerjee
ShAk is that delicious little clump of vegetable, spiced with jIre and kAnchA lankA, which you are served next to the bhAt on a kAnshAr thAlA - dark green beside white onbeaten gold. As you break the rice with your fingers and mix itgently with the shAk you get the fragrance of the rice andwisps of hot vapour rise delicately. If the mood is right,you may even take some kAsundi and mix in its mustardpungency. The shAk darkens the rice with its black leaves,short trimmed stems, and occasional lankA. You lift itto your lips. Your teeth shredthe occasional hot lankA and your tongue savours the mixedflavours - the pungent mustard, the delicate taste of the shAkitself, while bhAt provides an absorbent backdrop.Meanwhile your fingers are preparing the next dalA. You are, ofcourse, sitting crosslegged on a piDi or Asan,together with your brother, father, and uncles, while your mother and kAkimA serve you and thAkumA oversees the operationfrom a perch on the other side of the balcony door - "einAntu-ke Arektu shAk de to buDi". The radio is playing Bournvitaquiz contest, for it is Sunday. Your water is in a kAnshAr glass to the right of the main plate, next to thestainless steel bAti of steaming musur dAl. Since thisis not a festive occasion, the same bAti will serve later forfish.
And how does the shAk come to you?
To buy shAk, you go to the bAjAr, carrying the bAjArer thali. There he sits on the ground under a tin roof, hisvegetables spread out on the chater bastA. He is wearing anoff-colour vest and the mAduli on his neck shakes as he movesto adjust his wares across his domain. " ki Panchu - Ajker pAlangkemon?" You bend down and inspect the shAk. You may evenchew on a stalk. "It's the best," he assures you, "nothing to beat itin the entire market." How much? Three sike's. (That's for one poA of course). What? Look at these grubholes on this leaf - andhalf what I am paying for is this dirt ... here, weigh thisbunch. " du poA'r ektu kam Achhe - Apni pAnch shike-i din " -" ei neo ek tAkA. " and he puts the rich green pile into yourbag straight from the pan of his balance. Whatever the socialists maysay of "exploitation" etc in this process, there is a delight in thisbargaining that goes to both sides, and this is as true in the pADAr bAjAr as it is in the Souks of Marrakesh:
"It is desirable that the toing and froing of negotiationsshould last a miniature, incident-packed eternity. Themerchant is delighted at the time you take over your purchase. Arguments aimed at making the other give ground should befar-fetched, involved, emphatic, and stimulating."- Elias CanettiThe exchange is much more than the shAk you are buying fromhim. The one-on-one human contact has its own secrets: the sparringholds subtle fulfillment for both parties, and you often exchangepleasantries -- "How is chhotobAbu?" he will ask; or "So -- didyou find a husband for laxmI?" you might query. He mightsmile, pleased at your interest, and his reply would pause suspendedin ether for another day, another morning, before progressingseamlessly into a continuous discourse. Over the years, this hasgrown into a part of a larger relationship fringing the human part ofyour life; you used to see his daughter who sometimes played withbeads sitting beside him; as she grew up, she occasionally sat in forher father. Now that she is about to get married, pAnchu hasasked you for some help, and he knows you will not disappoint. He iscounting on many such small relationships; much more than the littlematter of the shAk itself. On the other hand, were you to cometo the bAjAr tomorrow and never see pAnchu again, asmall part of you would be gone forever.
So this is shAk.
Spinach is a "n: a dark green herb grown for its edible leaves"; a wetwilting thing that you take out of the microwave and fork into yourmouth from a corning bowl, while walking around the house or ensconcedin front of the evening news. The healthiness of this insipid listlessstuff is such that it has to be imbued with magic by Popeye beforelittle children can be convinced of its virtue. As in medicine, youexpect no gastronomic delights. You buy it in a cellophane pack, andwash it carefully to remove the chemicals, and remove the spots whereit has wilted from staying too long in the store or yourfridge. Sometimes (heaven forbid) you may even buy it frozen, finelycut, in neat little rectangular boxes, packaged in a factory forefficient transportation and display. You feel like an automatonpassing through the grocery chain getting your spinach, along with adozen other things, trying to minimize your time while the store ismaximizing your purchases. You are just another statistic, yet anotherpoint on a multi-dimensional cost-benefit pareto-optimizationcurve.
That is spinach. A green herb with edible leaves. The dictionaryexplains it pretty much as what it means to me in the west. Whatworries me is that were I to live here long enough, that might becomewhat shAk means to me as well.
This difference may appear subtle, but it makes all the difference. Octavio Paz the exile feels the same way:
"When I commented to a Mexican friend on the loveliness ofBerkeley, she said: "Yes, it's very lovely, but I don't belonghere. Even the birds speak English. How can I enjoy a flower ifI don't know its right name, its English name, the name thathas fused with its colors and petals, the name that's the samething as the flower? If I say bugambilia to you, you think ofthe bougainvillaea vines you've seen in your own village,climbing around an ash tree or hanging from a wall in theafternoon sunlight. They're part of your being, your culture."- "Labyrinths of Solitude"Words fade in translation. It is futle trying to convey the richnessof bugumbilia or shAk to the foreigner. Transcendingwords, one needs the direct experience, but even then it is a poorapproximation to the totality of shared experience that shAk represents.
Going the other way, the same word is merged jostled in the crowdand merges with a host of other meanings. Its colour has bleached,its associations are frayed, and when you meet him in a distant land, part of you also seemslost with it. When you eat bhAt in America, you are eating rice. Whenyou buy chAl, or the farmer grows dhAn, it is also rice.But rice comes in many more shades to the Bengali in me, eachintertwined into delicate strands of memory. The feel of bhAtas I mix it with my fingers - the chAl as I sieve it throughmy hand directly from the jute sack - how can I relatethis with the neatly pre-packaged grainthat I eat directly from the rice-cooker?And the word itself - it means everything and therefore it means nothing to me. What of the process of serving and eating rice - bhAtbADA and bhAt bhAngA - which will never have an analog inEnglish? What then of polAo, the festive mood of which isirrepairably lost in the colourless "fried rice" that degrades it tomere food, and worse, lumps it with a myriad dishes from far east andelsewhere. Then there is pAyes - rich, sweet, lush and creamy- off with your banal "rice pudding". There is "muri", and khai", and "chiDe" -what a letdown it is to eat "puffed rice mixture" when what we areeating is muri-chAnAchuD. The eskimo has twenty words for"hole in the ice", and I am sure he also feels the same sense of lossand devastation in a pagan land that knows only ice in the fridge. What of lankA and marich - both "chile": or when you say hot - isit jhhAl or is it garam? And then there is theuntranslatable: what of the sondA gandha - how can "smell of theearth after the rain" tickle the nostrils the same way?
This difference in translation is, of course, also a difference inculture, and ultimately, a difference in identity. This is thegap that is so palpable between a second generation Indian andone who grew up in India. Communities in exile, like the Tamils ofSingapore, or the Jewish diaspora with Hebrew, hold on to a purerform of the language, which mutates and may even be lost in themotherland. This is their fragile attempt to hold on to something thatis uniquely theirs. Words define us; shared meanings define ouridentity. When we lose a word, we also lose little bits of ourselves.When we are in the same place, each loss is replaced with more newones; but in a foreign land one can merely cling ever harder towhat was there in the past. However, like Tagore says:
- jIbanere ke rAkhite pAre ...
smaraner granthi tute
se je jai chhute
viswapathe bAdhAbandhahIn
with the frail strands of memory?
He is forever breaking free
to roam the universe at will.
Great emperors have failed in their attempts to rebuild memory. Who am I to hold on to my puny shAk? Come,wilting spinach, let me embrace your wetness with my fork.
Bengali words appearing in text:
- bhAt: cooked rice
- chAl: raw rice
- dhAn: rice with the husk on it; the rice plant
- muri: a smooth puffed rice
- khai: popped rice (popped from dhAn)
- chiDe: a flattened rice, made by flattening wet soft rice
- polAo: similar to the biryani; often yellow, with a hintof sugar
- pAyesh: small well-cooked rice bits in rich creamy milksauce
- kAsundi: a mustard in water concoction that alwayspurports to come from Bikrampur near Dhaka.
- lankA, marich: chile
- jhAl: hot as in chile
- garam: hot as in temperature
- dAl: a class of broth made from many varieties of lentilor pulse
- sondA (gandha): the smell of the earth after the rain
- Asan: a piece of embroidered cloth on which one sits onthe floor
- piDi: a wooden rectangle for sitting on the floor
- sike: quarter rupee; twenty-five paisa.
- poA: quarter kilogram; 250 grams
- bhAt bADA: the act of serving the rice, putting food onthe plate. The rice is usually served in neat round mounds
- bhAt bhAngA: literally, "breaking rice": before eating, youbreak the neat pile and pull a little rice toward you
- muri-chAnAchuD: mixture of muri with a spicy mix of salt/sour/sweet/chile savouries
