Going Bong-kers

'Tui ki ghoti?' she asked me.

(Are you a ghoti?)

'Huh?' I responded brightly, while my mind cartwheeled over thoughts of ghoti (a metallic container for water), baati (bowl) and other such utensils.

'I mean, are you from West Bengal or East Bengal?' she explained patiently, treating me with the upturned-nose tolerance a fish-hating, probashi Bengali deserves from a blue-blooded Calcuttan.

The brass, steel and aluminium vessels making towers in my mind came crashing down as I thought for a second before replying.

This was Delhi 1999 and I had never been asked this question before. When I came home and related this conversation to my grandmother, who had left Calcutta at the age of 20 and refused to learn Hindi or what gender a car was when you referred to it, hooted with laughter (if you can imagine a 70-year old lady doing so).

As a probashi Bengali (one raised outside of Bengal), Kolkata as a concept, as a city, as a living breathing entity has always been just outside my reach. My parents were hopeless - hailing from UP and Delhi, they ensured that I spoke Hindi as a child. Ostensibly because it helped me communicate with everyone, but in reality because it helped them use Bangla as a code, against me. When I caught on (at the tender age of 5), I tenaciously tried speaking Bangla, though even today I translate from Hindi and all my true-blue Bong friends/relatives/in-laws laugh uproariously/smile tolerantly/smile indulgently respectively.

Eta shotti hocchhe.

Is what I say, which translates from wrong Bengali into wrong English as 'It is being true.' For that's what I'd say when I translate 'Yeh sach hai' into Bangla.

As you can see, my ignorance of all things Calcuttan and many things Bengali did not work well for me when I got married. After all, I chose to marry a Bengali, from Kolkata, who loves fish, who gets all mushy at the thought of Durga Pujo and can spend it nowhere but Kolkata, whose idea of keeping in touch with his roots (in extreme circumstances) often includes checking vegetable rates at the para market on some obscure website while he sits in the Middle East, whose mother mastered Bangla literature, who grew up reading fantastic, homegrown, children's Bangla literature where they eat monda-mithai rather than the unknown and unknowable scones Enid Blyton told me about, who reads and writes Bangla like a natural while I labour over the joint letters and must read out loud.


On a serious note, the one thing I regret in all this is that the beauty of Bangla literature, to me, is like outer space. I know it exists, but I have not experienced it first-hand. I want to remedy that, because my probashi father, Premchand-reading and shaayri-reciting, educated himself in Bangla and can now hold his own in a conversation on Bangla prose and poetry. So I have no excuse. I read Bengali bloggers and they are all steeped in knowledge of their literature as well as the world's, and I feel ashamed to know only Shakespeare.

In the one year since I got married, I have had several occasions to realise how little Bengali-ness pervaded my growing-up years. Sure, Thakurmar Jhuli (Grandma's Bag of Tales) was read out to me and my brother at bedtime, but so were Russian fairy tales and Noddy. Durga Pujo meant new clothes, but the thrill of Bijoya Dashami and the bhashaan (immersion of the idol) went unfelt as I watched the Ravana effigy at the local Ramlila park explode while a tape-recorder played the giant's raucous laughter and people shouted 'Siya pati Ramchandra ki Jai'.


I think I am a bad Bengali. No, I know I am. My sweet tooth may have been a saving grace, but brownies and besan laddoos win over rosogollas every time. About fish, the less said the better. I dislike shukto, faint at the thought of shinni. I feel no regional affiliation at all. I don't scan admission lists or colleagues' names to see how many other names are Bengali ones. I don't go insane with joy if Sourav Ganguly scores a century. Nor do I allege regional bias when he is kept off the team. And, my goodness, I don't ooze horror like my Dida used to at the new breed of 'shekshy' (sexy) Bengali sirens 'Ghenna' (disgust), she would say, and stomp off when Bips pouted on screen.

Which means that when I am roaming the pandals of Kolkata next week in my notun-bou avatar in my first ever Kolkata Durga Pujo, I will need to lie low. Kolkata's going nuts about, and because of, Pujo as it probably does every year. But this time I watch in alarm the building tide of enthusiasm as seen on Bangla TV, because I'm going to be there. And, since I do love mishti doi, rolls and phuchkas, I will be part of the traffic jams and the serpentine queues, of the crowds at Kalpana Mishthanna Bhandar, at Samrat's Hot Rolls, at Annapurna Mishthanna Bhandar, at Bedouin's Biryani outlets, at Madhukshara Mishthanna Bhandar, at Dolly's Tea House, at Maa Durga Shooeets, and, eventually, I will be trying to cut the line at Maa Kali Chemists, asking for Pudin Hara.