Feast of memory-I

I gazed up at the star-spangled blue-black night sky in wonder. The sight was all the more wondrous because I was indoors and the ‘stars’ were the scores of tiny lights that studded the ceiling of the fine-dining Sky Room restaurant on Park Street, in the city which was then Calcutta. I was first taken to Sky Room as a young boy by an indulgent aunt. Later, when I grew up and got a job, it became Bunny’s and my favourite restaurant, and we’d go there to dinner at least once a month. Our orders were always the same: Prawn Cocktails, the Chicken Tetrazzini for Bunny, a steak for me, followed by a Baked Everest (for two), a confection of cake and ice-cream, served en flambé, blue flames flickering on its surface. Sky Room and the other culinary delights Calcutta offered were brought back to me by a book I recently received called A Taste of Time, written by Mohana Kanjilal, who narrates the many-flavoured history of the ‘City of Joy’ with meticulous detail. Calcutta at one time was not just the cuisine capital of India but possibly of Asia. It was a bounteous banquet of courses, each representing one of the diverse communities who called it home. Bengalis, of course, and Marwaris, Punjabis, Parsis, Gujaratis and Kutchis like me. Then there were the British, who’d made it the ‘Second City of the Empire’, their country cousins, the Anglo-Indians, the Armenians, said to be the ‘First Firangis’ in India, the Jews, and the Chinese who ran the tanneries on the eastern swamps of Tangra. It was a bubbling stockpot into which history, like an extemporising cook, had chucked in with a generous hand-assorted ingredients of varying tastes and textures to create a unique repast, a savour entirely its own. The best part of it was that instead of it all becoming a mishmash of conflicting tastes, the flavours of Calcutta seemed to complement each other, adding to the relish of the entire bill of fare, which was part this, part that, part the other, and all the while wholly Calcutta. (To be concluded.)