Non-Fiction
Lal Shak . . .
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. The sun glares overhead and our shoes squish in the occasional puddles of mud until we enter the courtyard. A sudden gust of wind precedes us, blowing the covering off her hair as she crouches over the clay stove, stirring something with a bronze spatula. Inevitably, she is wearing an unstarched cream sari which had aged just like her, gracefully. My sister and I enter the grounds noiselessly, creep up behind her as she concentrates on the quality of her lal shak, red spinach, and erupt with a sudden yell. She pretends to be frightened, prompting us into fits of giggles. After a tight hug or two, depending on how long ago she had last seen us, she goes back to her cooking, making sure the lal shak is the right shade with the smell of the burnt red chilies stinging our nostrils. Nanu is preparing the feast for her little sparrows.
An active member of her community, Nanu was well known in her village for her unerring wisdom and sound judgment. People sought her advice about what to name their newborn children, how to settle disputes, how to start a vegetable patch. She always knew who should marry whom, whether her neighbor on her left should continue to live with her selfish son and daughter-in-law, or if the neighbor on the right needed rice or lentils to make dinner for her large family. I once asked if she knew everything there was to know in the world, and she laughed and said she did not know farming. It wasn't just for advice that people came. Sometimes they would drop in while she was cooking and stay on for the meal. She could feed the whole village if she had to. She knew every family in the village and every single child by name.
But most of all, Nanu loved her grandchildren. Whenever we would go to visit her in Bikrampur she would make sure she had slaughtered the fattened chicken or bought the best hilsha fish. She had over thirty of us to cater to, but never all at once, which was fortunate. I enjoyed the undivided attention, and in fact, craved it. She never said everyone had to eat lal shak just because she had cooked it. No, that was for me. Just like my sister had her tomato lentils and my favorite cousin had her potato or coriander mashes.
Nanu prided herself on her spinach garden, her lal shak. She knew it would be the one dish I would ask for in my shrill five-year-old voice. That was the year I started liking it, my memory informs. And it was usually this very dish that she was cooking whenever we went to visit my mother's village.
She knew when we were in the vicinity because the neighbors often ran ahead to tell her that her youngest daughter had arrived from Nigeria with her family in tow. She loved each of her children but she adored her youngest especially because she hardly got to see her and her children. And the preparations would begin. She would make sure she picked the freshest new leaves of the red spinach for my feast. Although I didn't quite understand the details of how she kept her garden at the time, she explained more as I grew up.
Lal shak has its season and although many people have the expertise to grow it all year round, its best flavors are out in the winters. Nanu knew this, of course, but we arrived in Bangladesh only on our summer vacations. So although she complained about the quality of her cooking, I usually gave her my best wry look and gobbled down as much as possible.
There was no particular secret to cooking red spinach; everyone I knew could prepare it with ease. But the particular taste of Nanu's cooking never left my tongue. I tried it once or twice at most in my teen years in Nigeria but I never had the guidance of Nanu, so I would mostly trust my tongue. I remembered that it was the dry red chilies that did the trick. They had to turn a certain shade of brown and sometimes burst open as they are lifted over the open fire which would choke us even if we were a few yards away. This was the final touch.
In 1998, Nanu fell ill. We couldn't make our annual visits any more due to financial constraints, although Mum went home to tend to her mother. But I made sure I tried my hand at lal shak more often then. I wanted to feel close to her. This was our bond. She knew I was cooking for her during those times, imitating her every move as though offering a prayer to the one beyond who knew my pain and hers. I never found out what she had fallen ill with. I didn't want to know.
Dad bought spinach at my insistence. It was difficult to find in Lagos. I would wash it thoroughly and make sure not one precious leaf strayed from the bunch. I would strain the leaves and leave them in the strainer as I heated oil in a small pan. I would fry the onions until they turned golden brown, then add the spinach and some salt. Slowly the water from the salt would cook the leaves, turning them rusty brown with a hint of a dark green here and there. Then the final touch, the fiery smell of red chilies. Mum never let me try this part in the kitchen; we had to burn the chilies outside so that the house would not be filled with that pungent, fiery smell.
The task done, food in hand, I prayed with every bite that things in Bangladesh would be fine. The next time I called, she had forgotten my name.
Nanu has now been gone for ten years. People keep saying that it doesn't feel like ten years, but I've felt every minute of it. Mum tries to compensate even today when the lal shak is served. She thinks calling me her little sparrow will cheer up the gloom that settles over me when I see it served on my plate. My mother does not look anything like Nanu, but in our conversations I realize she is becoming like her mum, a woman of wisdom and will power and the capacity to love everyone around her. That is the piece of Nanu I have left, and soon it will be the piece that Mum leaves me.
Comments