Friday flavours and feels

I find olfactory déjà vu's to be quite bittersweet, especially so on Fridays. This day of the week has its unique bouquet of flavours and smells, sounds, sights, and tastes that are quite different from the other days. It transports me to another time and place and digs up hibernating memories within seconds. 

Having grown up in a Muslim family, Fridays always had the flavour of a mini-festival. I remember waking up on Friday mornings to the smell of golden-brown discs of daal puris and aloo puris being deep-fried in a traditional korai. To these delectables, my father would demand a side of onion slivers lightly drenched in lime juice. A bite of the piping hot puris full of mushy fillings and the tart and crunchy lime juice-onion duo set the mood of a Friday morning. And a very good mood that permeated the house. Well, mostly. 

There were always some guests who would drop by on Friday mornings and in those days, there were no pre-visit calls to check if it would be alright to drop by. Everyone was welcome to have a hearty chat with a cup of tea or two, and some puris. Amidst the sound of deep discussions peppered by roars of laughter at some bawdy joke, the morning would pass by.

On Fridays, the early afternoon prayer call starts about 45 minutes earlier than on other days. Back then, when the clock struck noon or thereabouts, the Jummah prayer call would ignite a flurry of activities in our home. Various household members would run helter-skelter looking for the specific kurta and pyjamas my father would wear to the mosque. And God forbid if the drawstrings could not be hunted down in time! Once located, these clothing items would be given a vigorous hot iron pressing. There was a comforting smell that rose when the water sprinkles on the crisp cotton crumpled clothes met the hiss of the striking hot iron--somewhat like petrichor. 

Finally, after my father and brother were dressed and ready to leave, the last touch was a cotton ball doused in a musk attar, eloquently and lovingly called "mushk-e-amber" by Abba. He would push the perfumed cotton ball somewhere in a hidden nook of his ear and our house would wear the sweet smell of musk for the next few hours. Sometimes, uncles and male cousins would join them for the Friday prayers and they would go to different mosques for the experience and to break the monotony of saying them in the same neighbourhood mosque. 

Friday lunches are still special in many homes, where everyone eats together as it's the weekend for those not working in a company that matches its working days with the West. Walking down any road on a Friday afternoon, one can catch the distinct aroma of chicken korma, pulao, fried fish, or beef kaliya. 

Another Friday feature was (and still is) the prayer meetings or milads. These are held mostly on Fridays to ensure a maximum turnout of guests. These meetings had a pronounced smell of rosewater back in the days when oudh was not in vogue and certainly not available. A younger person from the family would be tasked with sprinkling rosewater on the guests toward the end of the prayer meeting. In each corner of the rooms, incense sticks would be buried in small pots filled with rice to keep the sticks from falling. As these burned, the thin wisps of smoke spread a heavy and sweet fragrance, lending a sombre holiness to the milieu. 

The sound system featured much later on in these gatherings. The main priest pumped out his spiritual sermon at a high decibel, although it wasn't high enough for the women to hear from another room. There would be someone who would take the cue from the maulvi and come to the zenana to signal the beginning and end of the prayers.

Then came the sound of the guests hurrying to take off the upper cover of the 'Alauddin Sweetmeat' purple boxes with a few pink curved stripes on the corners. After a minimum of hour-long prayers punctuated with forced sobs from the maulvi, the guests would be dying to sink their teeth into the potato shingaras gone cold or the yellow laddoos speckled with mawa or solid milk bits. The air would be filled with the chomp-chomp and murmurs of guests taking a break from eating and catching up with friends and family. 

The soundtrack of Thundercats is another favourite Friday association. At 3:40 PM every Friday, we would get ready to watch the Thundercats cartoon. Out came the strong iron trunk from underneath my parents' bed on which we would sit in front of the TV. For about half an hour or so, we would be lost in a different world where Cheetara, Lion-O, and their friends would foil the evil plans of Mumm-Ra with a lot of action and adventure.

As years rolled on, Friday mornings started with our dog Sheba's short, sharp barks, signalling that the newspaper-wallah had arrived at the gate. And when he was on his way out, she would run after his motorbike frantically, all the while barking at him while he revved up and throttled his way out of our street. As the bundle of newspapers and magazines came in, the house would be filled with the sound of silence and the rustling of the pages turning. We would all be engrossed in reading the Herald, Dawn, Newsline, She, and many other publications. 

Jummah Bazaar or Friday Market was a regular haunt. My mother loved haggling over the prices of plump grapes the size of an Afghan's thumb, deep maroon rugs with beautiful floral and geometric patterns, silver jewellery embedded with the brightest turquoise stones or the bluest of blue lapis lazuli with tiny gold specks in them, and anything else she had her heart set on for the house or us daughters. The sellers wearing delicately embroidered caps in multicoloured threads or woollen beige ones like a two-tiered, stiff and fluffy roti would give in to her demands. They became tired of flailing their fleshy arms in a futile attempt to get her to accept their lowest offer. 

These days, Fridays still have similar flavours, tastes, sights, and sounds, although the touch and warmth of old hands are gradually being replaced by new ones. There are no more unexpected guests who are expected to drop by; they are not welcome anymore. Instead of gathering over a Friday breakfast at home, it's more convenient to chat over a deshi breakfast in Star Kabab or a continental one at the numerous cafes. Friday lunches are still special and have a quintessential Friday flavour to them even if the same spices have been used. The neighbourhood laundry is good enough to get the kurtas and pyjamas pressed. Neat rows in superstores with carefully attired attendants make shopping a less involved experience. The milads have a new dimension—live Facebook transmission of someone close to the family taking the mic and reminiscing about the deceased. 

Although the means may have changed, the essence of Fridays remains the same. It is the only day of the week that releases all the bottled-up flavours of family love, aromas of recipes handed down through generations, memories in a sniff of raat ki rani blooms, and the haunting image of a funeral bier being carried away at the sound of the Jummah prayer call. 

Zertab Quaderi is on a literary journey and hopes it can make better sense of the world.