Our Stomachs, Our Selves

Three months after I got married, I realised my husband couldn’t live without his mother. 

​

She was the voice in his head, informing every decision. My parents were a little different. I was brought up on a daily-diet of how will you manage when you’ve got your own home? And why don’t you try doing it yourself before asking for help? In short, diametrically opposite. Our wedding had been a fraught affair. My parents disapproved of my choice of partner and refused to attend the wedding. This won’t last, they said, before completely cutting off all contact. 

​

Feeling abandoned by my own family made me do strange things. I offered to move in with my in-laws. Are you sure?, my husband asked, despite being thrilled at the prospect. Before our next rent bill turned up, we had moved in with them. I became determined to integrate into my new family. To blur all the lines that demarcated my South Indian self from their Bengali selves. 

​

My mornings changed. I’d stand with my mother in law as she cooked, watching her wash the fish and lather it with turmeric and chilli powder. I picked up key terms–chaal, laungka, noon–catching the alien words as they sputtered around me. When it was time for her to plop it onto the burning mustard oil, I learned to exhale silently just before this happened so the fumes wouldn’t assault my nose. Sometimes the oil would leap out and land on my arm, basting me in their culture. 

​

But it was tea that marked the line I had to cross. I’d wake up to passionate discussions about the consistency of tea. Each member had different preferences, none of which matched mine. I’d wince inwardly with each sip of the chai that my mother-in-law insisted only she make.

 

​

My mother had given me my first cup of tea when I was preparing for my ICSE board exams. It tasted bold. I felt grown up, in a sense more in tune with the adult world that I was preparing to enter.

​

While the tea at my parents’ home was soft and thin, tea in the hostel was thick like dessert. It sweetened every day hostel life. And when I reached Bombay for my summer internship–no place to stay and no primer on how to navigate work life–the triple boiled, punch-to-the-back-of-the-throat chai of Churchgate station stood faithfully by. I grew to think of it as my constant companion, punctuating the passage of time as I wove my way into adulthood and the fears that came with displacement.

​

None of this worldly exposure prepared me for tea at my in-laws’ place, though. Theirs was a periodic table of elements–water, types of tea leaves, types of milk, types of sweeteners. Within a few days, I was carrying a chart in my head – Person X Time of Day X Milk (presence / absence) X Sugar (presence / absence) X Tea leaf (Taj Mahal / Kanan Devan dust / Darjeeling leaves). I also learnt about ‘liquor cha’. Finding a way to insert my own preferences into this factorial chart of tea preferences, was near impossible.

 

​

My education into their family and culture deepened when we had to attend a wedding in Siliguri, a small town in West Bengal. They were an excitable lot–deeply knit, warm and garrulous, but prone to bouts of misunderstandings and general confusions. Frustratingly democratic, almost all decisions they took were exercises in nerve-racking emotional turmoil, replete with fears of protocol violations and imagined slights. I know now that this describes all middle-class Indian families, but I didn’t back then. My own family was nuclear, introverted and subdued in comparison and our weddings were short–beginning in the wee hours of the morning and wrapping up by lunch. 

 

Our trip began with a miscalculation of the travel time to Sealdah station. Upon reaching, we had to perform some near-acrobatic acts to jump into the train. People were blamed, alternate routes were discussed in painstaking detail and a conclusion was arrived at that the second mama, the one who had been in charge of logistics (and who now was to blame for the delay) would never be allowed to lead any future family trips.

​

Once the discussions of who will sleep where died down and we had more or less settled in, our chappals stashed under the seat and our feet up, it was time to eat. As the newest addition to the family, it was expected that I would jump into the womanly duties of organising paper plates and serving the food. 

​

I stood at the centre of the bogie, my legs apart for balance, spooning rice and aloor dom into plate after plate and handing it out. We sat gingerly, jostled by the rocking train, licking away at errant drips of oil that snaked down our arms. The food brought cheer back into the mood and soon songs were being sung, legs were being pulled, and I was being teased for being different. 

​

Don’t worry, they told me, soon your stomach will also become Bengali. 

​

I deflated. I didn’t want a Bengali stomach.

​

When the chaiwala came to our bogie, I reached for my purse, but my mother-in-law stopped me. It’s too expensive, she said. Besides, she’d brought her own tea in three separate flasks.

 

I looked away, out through the rusted bars of the window, embarrassed by the prickling in my eyes. Night had fallen outside. The hospital white tube lights of the train blinked and buzzed, casting a gloomy, cold pall on all of us. 

We stepped out into the damp cold of Siliguri at five am. The father of the bride came to greet us and then we were all systematically pushed into the many cycle-rickshaws that plied the city. Our vehicles had to snake behind each other as we made our way to the venue.

​

The sounds of the city came to me in staccato bursts — blaring horns, impatient cycle bells and the screeching halts of old brakes. This was not how I had imagined Siliguri to be, thinking it would be sleepy, slow and perhaps a little exotic. Instead, it seemed like any other small Indian town, developing haphazardly. Every street in Siliguri had a rushed and cacophonous feeling, like the upward percussion of a damru rattled with urgency. 

​

We were housed in an old community centre, four to a room with one bed and a few extra mattresses to share amongst us. Not ideal. I was offered a very weak cup of tea and a breakfast of cold, oily omelettes and soggy bread. The last time I’d stayed like this was back in college.

 

​

During my summer internship in Bombay, my best friend and I had reached a point towards the end of our term, when we only had eight rupees between us. Once we’d finished packing for the flight that we had, thankfully, already paid for, we had time to kill before setting off. One hour and eight rupees. We scanned the kitchen, found tea leaves and sugar but no milk. Wanting to try our luck I went to the local doodhwala who sold loose milk. Bhaiya, aath rupaye mein kitni doodh milega? 

​

The man chuckled at my poor Hindi and said, Aadha litre deta hoon, udhaar me le lo.

Nahin, hum jaa rahe hain Bombay se.

​

At this, he didn’t ask me why I needed the milk. He knew what it was for. He poured a tiny measure of milk into a plastic packet and handed it to me. Isse do cup bann jayenge. Tea was that universal language.

 

In the run up to D-day, I was asked to speak to the bride. Give her some confidence, they said, with a conspiratorial wink. 

​

I went to her, wondering why they wanted her to talk to someone she barely knew. All I remembered of her was that she was a year or two older to me and worked in a private bank. I also remembered how she’d made a show of being friendly with me at my wedding. 

​

As I entered her room, I sneezed because it was foggy from the early morning mist and too much hairspray. I sat on a corner of the bed as she pottered around in her blouse and petticoat, her hair up in a tall honeycomb. Did they send you to give me advice on sex? Clearly, she wasn’t lacking in confidence. I told her that I’d be only too happy if I didn’t need to tell her anything. Since I couldn’t leave too soon, I began helping her dress. She did have questions though. Is life terribly different after marriage? I took a long time before saying yes, it does change a lot. Did you forget your old self? Not yet, I told her, as I tucked in the saree-pleats at her waist.

After many more oily meals and cups of oversweet matka cha, I was told to accompany the father of the bride to the market to scout out a good beauty parlour that the women could hire for the wedding. Eager to leave the cramped room, I set out with him.

As we walked out of the campus, the city emerged, revealing puddles of rain water and half dug-up but quickly forgotten roads. Hawkers uncloaked their wares that were perched on pushcarts. I learned that we were headed to the famous Siliguri Hong Kong market. 

​

Navigating Indian bazaars, their familiar chaos, the plastics, people and pollution, is something all of us know how to do. I began feeling a little less estranged. The thing about marketplaces is that no matter how typical they might be, they manage to hold fascination  purely by dint of feeling so arbitrarily alive.

​

Our choices of beauty parlours were limited, so we chose the best looking one and informed them to come to our place by six. Now that the job was done, I expected that we would head back.

​

You’re not eating properly, my companion said. You don’t like the food?

​

I didn’t reply. We continued walking. After a while I realised that we weren’t headed back in the direction of our rooms.

​

This is the Hong Kong market. Come, I’ll get you good cha.

​

He took me to one of the oldest and most popular tea-shops — a tiny cafe uncaringly wedged between other shops that sold trinkets. It looked like a ‘standing’ tea-shop.

​

At its entrance stood two huge pots of boiling water, into which were periodically dropped spoonfuls of Darjeeling tea. Almost as immediately as the leaves hit the water, the brew was taken off the heat and the man began pouring the black tea liquor into small cutting-chai glasses. He had arranged 8 X 8 = 64 glasses, very neatly, next to his station. With the deft-ness of a practised hand, he began pouring the brew through a sieve into each of the 64 glasses — quickly and in a circular motion, as if to ensure that each glass had the same concentration of the drink. He continued taking orders simultaneously, and by the time he was done, this particular batch was used up. He emptied the used up tea leaves into a vessel and carried on with the next round. Customers who wanted milk tea got glasses with a dollop of milk carelessly dropped in. Fresh, hot and full of the smell of toasted Darjeeling tea-leaves, the sweet drink felt older than time. It wasn’t tea made for one, it was tea made for everyone. 

​

Once I had finished my cuppa, I hovered around contemplating having another, when my companion suggested that we grab a bite. Suspicious of the surroundings, I said no — it didn’t look like the place a city-dweller like me would risk eating in. Besides, there is no seating here, uncle! I complained.

​

Tutting, he pointed to something behind our tea-barista and began making his way. Through the haze and the rising steam of the tea maker, I spotted some people climbing up a grimy flight of stairs.

​

What is up there?, I asked following him.

​

Like Alice following the rabbit, I went up the rickety stairs. With a proud air, the father of the bride ordered two milk teas, butter toast and half-boiled eggs.

​

You eat egg, no?, he asked me warily, still unsure if of the dietary preferences of South Indian girls.

​

I replied affirmative and before the blink of an eye, two orders of chubby soft bread toast arrived, butter twinkling off their brown edges, with a soft-boiled egg plopped next to it.

​

Have the egg first, then bite the bread and then the cha. Go on, do it in that order.

​

I did. The yolk melted into my mouth, the sweet bread swept it up in butter and the tea washed it all down. Sweetness grew cumulatively and my shoulders relaxed.

​

I looked up to find him staring at me. Uncle, what happened?, I asked, worried that I’d violated another nameless rule.

​

I hope my daughter turns out like you, he said. Words my father hadn’t yet told me. I assured him that his daughter was already doing very well, she was independent and seemed to be choosing her partner wisely. He agreed, but added, I hope she is as curious as you are. You learnt our language. They tell me you also figured out how to make chai! I smiled in response. If it’s too much, you can always just stop. I know my sister. She can’t make you do anything you don’t want to. And if she tries, don’t let her.

​

Not knowing how to react, I caught the nearest waiter and said, Dada, aar duto cha deben?