Dear Reader,
The pile of cookbooks on my table (sent by publishers without asking) is getting higher every month. They have recipes for all the raging fads: gluten-free food, satvik food, plant-based meats, and more. I am faced with much the same on social media, which seems intent on making me taste every kind of abomination, from filter coffee rasmalai to mutton cooked with rosebuds.
The bizarreness of the dishes reminds me of Mark Twain, who had a fondness for the meat of diamondback terrapin turtles and raccoon. Victor Hugo is supposed to have consumed half an ox at one go, followed by a three-day fast. On the other end of the spectrum are writers like Byron, who being vain about his figure and good looks, thrived on hard biscuits and soda water. Kafka too was a frugal eater and once described himself as the thinnest person he had ever known. The Brontë sisters, especially Emily, survived chiefly on rage and fresh air.
Rabindranath Tagore, circa 1935. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
Rabindranath Tagore’s morning habit was to have a glass of water in which the stems of the punishingly bitter chirata (swertia chirayita) had been soaked overnight. The chirata-infused water, meant to cleanse the digestive system, takes on the colour of alcohol. On seeing Tagore down it, a visitor concluded with dismay that the poet began the day with tipple. Seeing his distress, Tagore graciously shared his drink with the guest and one assumes he never dared visit again.
In my childhood, mother regularly forced me to drink chirata water: let me just say that its unparalleled taste has cured me of hunger for a lifetime.
These are some reasons why I generally stay away from cookbooks and food descriptions: while reading Rahul Verma’s engaging review of Forgotten Foods: Memories and Recipes from Muslim South Asia, I nodded with sympathy at the last sentence, where he says, “Often, after reading the elaborate descriptions, I found myself reaching out for an antacid and thinking fondly of weak tea and toast.” Check out his charming review here.
I have always wondered what soma, the mythical drink of the gods mentioned in the Rig Veda, tasted like (I hope it isn’t a cousin of bitter absinthe). In Soma: Poems by A.K. Ramanujan there is a wonderful introductory essay by Wendy Doniger where she talks of some speculations over the identity of soma—some scholars say it was a dangerous hallucinogenic mushroom. The poems in the book are from the period when Ramanujan was probably experimenting with hallucinogenic drugs. The poems certainly cast a spell, as soma is supposed to have done, blurring the contours of reality and, at the same time, making it starker. Arshia Sattar’s superb review is not to be missed.
All this talk makes me long, like Keats, for a draught of vintage tasting of the forest and sunburnt mirth. I will dream about that until we meet next.
Till then,
Anusua Mukherjee
