The headline in The Statesman stared at me. Big, bold and black, the two-inch letters proclaimed "Bangladesh Declares Independence."
It was March 27, 1971. In the dining room of their Calcutta house, my parents and I silently looked at one another before gazing again at those ominous letters. The same thought, I knew, haunted each of us. This headline was not just history in the making; it could also spell tragedy for me.
The political convulsion in Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) and its violent consequences entered deeply into my personal life because of my marriage, in 1968, to a Bengali Muslim from that region. We had met as graduate students at Harvard. When I announced that I intended to marry him, my orthodox Hindu Brahmin family was horrified. I had been the first girl in our family allowed to go abroad for higher education, alone and unmarried. Everyone now regretted it. In a family where even intercaste marriages raised eyebrows, marrying a Muslim would bring unbearable social stigma. Worse, the Muslim I wanted to marry was a citizen of Pakistan, a country hostile to India. If war broke out, I might be cut off from my parents. And since Muslims could have four wives, what if this young man had one or more tucked away back home?
Would I be forced to convert to Islam? they asked. The gods must have shuddered at the prospect. Eating beef, absolutely forbidden to Hindus, is common among Muslims. Would my palate, too, be so defiled? The mere possibility seemed to cast a shadow of pollution over the daily offerings set before the family gods.
Blithely dismissing such considerations, we got married in the dusty offices of an American justice of the peace. My husband was a nonbeliever. His family at home consisted of older married siblings, all of whom appeared thrilled at the prospect of meeting their baby brother's exotic wife. None expected me to convert. On my side, after an appalled and deafening silence, we received a reluctant acceptance of the marriage from my parents. But my devout grandmother amazed me with a letter of joyful congratulation, unmarred by misgivings about our future.
We left the U.S. in October 1970. After meeting my in-laws and spending a month with them in Dhaka, I went to Calcutta alone—the prodigal daughter in search of forgiveness and love. I think by the time my first delectable dinner at home was over—my favorite items lovingly cooked by my mother—much of the hurt had been set aside. I was to stay for three months, while my husband joined his office in Dhaka and found an apartment. But before he could come and meet my parents, political events overtook us. Normal travel between Calcutta and Dhaka became impossible. And then came the declaration of independence.
For three nights and four days, we had no news of my husband. The papers reported on the terror unleashed by the Pakistani military, especially its systematic elimination of Bengali intellectuals—such as my husband. We also knew that his marriage to a Hindu woman from enemy India made him even more of a target for reprisal.
Panic-stricken refugees streamed across the border into Calcutta. Train stations were jam-packed with huddled figures. Newspaper photos showed people hunkering over bowls containing pathetic handfuls of rice. Our house became deathly quiet—my father and I remaining glued to newspapers and radio but afraid to discuss anything we heard, my mother seeking haven with the gods in her worshiping room.
When my husband turned up on the fourth evening, after an escape across the border and a two-day train journey, my parents welcomed him with unrestrained joy and relief. No shadow of resentment and suspicion toward the Muslim son-in-law was evident. Their only daughter was not a widow—that was all they cared about.
My mother cheerfully bustled around in the kitchen, fixing an impromptu dinner. Oppressed by fear in the past few days, we had neglected to shop, and our larder and refrigerator were almost bare. But her culinary genius transcended such limitations.
Later, I watched my husband eat his first meal in our house. Instead of rice, my mother served luchis—puffy, disk-shaped fried breads that Bengalis love. As he picked up the first luchi and punctured the top layer with his finger to let out the hot, fragrant air, a smile of almost childlike pleasure illuminated his face, erasing the tensions of his traumatic journey. When I saw that smile mirrored in my parents' faces, I began to hope that he would really become the son they never had.
The luchis came with eggplant fritters, a tangy potato dish, a dal made from yellow split peas, and a chilled dessert of evaporated milk infused with tangerine pulp. Afterward, we decided to walk to my widowed grandmother's house and give her the good news in person. She was eating her solitary supper but came out when she heard my voice. The instant she saw my husband, she rushed forward and hugged him tightly, unaware that her hand, smeared with the spiced vegetables she had been eating with chapatis, left turmeric-yellow fingerprints on his white silk kurta. The signature of true love, I thought.
The honeymoon, however, was brief. Being a penniless, statusless refugee in his in-laws' home seemed to bring out the most prickly and acerbic aspects of my husband's character. Those traits collided head-on with my mother's natural propensity to impose her way of doing things—even on people accustomed to independence from an early age. The "house rules," which I no longer noticed because I had grown up with them, were numerous and intrusive. No breakfast until you had eaten a morsel of the offerings made to the gods during morning worship. No leaving the house without putting one grain of the "holy rice" (from the Jagannatha Temple, in Puri) in your mouth. My husband, who never fasted during Ramadan as his fellow Muslims did, who never went to a mosque to pray, found it absurd and irritating to be subjected to these Hindu rituals.
Worst of all were the daily (and befuddling) restrictions stemming from the purity code known as enthho. Derived from the Sanskrit uchhishtho, enthho has become an amorphous term for Bengali Hindus, its interpretation varying from family to family. Anything that has touched your mouth or saliva becomes enthho. Observant Hindus will never bite into a fruit or sip from a glass and then offer the rest to someone else. The term becomes more puzzling, however, when applied to rice, which is not enthho when uncooked but becomes so after cooking. Once you have touched anything containing cooked rice, you must wash your hands before touching uncooked vegetables, fruits, spices, or even clean containers. The status of animal products—fish, meat, eggs—is less confusing. They are always enthho, cooked or uncooked. A bowl of cooked vegetables is not enthho and can be placed anywhere; but the minute the bowl comes into contact with anything containing cooked rice, it becomes enthho and can only be kept in an area (dining table, kitchen counter, refrigerator shelf) set aside for enthho foods.
The same rule applies to one's hands. When my husband, after sitting down for a meal, got up and opened the refrigerator to get iced water, he precipitated a crisis of pollution. For though he had not actually used his hand to eat, he had touched the plate containing rice and other foods. The refrigerator was immediately emptied of its contents, its interior washed thoroughly, and holy water from the Ganges (always stored in a small jar in the worshiping room) sprinkled over it for final purification. Naturally, my husband's comments about the meaninglessness of such practices did nothing to endear him to my mother. Later, I heard her lamenting to a visiting cousin about his refusal to learn the rituals of good health and purity.
No such reservations about nonbelievers, however, affected her response to some of my husband's friends who also had fled the ravages of the Pakistani soldiery. Both she and my father saw these young men as true refugees, since they were roughing it in the Bangladeshi Embassy. Expectations of conduct or conformity did not intrude between my mother and these visitors, whom she pampered with numerous Bengali delicacies. One of them often got his favorite dish—puishaak (a spinachlike leafy green) with tiny shrimp, ground mustard, and green chiles. Watching her undiluted delight in feeding him, I wished things could have stayed that way between her and my husband.
May is one of the hottest months in Bengal. The mercury climbs into the 90s and refuses to budge. The sun blazes from a mercilessly blue sky. And while the cracked earth, melting asphalt, and wizened leaves on the trees might create an illusion of desertlike aridity, the air is laden with a sullen moisture that drains one of all energy. May 1971 stands out in my memory as a relentless inferno.
The second month of the Bengali calendar, Jaishtha, runs from mid-May to mid-June. Every Tuesday in Jaishtha, married women observe a midday ritual—eating only uncooked rice flakes with yogurt and fruit, while men and unmarried women eat the normal foods. My mother insisted I join her in this practice. I agreed to, despite my husband's jibes about reverting to the Dark Ages. But one Tuesday, when he offered me a spoonful from his potatoes delectably mashed with mustard oil, fried onions, and fried chiles (a dish I loved), I could not resist. Convinced the gods would punish me for such transgression, my mother furiously gave vent to her frustrations, which were further exacerbated when, instead of showing contrition, my husband simply ignored her.
After this, I wondered what she planned for the most important ritual of Jaishtha—Jamaishashthi, when a Bengali mother-in-law prepares an elaborate midday feast for her son-in-law. The rationale (in a society where a woman's dependence on her husband was absolute) was that if he felt fussed over, he would treat his wife with care and affection. Would my mother choose not to do anything special for a son-in-law who showed so little consideration for all that was meaningful to her?
When the day arrived, I saw my fears had been groundless. My father was dispatched early to shop for a feast. When he returned, I rushed into the kitchen. The first thing I noticed was a huge head of rui (Bengal's favorite carp). This is an obligatory part of the son-in-law's feast. My mother would make a murighanto—a dry, spicy dish in which fried pieces of fish head are combined with diced potatoes and grains of atap (non-parboiled) rice. A paste of cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves blends with the fish brain to create a unique redolence.
Looking around, I realized that my mother had planned the menu specifically to please my husband. For starters, she would serve kalmi shaak (water spinach), stir-fried with chopped garlic, dried chiles, and the spice mixture called panch phoron. Eggplant fritters and a dal made with roasted mung beans would come next, followed by two vegetable items: stems of kachu (a kind of taro) cooked with ground mustard, fresh—ground coconut, and small shrimp; and a dish of banana blossom. Next came the carp head, followed by two Bengali specialties—prawn malaikari (made with clarified butter, coconut milk, and spices) and chitol in a fiery red-chile sauce.
This last item astonished me. We had never eaten chitol when I was growing up. It was a "difficult" fish—very bony in the back, very oily in the stomach—generally favored by the people of eastern Bengal. Later, my mother had learned from a friend from the area how to make fish balls with the bony flesh. But today she was ready to tackle the chitol because my husband loved it.
My offers of help were imperiously waved away. This was one meal she was going to prepare all by herself—a gift from mother-in-law to son-in-law. The heat of the June day mounted, carrying the rich, mingled aromas of cooking, but I felt oppressed at the thought of her being locked in the steamy kitchen. When a couple of my husband's friends showed up and suggested going out for coffee, I decided to stay home in case my mother did need help. She did not. By one-thirty, she was done—an amazing feat.
Bathed and refreshed, she laid the table, expecting my husband to return soon. My father, himself an epicure, happily talked about the Jamaishashthi meals he had eaten in the early years of their marriage. I peeked at all the dishes and repeatedly inhaled the fragrance of each, as I had done in childhood. But there was no sign of the guest of honor. When he did return, around two-thirty, he said he had eaten some snacks with his coffee and was not hungry. He would skip lunch. We should go ahead and eat, he said.
I am sure he had no idea of the magnitude of the affront. Of how unthinkable it was for a mother-in-law to eat on Jamaishashthi while her son-in-law remained unfed. But even I was taken aback at the intensity of my mother's reaction. She shut herself in her bedroom, sobbed loudly, and launched into a monologue that was part tirade, part dirge. Never had she been so humiliated. For what sins were the gods punishing her? And how could her only beloved daughter have married a man so utterly disrespectful to her?
For an eternity, no one tried to stop her. My father, my husband, and I—each in a different room—listened in stricken silence. Eventually, my father intervened. Though he had a sneaking sympathy for my husband, he persuaded him to offer an apology, however much it went against the grain. My husband, too, had begun to realize how deep was the hurt. Sadly, he knocked on her door to express penitence.
Much later that day, my father and I ate a little bit of the glorious meal my mother had prepared. Afterward, I convinced her to have a tiny mouthful and drink some water, using the argument that her anger, sorrow, and fasting would simply bring bad luck to my husband, which was sure to affect me. This was an argument she couldn't resist.
In the evening, she finally served the Jamaishashthi feast to the intended recipient. My father and I sat and watched anxiously. The meal began in a constrained silence. But with every mouthful the magic of her cooking worked wonders. My husband's compliments were effusive and completely spontaneous. When he was finally served the chitol, he looked up at her and smiled with delight. She smiled back. At last, my father and I could relax.
At the end of July, my husband received a fellowship that enabled us to return to the U.S. When they said good-bye, I was astonished by the frankness with which they asked each other to pardon their mutual lack of understanding. During future visits, the two of them always treated each other with deep affection and respect—feelings that remained unchanged even after my divorce.