All day long, Kumar Gupta wiggles his way around a rainbow of spices lining a cramped market stall. I have come for dried chile, but I won't escape without tea. “This is Bengali culture,” he tells me, flashing his hands at a boy who races off and quickly returns with a terracotta cup of hot masala. The kid pours me a handful of salty cashews and sweet golden raisins. Kumar insists I sit for further chitchat.
A wrinkled gray-haired man sits on the floor pounding white peppercorns into a powder. The grind is most important, Kumar says. Everything he sells is hand-ground, a specialty noted on his business card. Bengalis, like many Asians, say only a mortar and pestle can crush a spice or herb to its fullest potential. Blenders merely chop. Pestles smash to smithereens.
Kumar sells the same spices in the same way his forefathers did 90 years ago. "This shop is very old," several generations of men in the same family. But here it stops. Kumar will not put his kids into this business "because it's very hard work from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m." He wants them to have an easier life.
And so a century of tradition will end here at stall P-28 in Kolkata's Hogg Market (New Market). When Kumar goes, will the hand-ground spices? Perhaps. Already across Asia, homestyle cooks and restaurant chefs alike lament the coming of busier days. More and more consumers buy their spices and curries on the run, in jars and pre-mixed powders. The best chefs say they can taste it immediately when a restaurant serves a lazy curry that never felt the hand-held power of a pestle.
Kumar doesn't talk too much of what's to come. He simply offers me another cup of tea and persuades me on a bag of cloves.
Kumar ships overseas. Call 91-33-69902958 for orders.
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