Welcome home to flavours

Raaja Bhasin

I had been married only a couple of months and committed the crime of vanishing at a dinner party. This left my wife in the midst of people somewhat unknown to her. That, needless to say, did not go down well. Years later, at appropriate times, I would still be reminded of that remiss moment. As far as I was concerned, it was the expected thing. This was dinner at my old school, Bishop Cotton in Shimla. Mutton chops were being served. I was going years back to a flavour associated with a time long gone. The least one could do, was do justice to those chops. The plate was piled high. There was a quiet corner. Undisturbed, one could systematically wade through mutton and good gravy and once done, could re-join both wife and party.

Somewhat later, a good friend, Tikka Trivikram Singh of the former princely state of Koti, whose territory adjoined Shimla — and whose son, incidentally, is Anirudh Singh, a member of Himachal’s Cabinet — asked to find out the recipe for fried fish as was cooked at Bishop Cotton. While we were years apart, both of us had studied at the same school.

“Recipe, what recipe? There is no recipe. It is half a bucket-full of one masala, a full one of another, assorted bags of other ingredients and several kilos of fish. It’s all put together and cooked. The school kitchen caters to hundreds every single day and does not create recipes.” Well, that was that. And yet, somehow, the dish tasted the same every time.

The matter, however, did not, and does not, end there. Down the years, I have been looking for, what in my opinion, is the perfect plain cake and the perfect rich plum one. Again, the school bakery would churn out biscuits, breads and on occasion, cakes. Some days back, one of Shimla’s leading hotels presented a ‘pound cake’ that was more like a couple of kilos in weight, and shall happily see me through the coming weeks. This has come close to what one had eaten as a child in school — and baked by a man who for reasons unknown was always referred to ‘Darling Baker’. In the cake handed to me now, there is a similar fluffiness, a similar smoothness of texture, a similar gentle aftertaste, and it has been baked with only the same basic ingredients — eggs, butter and maida (refined flour).

Then came the time when I was off to college in Chandigarh. For breakfast, one couldn’t tell where the oil ended and the omelette began; a fried egg was an island in a sea of impending cholesterol. Opposite the gates of the PGI, there were rows of parantha stalls and often enough we were there, challenging the outer limits of digestive prowess and satiating our hunger. All this may seem odd as one has aged, but somehow, one misses this and all what those years held.

A few months back, I was travelling to Jammu, which was another childhood home as my mother’s parents lived there.

Long back, we would travel overnight by train and it would be early morning when it would stop at the station at Samba. Fresh fritters, bhallas that were still warm, would become a pre-breakfast snack and were eaten with grated radish and spicy chutney. This time round, driving through Samba at night, everything was shut. There was, however, one dhaba that was open and there, I made the mistake of asking for those once-loved bhallas with chai. They were cold and brick-solid. In an emergency, they could have been used as ammunition in this town which lies menacingly close to the border. In a moment, that association of being curled up warmly in a railway carriage with different smells of food and cooking smoke all around was dispelled.

When our children studied at St Edward’s, a day school in Shimla, ‘healthy food’ was packed for them. While one ate his conscientiously, the other’s found its way, as we later learnt, to the dustbin. Money given for the bus fare was used to buy golgappas and chaat. In later years, both went off to another hill.

When they would come home for their holidays from Lawrence School, Sanawar, my wife would unfailingly ask, “What would you like to have cooked?” Equally unfailingly, the answer was the same, “Don’t bother. We get better food in school.”

The only concession they made was to the leg of roast mutton, served with gravy and potatoes. This was one dish that was always cooked by my father when I came back from college, or elsewhere. It has taken me years to replicate the flavours he created. Somehow, it’s a dish that has come to symbolise, ‘Welcome home’.