Always nice to come back home

The river was a source of great pride. It was wide and I remember, sitting on the veranda of our house, I could contemplate sunset on the other side of the river and listen to someone playing flute on a riverboat. After so many years, the echo of that melody still lingers in my memory. Not many of the inhabitants of Savar went to Dhaka on a daily basis to earn a living.

As we drove along the Dhaka- Savar road, I found that in many places paddy fields have been replaced by factories of all nature, bricks, ceramics, garments etc. Savar and its surrounding areas have changed beyond all recognition. It is no longer the little agricultural town of my adolescent days .It is full of hustle and bustle of a busy satellite town. There are several schools, colleges ( including one specifically for women), a university, and even a medical college. It has also become an important tourist site because of the National Memorial which is dedicated to the memory of millions of unknown martyrs of the 1971 War of Liberation. Savar's population has increased several fold. Construction work is going on everywhere. There are new urban complexes from where people commute to Dhaka everyday. Proportionately there are more three-wheeled rickshaws than in Dhaka. Inside old Savar , the streets are still so narrow and the traffic so heavy that we had to stop several times to let the oncoming vehicles pass. Finally we reached our parental home and the adjacent graveyard. It was a shock to find that the river had shrunk to a pathetic brook and people had built houses on reclaimed land blocking the view of the river from our house. I was told by the neighbours that for lack of proper dredging floods have become such common phenomena in Bangladesh.

Luckily the mosque and the graveyard were well-maintained and kept impeccably clean by the caretakers. We prayed at the graveyard, sat around the garden and reminisced about the past. Then after thanking the caretakers, we headed back to Dhaka. After the long journey from Madrid via London and so much emotional excitement at Dhaka airport, I was feeling tired and thirsty. But this was the month of Ramadan and I felt embarrassed to confess that I was not fasting. Will someone offer me a drink of water?

Well, I need not have worried. My family members, particularly the women, had somehow guessed that I was not fasting. As soon as I arrived back in Dhaka, I was offered a drink of coconut water and I felt resuscitated . Actually, juice from freshly plucked coconuts tastes even better. I remember, many years ago, when I used to live at Salimullah Hall, one summer day, I came to see my parents at Savar. It was so hot and humid and the bus ride so tiring that I was exhausted. My father asked one of his workers to collect a few fresh coconuts. The young man climbed up a coconut tree in our garden like a squirrel with the help of a loop made of coconut-husk rope. He dropped several coconuts from above. My father chopped the husk of one of them with a machete , made a hole in the shell and offered it to me. Coconut water has never tasted better to me in my whole life. Once I had finished drinking the juice, my father cracked the drained coconut in two pieces. He cut off a wedge of the husk to use it as a spoon and gave the pieces back to me so that I could eat the tender flesh. The Bangladeshis are fortunate in having a fruit like coconut which not only satisfies their thirst but also their hunger. The dried husk is later used to make rope. My father also used some of the dried husk to light the tobacco in his hukka. Bangladesh is a country blessed with a variety of fruits. This is a land where huge jackfruit dangle from tree trunks , mangoes and bananas hang in abundance. Then there are of course, lichees, pineapples, watermelons , pomegranates, etc. I still remember starting the day with a breakfast of orange and golden papayas.

During my long stay abroad, I have often been asked as to whether I missed home and if so what in particular. Besides the affection of my family the thing I miss most is no doubt Bangladeshi food. When I lived in London in the sixties, the British preferred fish and chips to South Asian cuisine. London has now become more cosmopolitan. While curry has displaced fish and chips and dethroned roast beef and Yorkshire pudding in London, Madrid has remained provincial as far as food is concerned. In Madrid, there are only a few South Asian restaurants where they serve a Westernised concoction of curry and tandoori chicken which are probably fit for British expatriates' hungry stomachs but no self-respecting native of Dhaka would touch them.

Although we use more or less the same ingredients and spices as in India, in my opinion, Bangladeshi cuisine has a distinctively delicate flavour. Fish, vegetables, mustard oil , ginger, panchphoran, garlic , fresh coriander leaves figure prominently in Bangladeshi cuisine. Generous helpings of whole green chillies and onions are also required. In Bangladesh there is such a rich variety of greens and vegetables all the year round that it can be considered as a vegetarian's paradise. There are snake gourds, bitter gourds, marrow, peas, green beans, fat carrots, radishes, leeks, aubergine, cabbage, cauliflower, shallots, tiny new potatoes, lotus roots, okra, pumpkins, lady's fingers, spinach, lal shak , pui shak etc. This time I also found varieties of fish, shrimps, king prawns and even lobsters in abundance, most of them apparently grown in fish farms. I still remember with nostalgia how my mother used to serve so many different saute`s ( bhajis) of vegetables and fish curries at every meal. Mungh or masoor dal was always a must. I was pleased to find that my brothers and sisters had maintained the same tradition at their homes. More next time.