Of Rituals and Memories

Does it ever happen in your family?

It is never an easy decision to get into an arranged marriage, there are so many what ifs involved, so many concerns about compatibility (now that’s a concept still quite alien to where I am from). You fear if your mental frequencies and values will even match with the person you will meet a few times and speak to in long distance before actually living together. And if it is an entirely different family, people you are meeting for the very first time, it makes it just ten times harder.

So, I got married, and suddenly I was a bhabhi and bahu. I am also a chachi to half the kids in the family, for the other half I go by maami. Does it ever happen in your family? How you go amidst complete strangers, forge new relations, drink tea from mismatched cups and pick ordinary habits from each other as you live in the same house? It’s incredible, really. Family legends are shared and tales retold over old photographs, and then like in all families, there exist stories not found in words or pictures but on the dinner table. Through elaborate dishes and spices, we learn accounts of conviction, love and pride.

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I come from a middle-class Urdu speaking family. My grandfather and his family hailed from Bareilly, a small town in Uttar Pradesh (UP). They immigrated to Pakistan in 1947 after the British left the subcontinent divided into two countries. Partition sent a vibration across the cultural fabric of India and those who moved to Pakistan, brought with them tattered remnants. Of course the perils of migration and financial uncertainty didn’t allow room for many luxuries, certain traditions however still managed to pierce through the turmoil of displacement and assimilation—from colonial era Bareilly to post-partitioned Karachi, and to present day Chicago.

Like all muhajirs who immigrated to Pakistan, we have stories of havelis and courtyards back in India, family imambaras and neighborhoods that still remember our names, family recipes that are a monument to the lost glory. These are stories we tell every new member with longing and pride.

When I started learning about my family’s history and culinary legacies, I figured that we were not known for any popular delicacy like the baghaar-e-baigan and khatti daal of Hyderabadis or pachrangi khichdi of Amroha-waal, or Lucknowi galawati kabab. We followed what was a general food norm in most muhajir families: masoor daal with rice on Ashura, haleem in Muharram, chanay ki daal ka halwa in Shaban—which my naani from sadaat bara would make with utmost reverence—and so on. Though one thing that had us stand out was our penchant for chutneys and raita. It was a simple tradition that was passed onto the wives that came into the family after my grandfather’s generation got married; a tradition that the wives passed on to their bahus and from there on to the third generation, i.e. me, who thoroughly enjoys the propensity but also sees it as a matter of pontification.

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On the other hand, I got married into a family that hailed from Bihar. Bihari food is widely popular for its ostentatious presentation and complexity. For me it was a striking contrast.

The family matriarch, my mother in law, spent a good part of her life in Bangladesh, and returned to Karachi just in time before the fall of Dhaka. She is a woman of peculiar taste, set in her ways, and is extensively regarded as a culinary artist of her time. She is also fluent in Bengali and to this day speaks Urdu in a typical Bihari accent laced with words that no longer sound alien to me.

Contrary to what I had heard about rice being a staple in Bihari households, my experience could not have been more different; because in two something years of being married, I have come across at least five dishes that are complex variations of—wait for it—plain simple roti. Well, not entirely plain or simple, but a form of bread made out of kneaded dough.

There is the popular khasta roti which tastes like bihari kabab. I was baffled by the concept but it’s an interesting one. My saas explained that back in the day, when women used to make bihari kabab’s masala from the scratch (which she still does, by the way), the surplus was kneaded with flour in order to use every bit of the leftover masala. The resultant dough was then hot pressed with very little oil on the tawa. I wouldn’t lie and say I have developed a taste for it, because I haven’t, much to my husband’s dismay who feels deprived because of me.

Then there is the delectable maal pu’aa that is somewhere between poori and pancake, and the mighty maaRa that is made of rice flour into multiple layers. It is a rigorous dish that requires quite a lot of effort, so much so that even my saas doesn’t try it anymore.

I also learned a little bit of dosti roti which is basically two rolled rotis stuck together with ghee in the middle that separate flawlessly after being puffed. I just couldn’t understand the purpose. It is practically just two fashionably conjoined rotis that are supposed to be separated before eating. My husband recounted that it was a tradition particular to the 15th of Shaban, when his daadi would ritualistically prepare bhuna gosht and dosti roti with aatay ka halwa every year without fail. An entire stage was set way before the cooking started. Ingredients were hand-picked, kitchen thoroughly cleaned, each family member assigned a role to play in preparation of the grand celebration. A huge barrel stored the brass crockery that was exclusively for nazar niyaaz and came out only for such occasions. The crockery was first washed and purified as it air-dried in the sun. A chart with the names of the deceased that was kept inside the Quran all year was brought out, and fateha was offered on each morsel. A small section was separated for the djinns which she believed came every year to collect their part - a belief my saas still strongly holds onto.

That year, my saas demonstrated the elaborate steps to cooking bhuna gosht, her expert hands guiding me through inexperience, preserving a tradition that crisscrossed its way and managed to stitch us together. I learned that bhuna gosht is made with mutton fried in lots of onion with only two major spices - coriander and chili powder. Once the oil separates, the meat is left to slow cook for nearly three hours. Then came learning the process of dosti roti, which I only watched with disapproval and maintained that what difference would it make anyway if it’s just a more complicated way of making roti that will also taste the same?

Now here’s the fun part: it didn’t. It tasted different, and better (just don’t tell my husband I acknowledged that). Was it ghee? Or a dash of placebo? Regardless, I was sentimental enough to give it a try.

So for Shab-e-Baraat this year, I made dosti roti with bhuna gosht. And as a measure of my sentimentality, I also made chanay ki daal ka halwa offering my ancestors a place on the dining table too. When the sun set that evening, I solemnly lit the incense and sat my toddler on her high chair as husband brought out the sheet to perform the ritual prayer — and for a short while, my house smelled of memories that I didn’t live but thoroughly understood.