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Food and memory in Parimal Goswami’s autobiographical writing Smriti-Chitran


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Ishani Choudhury
Bethune College, Kolkata, India
e-mail: ishanihistory@gmail.com


AGATHOS, Volume 15, Issue 2 (29): 285-301, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.13950091
© www.agathos-international-review.com CC BY NC 2024


Abstract: Food is central to our identity and existence. Food is a medium of one’s own expression. Food, cooking, eating, meal experiences- all are often loaded with memories. The present article aims to investigate the ways in which memories about meal experience occupied a central place of importance in an autobiographical writing of twentieth century Bengal. Smriti-Chitran was composed between 1956 and 1958 by Parimal Goswami (1897-1976). He was a renowned Bengali litterateur, photographer and newspaper editor. He himself did not claim his composition as an autobiography, rather he mentioned that he was trying to draw a sketch of his memory and in such a sketch he had tried to preserve his self and his time. The present study intends to focus on- food as a signifier of a range of emotions, as a tool for personal expression, and as a reminder of the past- through the prism of Goswami’s Smriti-Chitran. While analysing food memories reflected in the Bengali autobiographical text Smriti-Chitran, the goal of the present author is to explore how any good food invoked such spontaneous memory, how meal experience got enmeshed with emotional-social-material relations, how food memories became integrally connected with some memories of illness and how food became signifier of happy as well as troubled days.


Keywords: memory, food, autobiography, Bengal, twentieth century, nostalgia


Introduction

The present article aims to investigate the ways in which memories about the meal experience occupied a central place of importance in an autobiographical writing of twentieth century Bengal. This paper thoroughly studies Parimal Goswami’s Smriti-Chitran where food memory on the one hand evoked nostalgia of any particular place or any close friend; on the other hand, food-oriented memories helped in highlighting a person’s psychological-social-cultural realities and identities. Smriti-Chitran was composed between 1956 and 1958 by Parimal Goswami (1897-1976). He was a renowned Bengali litterateur, photographer and newspaper editor. Parimal Goswami composed five memory sketches which included Smriti-Chitran (1958), Dwitiya Smriti (1962), Aami Jaader Dekhechi (1969), Patra-Smriti (1971) and Jokhon Sompadok Chhilam (1973). Other compositions of Parimal Goswami include ‘Dushmonter Bichar’, ‘Ghughu’, ‘Tramer Sei Lokti’, ‘Black Market’, ‘Detective Shibnath’, ‘Shubho Bibaho’, ‘Mar ke Lenge’, ‘Magic Lonthon’, ‘Budwud’, ‘Pothe Pothe’, ‘Benami Chithi o Heerer Angti’, ‘Sapta Pancha’ ‘Rabindranath o Bignan’, ‘School-er Meyera’, ‘Merupother Jatridol’, ‘Ashare Deshe’, ‘Adhunik Alokchitran’ et cetera. All his writings were reflection of the then social relation, cultural life, economic condition- a mirror of everyday existence. The initial request for writing Smriti-Chitran came to Goswami from Pranatosh Ghatak, the Editor of Bengali periodical Masik Basumati; and since then, Goswami started composing Smriti-Chitran and completed the entire autobiographical composition within next 18 months. He himself did not claim his composition as an autobiography, rather he mentioned that he was trying to draw a sketch of his memory and in such a sketch he had tried to preserve his self and his time. The present study intends to focus on- food as a signifier of a range of emotions, food as a tool for personal expression and food as a reminder of the past - through the prism of Goswami’s Smriti-Chitran.

 Food is not just a substance for fulfilling one’s appetite, fuelling ourselves and satisfying the biological need; rather food’s role is much more significant in human life. Food is rather central to identity and existence. Food is a medium of one’s own expression. Food, cooking, eating, meal experiences- all are often loaded with memories. When someone starts composing an autobiographical narrative, he or she depends on “the access to memory to narrate the past in such a way as to situate the experiential history within the present” (Smith and Watson 2010, 22). Now, at the very beginning of the present paper, it is necessary to answer two important questions – first, what do we mean by ‘memory’ and second, what is the role of memory in an autobiographical writing. To answer the first question, memory is not just simply bringing to mind any information encountered at a previous time (Foster 2009, 3). Memory is a delicate matter; historians, archaeologists, philologists are expected to use memory carefully (Nadali ed. 2016, 4-5). Memory is considered as both cause and effect of human thought. Memories are not mere saved images taken from the brain, but an interaction between the past and the present (Sutton 2001, 9). It must be kept in mind that “whenever the experience of some past event influences someone at a later time, the influence of the previous experience is a reflection of memory for that past event” (Foster 2009, 3). Memory is an integral part of daily life, closely connected with one’s existence, emotions, attitudes and social relations. Memory cannot be identified only as a truthful recording of past events. Memory is an active and selective process with both strengths and weaknesses (Ibid, 137).

 Now coming to the second question, memory is the ‘source, authenticator, and destabilizer’ of autobiographical narratives. Remembering involves a re-interpretation of the past in the present (Smith and Watson 2010, 22). The process is not a mere passive act of retrieval from memory bank; rather, in the act of remembering, the meaning of the past is actively created. In autobiographies, “narrators become readers of their experiential histories” (Ibid, 33). As explained in the work of Abarca and Colby (2016, 5), “the first link between food and memory or the first characteristic that produces food memory, is the sensory and emotional nature emitted by and through food’s material and symbolic social and cultural functions”. The taste of any good food is “powerful enough to invoke involuntary and autobiographical memories” (Varghese and Parui 2019, 156). Memories of special meals prepared by loving family members have an ability to evoke powerful emotions in human being (Lyons 2009, 1). Effect of food memory can often be caught up with many other material relations (Fox and Alldred 2018, 10). While analysing food memories reflected in the Bengali autobiographical text Smriti-Chitran, the goal of the present author is to explore how any good food invoked such spontaneous memory, how meal experience got enmeshed with emotional-social-material relations, how food memories became integrally connected with some memories of illness and how food became signifier of happy as well as troubled days.


Literature review

It is undeniable that experience of eating food always has a biological, emotional, social and cultural connotation attached to it. Food has been marked by social scientists as an important site of memory. The present article needs necessarily to review the pre-existing studies on the relation between meal and memory. It is relevant for the present work to discuss how scholars, especially in recent years, have started describing ‘food memory’ or ‘edible memory’; how they have increasingly explained the ways in which meal experience got attached to personal memories. In the field of food and memory, David E. Sutton has made a crucial contribution through the text Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory, published in 2001 wherein he has dealt with issues of memory from a variety of perspectives. Sutton has used his observations from his research in the Greek Island of Kalymnos where he identified how food plays an important role in recollecting one’s memory. According to Sutton, “ability of food to both generate subjective commentary and encode powerful meanings would seemingly make it ideal to wed to the topic of memory” (Sutton 2001, 6). Sutton has further argued that food memories constitute a ‘form of historical consciousness’ (Ibid, 26). Renowned anthropologist Carole Counihan in her work Around the Tuscan Table specifically focused on experiences and memories concerning food and eating in the context of late twentieth century Florence, Italy. Counihan has highlighted that certain foods can become symbols of the past which are no longer regularly consumed as they are either too difficult to prepare or no longer customary (Counihan 2004, 25).

 In this context of literature review, mention must be made of the paradigm-shifting analysis of leading Neuroscientist Gordon M. Shepherd who has coined the term ‘Neurogastronomy’ as the study that examines how the brain creates flavour and how it affects the mnemonic process. In Shepherd’s words “Neurogastronomy starts with brain and asks how it creates the sensation of the food” (Shepherd 2012, 5). According to this research, humans have a much more highly developed sense of flavour because of the complex processing that occurs in the large human brain; and it is this high level of processing – including systems of memory, emotions, higher cognitive processing and especially language – that gives human the unique ‘human brain flavour system’ (Ibid, 4-5). Another mention worthy scientific research in this domain was done by John S. Allen. His text The Omnivorous Mind explored perspectives on food and eating from a cognitive point of view. He has demonstrated how humans as a species use brains to ‘think’ food (Allen 2012, 2). He provides readers with a physiological analysis for understanding food’s capability to influence and inform human memory.

 Jennifer A. Jordan has used the term ‘Edible Memory’ in the title of the book published in 2015. Jordan demonstrates that “edible memory reveals human’s remarkable capacity to invest objects with personal and social meaning; and the unique qualities of food as a carrier of such meanings” (Jordan 2015, 41). Edible memory has also been marked as capable of describing one’s personal memories of ‘things eaten at formative moments’ of life (Ibid, 43). In Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating, Charles Spence has dedicated an entire chapter on food memory, giving it the title ‘The Meal Remembered’. Spence has argued in the context of food memory that “our memory of a meal, at least of an enjoyable one, is where so much of the pleasure of the experience resides. It can last for days, weeks or even years” (Spence 2017, 165). A unique quality of food memories has been identified by scholars that although the sensory and emotional implications of food memories function within the individual, yet they are always socially and culturally grounded (Abarca and Colby 2016, 5). In a recent research paper ‘Mapping Emotions, Culture, and Identity’ published in 2022, the relation between food and memory in the context of a novel has been highlighted with minute details as it focused on how Esther David’s Book of Rachel employs food codes as markers of memory to connect Rachel’s past and present” (Raviya and Sharma 2022, 47).

 These writings have shed light and induced the present author to better interpret the relation between food and memory. The present article while drawing upon and taking insight from this wide range of texts, expands its own analysis to a broader line of argument to illuminate and analyse the detailed points of food, eating and meal experiences in the context of a Bengali autobiographical text of mid twentieth century India.


Food and childhood memories in Smriti-Chitran

Parimal Goswami was reared up in a village in Pabna (at present in Bangladesh) in the eastern part of Bengal. The time period was early twentieth century when India was still under British colonial rule. His father was a Head of the Institution at a high school and a great enthusiast about reading-learning. Parimal Goswami’s entire childhood got spent amidst various books, periodicals and journals. Purchase and consumption of fish constitute a crucial part of his childhood memories; Ilish Mach (Hilsa) appearing as the predominant one (Goswami 1960, 15-17). Other fishes whose delectable taste found its place in the memory of Goswami were Piyel, Bnashpata and Kharsola. Hilsa is a beloved species of fish found in the water of South Asia. For the Bengalis, Hilsa is not a mere delicious fish but a representation of tradition, a symbol of cultural heritage, an essential ingredient of festivity and an integral part of existence. It is believed that Bengalis know their fish very well. Bengali’s love for fish is well-known since the ancient period. It is also argued that Bengalis can easily identify which skin and bone to remove to get to the favourite fleshy part of the fish (Roy 2021, 54-55). Various fish-recipes have found their place in Bengali cookbooks1 of colonial period like Pakrajeshwar, Byanjanratnakar, Pak Pranali, Amish o Niraamish Ahaar, Barendra Randhan et cetera. This overwhelming attachment with fish can also be visualized from Smriti-Chitran, the autobiographical narrative which is under consideration for this paper.

 As discussed earlier, food memories remain integrally connected with various material condition. In case of Parimal Goswami, his memories regarding Hilsa were blended with the simple living style of his ancestral village, the condition of rural market and the rate of everyday food items. As mentioned in his Smriti-Chitran, in those years of early twentieth century, monthly family expenditure was just 5 rupees and daily market expenses never exceeded 1 ana2. A medium size Hilsa used to cost 1 paisa; once even 8 Hilsa were purchased at the cost of 1 paisa because of unexpected abundance. Goswami narrated the purchase and consumption of Hilsa during his childhood in detail. During the season of Hilsa, wholesalers from outside used to gather to sell huge amount of Hilsa on the bank of the river at the south-eastern part of Goswami’s ancestral village. Maachher Muro (fish head) was sold immediately and young Parimal Goswami could buy those in the early morning as it was quite adjacent to their place (Goswami 1960, 16). He gladly remembered that 16 such muro could even be bought at the cost of 1 paisa and the main meal of those days consisted of muror jhol3 and charchari4. Goswami’s love and attachment for Hilsa is also evident from a lecture delivered by him on 6th June, 1972 at the Sahitya o Samskriti Department of Calcutta Radio where he mentioned that “in the Gita Lord Krishna had said that in whatever way one prays for me, I shall satisfy him and our hilsa says that in whatever way one fries me I shall satisfy him. None can stay away from its alluring taste. Frying is not the only option, at least fifty preparations can be made from it” (cited in Gupta 1989, 37). Moreover, the particular attraction towards Maachher Muro can be noticed from the lines from a text entitled A Marriage to India that Goswami cited during his lecture- “but the chef d’ouvre of the Bengali kitchen is its fish curries especially made with the unparallelled hilsa fish, and the supremely tasty part of this finest of all fish is its brain. If you are an adept, you will know just how to hold your lips to the tiny cerebral cavity and with one suck of the breath have the taste of gods on your tongue” (cited in Ibid.). Returning to the discussion of Smriti-Chitran,Parimal Goswami further recollected that during winter days, Hilsa was not easily available, but other fishes were abundant enough to fill the gap. One had to visit daily market just to buy fish; other food items like fruits-vegetables - including mango, jackfruit, guava, banana, custard apple, eggplant, chilli, pumpkin, gourd - all were mostly grown at premises of the residential house (Goswami 1960, 17). One striking point regarding everyday food consumption was noted in Smriti-Chitran that onion consumption was not publicly prevalent in the house of Brahmin caste in the village and such people had to secretly bring onion and onion-sprouts to home in a properly covered manner. Food memory in autobiography like Smriti-Chitran, thus, is not only confined within the involvement of an individual, rather it supports to get a broader understanding of the socio-economic perspective.

 Nostalgia5 got reflected in Smriti-Chitran as Goswami described his memories about the place called Ratandia (a part of British India at that time, presently in Bangladesh). Since 1910-11, he became increasingly intimate with Ratandia which seemed to be very close to his heart, to his imagined ideal space. We know that nostalgia is not just re-experiencing of emotional pasts, but also a longing for times and place that one has never experienced. (Holtzman 2006, 367). Food became fundamental to this nostalgic recollection as he reminisced the feeling of getting elated while plucking tasty plum-like fruits in the winter season. He further remembered the happiness associated with the eating of peas directly from the tree and the joyful moments of consumption of fresh thickened layer of sugarcane jaggery (Goswami 1960, 35). This nostalgic memory can never be complete without remembrance of sweetmeats. As Chitrita Banerjee has mentioned in her renowned text The Hour of the Goddess- “ask any Indian and you will be told that Bengal excels in the taste and variety of its milk-based sweets” (Banerji 2006, 107). Bengalis are famous for having a sweet tooth. The recollections in the autobiography under consideration here also could not stay away from highlighting sweet consumption moments. In Smriti-Chitran, Goswami’s memories of the local fair included rasogolla, pantua and jilipi6 being prepared in the huge Bhiyen (bhiyen ghor in Bengali means a makeshift kitchen or room for making sweetmeats) at the land of the local Zamindar. In the words of Goswami, “it was a fresh preparation made with fresh ingredients, which is eternally famous in the Pabna-Faridpur region. This taste can never be expected in Calcutta. This sweetmeat store was a heaven for the childhood” (Goswami 1960 35-36). It is evident that food-centric nostalgia played a crucial role for Parimal Goswami in anchoring its readers to the minute but significant experiences of his childhood. Food memories presented in Goswami’s autobiography also highlighted that nostalgia and food experience share connection with belongingness, social bonding and cultural heritage.


Remembering the sick-diet: Episode of adherence and defiance

Diseases have affected the path of human history since time immemorial. Bengal in the colonial era became severely troubled by the high rate of diseases and death. Fevers, cholera, dyspepsia, dysentery, diarrhoea, malaria were observed as frequently disturbing diseases. Medical manuals, household guides and health journals in colonial Bengal constantly highlighted the necessity of appropriate sick diet or pothyo at the time of such diseases. It was believed and constantly reiterated in the Bengali prescriptive literature of late nineteenth and early twentieth century that swasthyakor pothyo or a healthy diet could help the Bengalis fight the diseases, epidemics and the growing debility. Ancient Indian tradition of Ayurveda7 became increasingly referred in the context of prescribing ideal diet at the time of ill-health. Appropriate sick diet became increasingly identified as essential for bringing back vitality (jivanishakti), good health (suswasthya), nutrition (pusthi), fitness and strength (sobolota) and rejuvenation (punarujjivan) to counter illness.

 Historians and Social Scientists have continually demonstrated how Malaria became one deadly disease and a major cause of concern in the colonial Bengal as well as India. The predisposing cause of Malaria in colonial Bengal had its root in the topography of the riverine areas and the insanitary habits of the people; yet the proximate causes stemmed from the colonial infrastructure too (Samanta 2018, 2). As noted in the pages of Smriti-Chitran, Parimal Goswami became affected by Malaria since his childhood. Goswami remembered that he was repetitively suffering from Malaria in around 1911-12. As part of the prescriptive sick-diet, rice and milk became forbidden at that time of Malaria fever. On the one hand, these restrictions made one tempted towards various food items, on the other hand extreme debility was caused by fever and meal restrictions, as recalled by Goswami (Goswami 1960, 42). In the tenure of one month fever, he used to imagine the joy of the those who were allowed to consume rice. On hearing a news of the arrival of a new Malaria medicine in Calcutta, he even undertook journey from Ratandia to Calcutta as he heard and believed from heart that the new medicine would not inflict any food restriction upon the malaria patients. After reaching Calcutta by train, his main focus got shifted from purchasing the new medicine to satisfyingly tasting food like sondesh8, dimbhaja9, luchi10, rabri11, rasogolla as he felt that fulfilling his craving was more important than the medicine and he was also confident enough that the medicine would ultimately eliminate any diet-oriented restrictions for him (Goswami 1960, 43). The most exciting matter was that finally he returned from Calcutta without buying the medicine and meanwhile he had recovered also.

 Malaria again troubled Goswami in the following years. As he came under the treatment of doctor Rasiklal Datta in Calcutta, he was prescribed a change of weather and a diet comprising of Milk and Barley in the morning and afternoon, rice for lunch and ruti12 or luchi for dinner (Goswami 1960, 65-67). Walking in the fresh air was also advised. For a healthy environment, Goswami was taken to Sahebgunj, but once again following the prescribed diet became a cause of problem. in place of the advised milk-barley, he started consuming rabri or malai prepared on the previous day at a local shop. As he wrote in his autobiography, “dudh-er sathe somporko thaklei holo” (it is sufficient to be connected with milk). Gradually, the monotony of rabri led to consumption of more exciting preparations including rasogolla, sondesh, pantua, pera13. He was elated to think that milk was an integral part of all these preparations; hence he was not completely deviating from the prescriptive diet. While returning to Ratandia, he bought medicines and a fresh tin of barley of a foreign brand with a resolution to follow the prescription. Goswami has portrayed the days of disease, suffering and pain sarcastically in his Smriti-Chitran and prescriptions of pothyo and the defiance as well as deviations have occupied a crucial space in his memory. Malaria did not fail to accompany Goswami to his urban life of college days, even he was compelled to skip an examination due to the same disease as it caused absence of concentration and created problems in the academic continuity.


Reminiscences of hostel and mess meals

By the middle of the nineteenth century, Calcutta was a thriving colonial city (Prasad 2006, 246). Calcutta was central to the colonial middle class of Bengal for it constituted the heart of three kinds of institutional networks, crucial for the emergence of the nineteenth and twentieth century middle class as a distinctive formation: the new kinds of schools and colleges which came to be considered the indispensable entry points into the new professions, the printing press and clerical jobs in government or mercantile offices (Sarkar 1997, 170). Educational opportunities and a perceived prospect of better medical facilities as pull factors and malaria in the countryside as well as the declining income from tenure-holding as push factors, had determined the rising population of Calcutta (Banerjee 1997, 82). The population of imperial Calcutta was male dominated like all other primate cities of colonial India and became increasingly so as the city grew in size. The immigrants were mostly students of college and university or job seekers as well as recently employed youth. This group of educated male in most cases came to stay in the cities alone leaving their family at the rural ancestral homes. The wave of immigration increased to a great extent in the first half of the twentieth century, especially after the First World War.14. Two kinds of accommodation were commonly noticeable for the educated male immigrants - the student-hostels managed by the educational institutions and ‘mess’ or boarding-houses run by private owners. Hostels were located adjacent to the institution itself whereas the privately owned ‘mess’ and boarding-houses were established in around the Amherst Street, Mirzapur Street, Cornwallis Street, Harrison Road, Upper Circular Road, Rammohan Road of Calcutta, as these were nearer to the institutions like the Medical College, Presidency College, Calcutta University and the office area of Dharmotolla and Esplanade (Choudhury 2017, 198-199).

 The privately owned ‘mess’ or boarding houses were undoubtedly a ‘new concept’ in the history of urban accommodation of India (Dasgupta 2011, 33). The hostels, boarding houses and messes were often described as joint families (Chaudhuri 1942, 31-32). In the words of Bipin Chandra Pal, the renowned nationalist leader of Indian freedom struggle, messes in Calcutta were ‘like small republics’ and ‘were managed on strictly democratic lines’ (Pal 1932, 193). Sushobhan Sarkar, a noted academician and historian of Bengal, after getting admitted to Presidency College, began to stay in a ‘mess’ named ‘Fraternity Home’ located in the north of Harrison Road. In the course of time, Sarkar had to shift to the famous Eden Hindu Hostel, adjacent to his college, as per his father’s wish (Sarkar 1982, 15). Brajendra Narayan Chaudhury after his arrival to Calcutta initially started staying in a ‘mess’ of Old Baithakkhana Market area, but soon got shifted to a ‘mess’ of Harrison Road where inmates were mainly having ancestral origin in Dhaka and Sylhet. Next year, he had to shift to a new ‘mess’ in Nur Muhammad Sarkar Lane, where seats were received mainly on the basis of family relation (Chaudhuri 1942, 31-32). When Parimal Goswami arrived in Calcutta for his studies, he got a seat in a room in the first floor of the college ‘mess’ of Vidyasagar College (erstwhile Metropolitan Institution), where he had to share that room with four other students. He became very glad to receive a seat at a corner wherefrom the view of street was clear enough to remove his monotony in that new atmosphere of a ‘mess’ (Goswami 1960, 92-94). Goswami along with other students were shifted to a new hostel of the college at the Cornwallis Street in 1918 (Ibid, 104).

 Hostel or ‘mess’ meal experience was not new to Goswami. As he recalled in Smriti-Chitran, earlier he had to stay at a Hostel at Pabna where he had to shift to eating vegetarian food being disgusted with excessive hilsa consumption (Goswami 1960, 79). The reminiscences of the Pabna hostel particularly consisted of a very generous non-Bengali sweetmeat seller who used to visit the hostel with his extremely delicious sondesh and khirer luchi which began to appear as a special attraction to all the residents of that hostel ignoring the concern of expenses and health hazards. Goswami’s memory about the hostel inmates, the study time, the funny incidents – all were intrinsically connected with meal experiences and special moments of food consumption. He further noted his remembrance of the practice of the preparation of kheer from 1 seer milk in the afternoon using an old stove as tea was not yet known in Pabna region in those years of 1915-16. Goswami has recorded the meal experience at Calcutta college hostel in detail. He recalled that 50 or 60 inmates used to seat together for the meal. they were given meat once a week and meat-preparation used to be of 2 kinds, cooked with onion and without onion which was identified as ‘Niramish Mangsho’ (vegetarian meat). Lentil, fish or meat were served in separate bowls. The breakfast and afternoon snack were served at hostel rooms. (Goswami 1960, 107) Goswami’s food memory also reminded him of the mischievous tricks of his hostel inmate Khitish who through his clever deeds somehow managed some extra meat or prawn from the pachak thakur (paid cooks of the mess/hostel).

 The ‘ordinary food’ available in the ‘mess’ or hostel could not satisfy the palate of the inmates, for which they increasingly depended on the tea stalls, street food or public eateries. Balaichand Mukhopadhyay, the noted Bengali litterateur, also mentioned in his autobiography that when he started staying in a private boarding house name ‘Diamond Boarding House’, the meal provided by the boarding authority could not satisfy him at all. The kind of rice which was provided, the quality of the lentil, and charchari as well as the fish curry- nothing was satisfactory according to him. For that reason, he decided to cook by his own (Mukhopadhyay 1978, 114-115). Goswami’s Calcutta days soon made him fond of tea. In Smriti-Chitran, we can find that in 1925 Goswami along with friends even went to Howrah station in the mid-night for drinking tea and he had given the description how his friend Shibdas managed to have tea even after finding that tea-stalls were closed at that late hour (Goswami 1960, 179-180).

 Meal consumption beyond the domain of lovingly-served home cooked meal of ancestral villages got reflected in the pages of Smriti-Chitran. Thus, it can be observed that the experience of meal of young male adults residing in the hostel, boarding houses or ‘mess’ was much different from that of their ancestral home where in general, they did not have to device any trick for getting an extra piece of fish or meat. It is undeniable that the burgeoning emigration of the educated young male adults to the urbanised sites of education and employment amounted to the severance of their meal from the interiority of the family-household and a consequent commodification15 of the meal, whether the young émigré was now an inmate of a hostel or ‘mess’ in the city/town and/or was having to depend for the meal on eateries or tea stalls or sweetmeat shops in the urban milieu.


Conclusion

Narrated memory is an interpretation of a past that can never be fully recovered (Smith and Watson 2010, 22). While reading an autobiographical narrative, the readers become intimate with the act of remembering, and start to get engaged with the experiential world of the narrator. Through the pages of Smriti-Chitran Parimal Goswami created a complete picture of his experiences and he took the readers to a few moments of the first few decades of twentieth century. For instance, when Goswami described the alluring smell and delicious taste of the cooked items during his journey by Steamer in the year 1917, readers can imagine and situate themselves amidst that food memory and readers might feel some sort of connection with that exciting experience (Goswami 1960, 89). Similarly, when readers get to know about the consumption of the small cakes from hawkers in Darjeeling while lying down on the grasses, it again takes the readers to the feel of intense fulfilment which Goswami had mentioned as ‘indescribable’ (Ibid, 63). Smriti-Chitran continued to detail Goswami’s Santiniketan days as a student of Kala Bhawan, the remembrance of an event of a Japanese student eating spicy potato curry that he found as ‘very hot’, the ‘comic moment’ of students rushing to the dining hall at the very first sound of a bell, the recollections of early years of writing career of Goswami, his experience of an earthquake, his acquaintance and interaction with the renowned Bengali litterateurs, doctors, and periodical editors of the time, his involvement with the journals and periodicals, the crisis caused by Black Market and many such facets of late colonial Bengal.

 Goswami in the last segment of his Smriti-Chitran, takes the readers to the tough days of Second World War and Famine. Bengal had to witness in 1943 one of the worst famines that history had ever recorded (Ghosh 1987, 15). From the early part of May 1943, people began to flock to Calcutta from villages of Bengal. Hundreds of sick, starving and ragged destitute migrants were observed to gather near the dustbins and making riots among themselves for just a few particles of the putrid foodstuffs and often wailing for a cup of rice starch or fyan (rice starch). They had left their villages being compelled by hunger and were obliged to enter the death trap of Calcutta. Here, Goswami’s recollection of food was nothing but the image of hungry, starving people dying on the streets of Calcutta. The sight of sick, starving, dying people appeared to him as a cause of pain, frustration and dilemma. The content of Smriti-Chitran ended in a transitional phase of Indian history. The post-1945 memories were recorded by Goswami in a latter volume entitled as Dwitiyo Smriti.

 In case of any autobiography, through the words of the narrator, fragments of his/her experience touch the mind and life of the readers. The present study has demonstrated the ways in which Smriti-Chitran proves that remembrance of a meal experience is closely connected with a space, a time, and people with whom the consumption moment was spent. Food memory can neither be identified as separate from one’s self, nor as too insignificant in one’s life. The present article has highlighted through the prism of Goswami’s Smriti-Chitran that minute details of a food memory constitute a major part in one’s autobiography by connecting various other aspects like family, health, tradition, socio-economic condition, and many such matters.


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1 Before the nineteenth century, there are no references to cookbooks in Bengal. The first two such cookbooks were Bisweswar Tarkalankar’s Pakrajeswar (1831) and the anonymously written Byanjanratnakar (1858) both of which were composed under the patronage of the king of Burdwan district in Bengal. By contrast to these elite volumes, Bipradas Mukhopadhyay (1842–1914) wrote the first cookbooks in Bengali intended for a general population of readers. In 1883, Mukhopadhyay published a monthly periodical with recipes entitled Pak Pranali to teach Bengali women new preparations. With the turn of the century women authors began to publish cookbooks as well in Bengal. The most significant volume in this period was Prajnasundari Devi’s Amish o Niraamish Ahaar (1900). In 1921, Kiranlekha Ray’s Barendra Randhan got published. See, Choudhury 2017, 3-4.

2 Ana meant a smaller unit of currency in colonial Bengal. 1 Rupee used to have 16 ana. Ana itself consisted of another smaller currency unit called ganda.

3 Muror jhol is fish head curry or stew.

4 Charchari is a dry dish of spiced vegetables cooked in oil and often with fish bones.

5 Nostalgia is a term that denotes a wide range of mnemonic and evocative practices. The term has been coined in 1688 by the Swiss medical student Johannes Hofer to refer to a new medical condition that first made its presence among displaced people, particularly soldiers, in 17th century Europe. Nostalgia became epidemic in Europe in the wake of the French Revolution. Gradually it got turned into a virtue in the hands of the Romantics. See Swislocki, Culinary Nostalgia 2009, 3.

6 Rasogolla, pantua and jilipi are Indian traditional sweetmeats. Rasogolla is a syrupy ball-shaped sweetmeat made from chhana or cottage cheese. Pantua is a kind of ball-shaped sweetmeat soaked in a solution of sugar. Jilipi is a kind of coil-shaped sweetmeat which is crisp fried and then immersed in thickened sugar syrup and withdrawn for serving.

7 Ayurveda is a traditional Hindu system of medicine practised especially in India and parts of the Far East, based on ideas of balance in bodily systems and placing emphasis on diet, herbal treatment, yogic breathing etcetera. In Ayurveda, all material things were believed to be composed of five elements (earth, air, fire, water and space) in various combinations. In the body these combinations take three forms- vata, pitta, kapha (translated as wind, bile and water) which when in balance result in good health. Concept and practices of this Ayurvedic science got developed over centuries and were codified in Charaka Samhita, Susruta Samhita, Vagbhatta’s Astanga Hridaya. (See K T Achaya, 11)

8 Sondesh means a kind of delicious sweetmeat of various shapes. The name has been derived from the term to the giver of good news.

9 Dimbhaja means fried egg.

10 Luchi is a kind of small and thin saucer-shaped bread fried in oil or clarified butter.

11 Rabri is thickened and sweetened milk.

12 Ruti is baked, grilled or roasted bread mostly based on wheat flour.

13 Pera is an Indian sweetmeat, usually prepared in thick, semi-soft pieces.

14 In the Census of 1901, it was recorded that the total population of the city on the night of 1st March 1901 was 949144. There has been an increase in past thirty years of 31.7% as population in 1872, 1881, and 1891 were respectively 706511, 684710, 765510. (Blackwood, Census of India 1901, 17-24). Among the population of Calcutta 31.9% were born in Calcutta, and 68.1% belonged to outside Calcutta who emigrated to the city. Census Report of 1931 showed the total population of Calcutta Municipal area and Fort William area as to be 11,96,734 and the number of immigrants had increased to a great extent. (A.E. Porter. Census of India, 1931, 2, 15)

15 Commodification is a term for things being assigned economic value, which they did not previously possess (according to the Marxist theory). In brief, commodification means transformation of something into commodity. Marx’s own reanalysis of the concept of commodity was a central part of his critique of bourgeois political economy. In most contemporary sense, commodities are the goods or services which are to be found in a society where capitalism has penetrated. (See, Appadurai, 2005, 34)