Milk of merriment

The chopping of almonds and pistachios would sometimes fall on us, my brother and I. We’d take the small mounds and proceed to slice, fine as fine, the fat nuts and seeds that had been doled out from glass jars that stayed in the dark-blue steel almirah. There were cardamoms too, pale green skins slightly rough, waiting to be popped open and pounded. The saffron would come later, carefully picked from thin, flat plastic boxes smaller than our thumbs, the thin gold threads and paper-seals around the boxes coming apart. The strands, like dark orange sparks, were cool to the touch when held between thumb and forefinger. They would be removed from their homes at the last possible minute or they’d perfume the air, rather than the sweet they were meant for.

This was preparation for the sugared milk that would be boiled and thickened. The almonds and pistas would go in while it was still boiling. When it was done, powdered cardamom and saffron would be stirred in. It would be made on Diwali evening and kept in the fridge, to be drunk the next day — by all of us at home, and the extended family and friends who would come to meet bright and early the day after Diwali, on Gujaratis’ new year day.

Not as early as in my mother’s day, though. Her uncle would board the first tram from Bhowanipore in Kolkata to reach his brother’s by 4.30 or 5am. By this time the house would be dusted and swept and the family bathed, and ready to meet. They’d have been given new things, including toothbrushes, which were handed out once a year. The bathroom had new soap, the girls had new ribbons, and everyone had new shoes.

Their door would be open, and the entrance looped with mango leaves. On the floor, there would be a rangoli, lit diyas, and tiny footprints painted in red on either side of the door, one set coming and another, going. These were goddess Lakshmi’s footprints, made before puja the previous evening, signifying she had visited and blessed the house, and departed — also a reminder that wealth is transient.

The family would greet each other and hustle through breakfast. Tea, milk, sweets and farsan that had been prepared in the days past to eat through the festive season, laddoos made of coconut, of chickpea flour cooked in ghee, chewda , alu sev . My grandfather and his brother would then depart to greet their elders living in different parts of the city.

By seven or eight, the neighbourhood children would have tumbled in and out of the house, having helped themselves to fistfuls of whatever was laid out, with cries of ‘ Salmu Barak , Masi !’ — a corruption of Saal Mubarak , a rare relic of a more syncretic time. The supplies would be replenished and the house once again set to rights, to prepare for relatives who would now come.

These were happier days, years after the post-Partition terrors had left their building near-empty. My grandparents stayed on tenaciously, living with daily rumours that they would surely be stormed by people with swords from a neighbouring street. Mistrust had built terrifyingly quickly, and took years to leach out.

My grandfather would be back by afternoon, by which time many people would have visited. By evening, or sometimes the next day, my grandmother, with the children, would have made a small dent in the relatives, close and distant and faintly connected, as well as friends, all of whom must be met individually. And if they missed each other in the days before the telephone, because if any of the Alipore (or Bhowanipore, or north Kolkata) relatives would have come to your place while you were visiting theirs, the visits would have to be repeated until all had been met, and the blessings got and given. This would go on for an exhausting number of days.

***

A couple of decades later, elsewhere, my brother and I would be hounded out of bed by five. Breakfast was mohan thal , adadia and magajia laddoos (the latter rumoured to increase brain power) and chewda , which my mother and grandmother had made in the days leading to Diwali. Which we had been consuming steadily since they were cool enough to eat. And faradi chewda , bought from the same vendor year after year, of which we never tired. There would be kaju katri , moist and silver-foiled, and, often, dhokra .

The thing to look forward to today was the milk — for everyone except my brother, who couldn’t abide it. For him there would be sharbat , Rooh Afza-pink or virulent green. We’d ponder over which glasses to use, because this was a special day. Would we have the slim glasses with playing-cards painted on them? Or the old cut-glass ones with swirling floral designs that would have looked right at home on the sets of Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam , or in a Victorian home? Or the thick brown mugs, printed with steepled buildings and a one-horse carriage, which had come free with Nescafé? We’d managed to collect six, by buying enough coffee to keep a small military base awake, before the offer ran out. Or would we break out the silver glasses, one of which poor, slow-speaking Visanjee Mama had given my mother as a wedding gift?

By 6.30am, my father and brother would have left to visit the elders in matching cream kurtas. By seven, the great-uncles would start arriving. Among them would be one who’d feed pigeons that lived in the eaves of his house, and who roundly ignored the priest who told him not to, on the morning of his father’s death anniversary — because the first to be fed that day should be those messengers of the other world, crows.

And soon after the uncles left would come the great-aunts and aunts, in twos and threes, in pale starched cotton or muted-coloured silk saris, with classic (and identical) diamond earrings. There was one who’d studied botany and law, and who remembered seeing flocks of goats and sheep herded down Kolkata lanes in the pre-dawn dark to the butcher’s. Another great-aunt who, looking to step over a calf in her family’s stable, lantern in hand, got the fright of her life when said calf got up while she was mid-stride, so to speak. She clutched at its head, petrified the thing would bolt. And yet another great-aunt whose five-year-old had died years ago on Diwali, when a sparkler set her clothes on fire.

And then I’d go out with one of our parents to visit our relatives, and be offered milk, with variations of absolutely the same things that had been made in our home. By afternoon, we were stuffed and a little ill.

Eventually, there was consensus that it was unrealistic to do so much, and for days. So now, instead of meeting people at their homes, there’s a puja on the new year or soon after at a community space, where everyone gets together.

***

It has been years since I’ve lived in the same town as any great-aunt, or gone to a relative’s for the new year, or to a community meet-and-greet.

I called up a great-aunt to ask if she still made the milk for new year’s day. Yes, she said, implying she wasn’t about to start serving people juice in Tetra Paks, which had now become the norm. And she said she’d give me a shortcut to the recipe even I could follow. Boil two litres of milk, take it down from the fire, and stir in a can of condensed milk. Simmer a bit, keep stirring so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of the pan. Add a teaspoon of crushed almond and pistas, and saffron strands just before serving. “And people ask me all the time what I’ve put in it, because they love it!” she said triumphantly, but grew melancholy again. “Those were golden days, eh? Golden. There’s just no closeness now. How many people bother to visit even?”

So this new year, for the first time I’ll make that milk, call my great-aunt, wish her Salmu Barak , and tell her the condensed milk shortcut worked. Maybe unearth Visanjee Mama’s glass, or one which would look right at home in a period film. Not the mugs with steeples, though.

Those have remained with my mother.

Suhasini Kamble is a Mumbai-based freelance writer

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