Pritha Sen (66) does not think of herself as a great cook. 

Instead, she describes herself as “a deconstructor of food”. Her career as a journalist might be the reason she finds herself needing to know the who, what, why, when, where, and how (the 5W1H technique in journalism) behind every dish that she comes across. Take, for instance, the Goalondo fowl curry. 

A six-year-old Pritha would intently watch her uncle prepare the curry while her maternal grandfather would reminisce — from his spot in the reclining chair — about the Padma River in erstwhile East Bengal (now Bangladesh) and the game birds and waterfowl that inhabited its mudbanks. 

Tracing a dish through memory and time

As Pritha writes in her book, The Great Padma: The Epic River That Made the Bengal Delta,“My mother, more taken by the steamer, the river, and the ‘duli’ rides from Narayanganj to her paternal village further in the interiors, could only give me a very vague description. However, an aunt from Tripura, who travelled frequently on the steamer to Goalundo Ghat, had some interesting stories that gave me valuable insights into the niche that the curry held in the gastronomic hierarchy of the times.”

As she delved deeper into the gastronomic routes of the curry, Pritha learnt more. For instance, from the late 19th century, those travelling to the erstwhile East Bengal, Assam, or Burma from India took steamers from Goalundo, a small station where the Eastern Bengal Express from Sealdah station in Calcutta terminated. 

She also met the late Mr Tulsi Prasad Lahiri, a railway man, who recalled to her how the ghat(landing station on the banks of the river Padma) was dotted with small shacks or bhater(rice) hotels. 

He described the fowl curry as “a thin, red curry with oil glistening on top and a heavenly aroma of garlic, which we had with mounds of plump, parboiled rice, our mouths on fire from the chillies.” 

And while listening to these tales, two things became evident to Pritha: every dish has a story of how it came to be, and second, she wanted........

© The Better India