The Sauce of Love

She sat in the Starbucks cafe, sipping her coffee and staring out of the window. The blood stained knife lay next to her handbag, covered with her blue silk scarf.

It was early hours, and the aroma from the cup of freshly-grounded coffee beans, was slowly spreading warmth into her lean shivering frame as she tried to obliterate the fishy-bloody smell that seemed to envelope her and to assimilate the events of the past few days, which flashed past her eyes. She was in her pajamas and a T-shirt hung loosely on her, the attire that she had slipped into, the previous night. Her hair was hurriedly tied up in a bun with a few strands of hair hanging out untidily. The last couple of days she had been living in a daze and with each slow sip of the Starbucks trademark frappeccino, she tried to collect her thoughts and her reasoning skills so that she could get herself out of this mess.

This GK1 market outlet of Starbucks was a bit rundown and was crying out for want of space. However, exactly this characteristic, lent her the cocoon of anonymity that she craved for right now. The veil on the glass panes from condensed dewdrops rendered hazy images of a city briskly waking up to its call. The simple beauty of it all, from the blurred imagery to the sweet tinkle of a dream catcher, and the subdued tones of the morning customers trickling in, into the warmth of the café, distracted her momentarily from the reality that she would have to deal with promptly. Her temporary distraction ended abruptly, when she suddenly noticed the young man serving at her table, darting furtive glances at the chair beside her which held her arm-de-destruction. The blue silk scarf though not exactly of transparent material, was unable to hide the outline of the boning knife that lay beneath the scarf. She hastily placed her handbag on the scarf, but she presumed that the damage had already been done. In order to divert the man’s attention, she ordered for a plate of double chocolate muffin, even though she was sure that it would be nauseating for her to even take a single bite. As a confirmation to her doubt, she noticed that the man was leaning on the serving counter and whispering something to two other waiters, while at the same time, glancing back towards her. One of the guys at the counter, picked up his phone to make call, all the while glowering at her. A couple of university students, with their trademark bag-pack had entered the café to perhaps grab a hurried breakfast. One of them, sat down at her table and quizzically swung her looks back and forth from the red sticky substance that seemed to come out from under her handbag to her face. She decided that it was a now or never situation and after leaving two hundred rupee notes on the table, she hurriedly slung her bag over her shoulder, picked up the knife with its camouflage and stumbled out of the café, almost tripping on a new entrant’s foot at the doorway, amidst astonished glances and calls of ‘behenji, zara rukiye’ from behind her.

Puja Mukherjee and Avik Mukherjee seemed to be quite the amiable couple, which about anybody would wish to have as their next door neighbour, in the quiet and quite upper middle class neighborhood in Chittaranjan Park.  Avik worked as a Senior Consultant with the software giant TCS at Udyog Vihar while Jyoti was in the final stages of completing her PhD at Delhi University. Avik’s parents were expatriates from Kolkata, popularly called ‘Probashi Bangali’ in the Central Government service who had procured land in the Bengali-majority area of Chittaranjan Park and had built a house there, when they had finally decided to settle down in New Delhi after the retirement of Avik’s father, Goutam Mukherjee from the Indian Revenue Services. Avik’s mother Meera still had a couple of years before her retirement from the Railways. They lived close by to where, their son and daughter in law had procured an apartment for themselves. This had been mutually settled within the family so that they could stand by each other in times of need as well as to keep some space between themselves in the process.

This agreement proved both to be a boon as well as a bane, as the parents thought that their children would be delighted to share the Sunday breakfast and lunch with them, as her daughter-in-law would be spared her daily grind of kitchen chores even if, it was for only a single day in a week. Meera, secretly, patted herself on the back as she considered herself to be an understanding mother-in-law, comparing herself to her own mother-in-law who was quite the tyrant in her times. Added to that was the fact that, she yearned to feed her son to some degree of wholesome staple Bengali food, and it was really gratifying to feed him luchi-alurdom for breakfast, and a delectable array of the choicest of freshwater fishes which her keen Bengali mother’s eye had detected, always brought about a glint of gladness in the deprived Avik’s eyes. This entire package was supposed to generate a blithe situation for all the parties concerned, but as fate had it, everything did not turn out as planned.

Puja Karia was a batch junior to Avik at NIT Delhi. They belonged to different disciplines, and while Avik acquired his undergraduate degree in Electronic and Communication Engineering, Puja was an undergrad in Applied Sciences. They met through common friends and to cut the clichéd story short, decided to take their relationship to the next level, and so, after Avik completed his M. Tech, procured a job in TCS, garnered enough confidence of breaking the news of his decision to marry a Gujju to his parents, and after reiterating several times to the Karias that he would never force, Puja to have non-vegetarian food, he managed to cut short the lengthy red tape over numerous rounds of Dhokla, Khandvi, Motorshutir Kochuri, Kucho Nimki, Malpoa and Rosogollas. Finally they got to get married, however, they had to do it twice, both in the Bengali as well as in the Gujarati tradition, in keeping with the sentiments of both sets of families and thus ending the feud between two sets of warring parents.

Puja was a thoroughbred Gujarati coming from a strictly vegetarian conservative Gujarati family from Surat. Her father and brother were in the textile business and her mother was a homemaker. The Karia family had managed to do quite well for themselves and had grand plans for their only daughter’s wedding after she was through with a simple graduation from one of the numerous colleges around Surat. Puja had to fight tooth and claw with her parents who were totally against her joining an engineering college hundreds of kilometres away from home and her staying in a hostel. It was quite a feat in itself for Puja to convince her parents that, getting an entry into an NIT was a chance that she could not afford to squander. After a number of admonitions, a barrage of advices, wet eyes and quivering lips, she was settled into an AC three tier bogey of the Surat, Hazrat Nizamuddin Garib Rath and for the first time in her life, she was on her own.

Intially, Puja loved to visit her in-laws over the weekend. She enjoyed the lazy Sundays when she was not required to tend to cleaning her house or cooking. While, Avik and his mother fondly made, trips to CR Park Fish Market and the sweet shop, ‘Rasoraj’, she was content to catch a movie with her father-in-law on the TV, argue with him over virtues and vices of the policies that the new government was implementing, or would be comfortable, curling up on a garden sofa on the terrace with her headphones plugged into her ears, listening to the ‘Blues’. In fact, she was developing a taste for Bengali vegetarian delicacies like ‘Dhokar Dalna’, ‘Jhinge alu Posto’, ‘Lau er Ghonto’ which her ma-in-law was rustling up for her at regular intervals and had started having sweet pangs for her eternally favourite ‘Mishti Doi’.

A few months into her marriage, she was seen, dabbling with veggies and gliding up behind Meera to watch her cook. Her mother-in-law, was only too glad to note that, Puja was integrating herself into the Bong household and was interested to learn about the family inheritance, culinary and otherwise and she fondly told her that it was upon Puja to carry on the Mukherjee family legacy.

Conflict started brewing, when, Avik asked for Bong recipes, as a change from the daily Gujarati fares of ‘Kadhi’, ‘Uundhyu’ ‘Thepla’ ‘Farsans’ and ‘Srikhands’ that Puja fixed for him. Puja tried out the recipes that she had learnt from Meera, but they were never good enough for Avik. At times he jovially kept asking Puja to concentrate more on her Bengali cookery lessons with his ma. According to him, ma was a fantastic cook, and it would augur well for Puja to learn diligently from her. One evening, Avik brought home half a dozen eggs from the ‘Spencers’ and cooked himself a meal of ‘Dim er Dalna’ or egg curry at night, much to Puja’s dismay. She felt nauseated from the smell and spent an extra hour cleaning the utensils used for cooking eggs as well as the gas oven, even more thoroughly than before. She was hurt, that Avik had not given, enough value to the sentiments that she was brought up with. At night, while she watched, Avik, sleep, she felt sorry for him. His young face looked tired and fraught with worries as he cuddled up like a baby towards her. She reasoned with herself, that Avik was also used to a certain type of food and lifestyle before he married her and had imposed upon himself habits, agreeable to her, only because he loved her. She argued with herself that therefore the onus also lay on her to accomodate a little so that, Avik would also feel comfortable. From that day onwards, eggs became a staple in their kitchen and Puja stepped in to help Avik in making omelettes and egg curry.

After about a month or so, a few of Avik’s relatives from his father’s side, Shibani pishi, who was Avik’s father’s sister, her husband and cousins  visiting from Kolkata had dropped in, to see their apartment. Avik, while returning, home from work, brought home some ‘Bhetki’ (a type of fish ) fillets, marinated them in ginger and onion sauce, dipped them in cornflour and egg batter and deep fried them. The fishy smell, hung heavy in the entire apartment, and Puja could barely conceal her scowl as she served Avik’s ‘pishi’ the ‘Bhetki fries’ who was hollering at the top of her voice, ecstatic at her nephew’s new found culinary skills, and constantly coaxing Puja to try atleast one of the top-class ‘Bhetki-fries’. She kept reiterating that it was imperative for a Bengali wife to have fish, as in keeping with Bengali traditions, only widows had vegetarian food and that having ‘machh-bhaat’ (fish and rice) went a long way in asking for a long life of her husband. Puja noticed that, Avik did not oppose her aunt, even for once.

That night they fought bitterly.Puja was furious that Avik was going back on his words and Avik argued that it was unnecessary to squabble with an elderly aunt who was visiting once in a blue moon, and that he himself was tired of eating ‘ghaas-patta’ (food which tasted like grass and leaves) everyday. Did he not have the liberty of serving his relatives, the way he wanted at his own home? Puja reminded him that he was aware of the situation and that he had agreed to her terms before they got married. At this, Avik screamed that if he ever knew what that entailed, that marriage was all about being a slave to her wishes only, he would never have got himself into this mess. That night, both of them went to bed, hungry and fuming.

The following morning being a Saturday, both were at home, and were trying to patch up forcibly, but the natural camaradarie, that they shared was missing. Avik anounced that, the next day being a sunday, he would ask his parents to come over, instead of the usual ritual of going over to their house. Puja was not too unhappy with this proposal either and readily agreed as she felt comfortable with her in-laws and thought that perhaps this gesture of hers would thaw the ice between them. So she called up Goutam and Meera and requested them to stay over for the night at their place on Saturday. Puja’s parents-in-laws arrived in the evening and the evening passed pleasantly with friendly banter. Puja had started to feel sorry at the words that she had used the previous night, and decided that she would make up to Avik for all the time wasted in fighting. Sunday morning, Puja woke up to a bad odour and as she entered her kitchen, to make the morning cup of tea for everyone, she was horrified at the blood, scales and fishes piled up on her kitchen top and sink. The entire apartment seemed to be reeking. She looked dumbfounded at the gleaming and happy faces of Goutam, Meera and Avik. They looked pleased as a punch. This sort of undid her. She picked up the boning knife from her ‘knives-set’, and with unnerving rage, kept plunging the knife into the fishes, tearing them apart into pieces, amidst screams from Meera and stunned silence from Goutam and Avik. Then she walked out from the kitchen, picked up a scarf and her handbag that was lying on the sofa, and in a disshevelled state, ran out of the house, past the visibly shaken security guard, who had earlier only known only a placid, Puja Madam. She did not know, where she would go, only that she could not return to her home, ever again.

Here she was again, stumbling out on to the footpath outside Starbucks. She started running as she felt a number of people chasing her. They were all calling out to her to stop. It was like an endless flight, as she kept tripping. People all over the roadside were staring at her. Finally she could do it no more and fell down in a heap on the kerb. She spotted Avik’s pained and striken face, just before she lost her consciousness. At last she knew what to do. She would let, Avik take care of all the issues just like he had always done. She finally felt at peace, as she felt his touch on her forehead and knew that everything would be just fine. Puja knew that they had reached common and stable ground now. It didn’t matter whether, it was Gujarati Srikhand or Bengali Mishti Doi, as long as the end turned out to be sweet.

Author: Jayeeta Sinha Roy