![]() But hospitality sense won over epicurean desires and Shefali treated us to some very delicious home-made koraishuntir kochuri and phulkopir torkari – a delicious Bengali breakfast treat. We eventually chose to meet for breakfast, and we were to buy local kachori-jalebi from the typical Calcuttan sweet shops. We wanted to meet everyone at one place and suggested that we have a grand family get together at Raju’s house – and idea that was shot down. Part of my long unkept promise to my wife, that I would show her around in Tagore’s Shantiniketan was just kept, finally in December 2019 after 25 years followed by a six hour long delay at Bangalore airport. My daughter was elated to have met “Blue Shirt Uncle” who was wearing a different colour now. ![]() That was the only time and Raju the only one, who has ever visited us from Garia. ![]() On a visit to Gurgaon, to his workplace at Panasonic, he visited us in 2011. ![]() Raju was wearing a blue shirt that day, and instantly registered as “ The Blue Shirt Uncle” for my daughter. Our little daughter who thus far was busy in a typical cocooned nucleus family was overwhelmed by the variety of uncles, aunts, grand uncles and grand aunts and the unending list of relatives around her. An incident over which Raju and I laughed even in 2021. Yet the highlight of the day was the hilarious incident of Sujatha slipping into the pond and drenching herself. We spent a large part of the day with my uncle and aunt, Raju, his wife Shefali and daughter Bebo, chatting, laughing and over a decent dose of exquisite Bengali cuisine. To us, hailing from the concrete jungles of Gurgaon, this was a respite. Raju, his family and his parents lived in Garia and theirs was a beautiful large open farmhouse with a pond surrounded with greens. Raju was my uncle’s son – and the youngest of my cousins. Of the three sons, my father was the youngest. My grandfather, the artist, lived in Garia, with a wife, a widowed sister, three sons and their wives, a daughter and her husband who lived nearby, two granddaughters and two grandsons – one of them being me. Garia boasts a very different land and skyscape and rightfully so, than it did in 1970. The lowlands, water bodies are all filled up with dwelling units and apartments. I spent a few years of my childhood in Garia, when the nearest bus terminus was more than a kilometre away and the nearest water body was just below the window from where we would catch fish during monsoons. Is there a theme that ties this together? I think not, but it is a lovely dram that manages to harmonize its tesserae strengths and weakness to produce a mosaic of wonderment and joy.Garia to me is synonymous with my grandfather, my father and his entire fraternity. The flavor comes apart like a Japanese puzzle box, and the taste ripples away like five receivers running a spread pattern from the shotgun formation. Ring wafted away by a summer zephyr at twilight. (Maybe more akin to Scarlett Johanssen gas after she ate too many jalapeno poppers?) The finish is pleasantly evanescent, like a smoke It’s surprisingly watery in the mouth, which in no way undermines the heat at the back end. Unless it’s a fruit custard tart drenched in a farrago of liquers: Cointreau, Chambord, Sambucca, Gran Marnier. On the nose, nothing so much as a tangelo flambeed in Tahitian vanilla served rolled in a Dominican tobacco leaf. The Dalmore 1263 King Alexander III (or as I like to call it, The Dalmore MCCLXIII King Alexander 3) has legs like rosewater running off a Jaguar XKE windshield that’s been treated with Rainex.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |