Hi everyone,
As the weather gets colder, I hope you continue to find warmth in your meals. What is your favorite winter dish? Lately, I’ve really loved melting butter over my food. Also, mixing this delightful Calabrian Chili Orange Spread into everything sweet and savory (this is not a sponsored post, but if the lovely people at Divina happen to come across it, I hope they’ll consider a sponsorship!).
Anyways, today we have an essay on the queen of fish, the hilsa, from Purbasha. She describes the experience of tasting, tryings, and relishing the different parts of the hilsa, or ilish, as it is known as in Bangla, viscerally. I resonate with the lines: “As Maa cooked them raw in the done mustard paste with added spoonfuls mustard oil little turmeric and salt. Many households make hilsa with tamarind waters but mustard paste always remained our favorite.” Having grown up eating hilsa myself, I too have an affinity for the mustard rendition of the fish. I love salmon in the US as much as the next guy, but there really is something so lovely about enjoying hilsa/ilish with khichuri on a cold and rainy day.
The essay also takes a turn that speaks on environmental justice and the crisis around finding hilsa in the same way. I love how it spins a familial tale that connects the three figures in the piece through their love for the fish.
Enjoy this piece, as well as this picture of the fish to go along with this joyful writing!
Til next time,
Padya
Purbasha Roy
Purbasha is a writer from Jharkhand India. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Mascara Literary Review, Channel, SUSPECT, Pulp Literary Review, Acta Victoriana, Strange Horizons and elsewhere. She attained the second position in 8th Singapore Poetry Contest. She is also a Best of the Net Nominee.
Hilsa…My Love
Each July Baba brought hilsa from local sunday markets. Maa's face shone like a 100 watt bulb. We would know now Maa would soak black mustard seeds for an hour. And come back near the courtyard tap with mortar and pestle. And then make a fine paste of the mustard seeds with generous amounts of green chillies. Grhh... grhh... grhh , the sounds rose. I understood Maa is contented her family would eat happy today. Mothers are same since centuries. It was much later I understood Maa loves it the way cats love milk.
The fish's strong smell ricocheted from every corner of our home. I bet its juicy flesh can't leave anyone unimpressed. Now I imagine even our neighbors knew what we were to eat that noon. This flared my nostril hairs too! I remember my salivating mouth glands. As Maa cooked them raw in the done mustard paste with added spoonfuls mustard oil little turmeric and salt.
Many households make hilsa with tamarind waters but mustard paste always remained our favorite. And one more very famous recipe is to make with aubergines and black caraways. The smoky earthy taste of it goes brilliant with this fish.
The eggs too have a taste different from other river fishes we usually eat. They need nothing much to be made. Only salt and turmeric smeared on them give them lip-smacking taste. Some prefer a hint of red chili powder for the ting to the taste buds.
We are a Bengali family staying away from our ancestral land for two generations. My brother, sister and I have never visited our place ever. Since , rituals traveling from our parents to us includes food habits too. Isn't eating a ritual we perform for our bodies. And hearts. Not just a man's, I think every humans' way to their hearts is a little or widely through the stomach. Something as nucleic acids in our chromosomes. We indulge in our family cuisines with great interest.
Hilsa is a certified patented fish of Bangladesh. It grows in Ganges in India and Padmaa river in Bangladesh. It is a famous fish of Myanmar , Sri Lanka. I am the nth person to say about its tall fan following. This doesn't seem to dwindle in the near or far future. Fish whether hilsa or others hold a very auspicious position in bengali households. Be it expecting mother's baby shower, child's first rice-eating ceremony , marriages or yearly festivals. And Hilsa as it is called Ilish in bengali has the highest stature. Its silver flat body makes it look different from other species those bengalis covet. And hence called 'queen of fishes'.
The only limitation this fish has is its large number of bones. Being a bengali we have eaten fish from a young age when memories couldn't be made by a person. So it wasn't difficult to learn meticulously the art of separating the flesh at a young age. Our two hands and eyes devoted in the task. We three indulged in a kind of competition. Who eats without getting stuck? One among us sometimes coughed by presence of slim bone in the throat alley. The fish that filled my Baba's carry bag used to be always larger than a kg. It is said , the larger the fish the lesser the bones.
When we went to our maternal relatives they too brought hilsa. They knew my Maa's special fondness for the fish. I guess this is the reason we three love this fish so much. Even more than our Baba. Maa always shared to us the stories of their nursery grounds. The most favorable being where the warm sea waters mingle with river flow. I wonder how the fishes find accurate breeding temperatures. We humans can't , without use of technology.
It is another July in our lives. And the second year big hilsa hasn't made its way inside our home. The reports news channels show are that their number is depleting at a never seen rate. The young fishes are caught even before they grow to a marketable size. This leads to the lessening of breeding among them.
The rivers and seas all carrying the weight of human waste have left a wilting breeding ground for them. Yes, of course I have heard of the climate crisis. Though never felt its effects other than monsoon moves through South Asia in a different manner than earlier. It never rains rhythmically during the rainy seasons. And frequencies of storms too have aggravated. Other than this, each climate crisis condition seems to be miles and miles away. Say, Australian wildfires. Ozone layer depletion or many many more in this wide earth.
But who knew it would affect our food habits too. My parents talk about how the curd always tasted better in earthen pots than the plastic containers. And we never understood. As we are habituated eating this since early days of our lives. But this hilsa incident we completely feel.
We miss eating it. Oh! we big Bengali foodies. Our community is kind of notorious for our ever enthusiastic appetite. Baba still loves going to fish markets. He never fancies anyone among us to bring fishes. This Sunday, Baba returned from the fish market. I was engrossed watching the Olympic games inauguration ceremony replay. My job doesn't gives me much time for television on weekdays.
My notebook lying discharged on bed. What I did was open the front door and sat back in hurry not to miss an inch of it. Baba almost irritated by my indifference swelled his mouth calling Maa. "Listen, take the hilsa.” I was amazed.
Hilsa in the carry bag. How's this possible? Without its extraordinary smell. Maa called from kitchen for help. I went and saw small hilsa in the cutting plate. I laughed out as if witnessing paradox. Is the beginning of an end. First, hilsa lost its shape. Second , the smell is absent like hope in mother earth's heart. And maybe in a year or two hilsa shall turn into a story. Completely extinct. How shall our marine ecosystem thrive healthily without it? I don't know.
Maybe the government policies can do something. Maybe time has the answer. Something not known to me like the next realization of love's ripeness in life .