Many people have taken time to make my visit to India special, but the three who really went all-out to show me a good time were Suresh, Sam and Gautam.
So, I’m starting my reports on Calcutta with a trip outside the city, in honor of Gautam’s tireless help, suggestions, and thoughtful prodding. I wouldn’t have made this outing without his guidance. It was a wonderful day, a memorable day, and clarified for me a little of how Kolkata fills its plates.
I hired a driver with Sam’s help, and headed north up toward Barasat. Villages along this road host wholesale produce marketplaces which shift according to the days of the week. Wednesdays and Saturdays, for instance, the market might take place at Gadamaara, and on other days of the week elsewhere. I would guess this allows the farmers to harvest and deliver their crops in a reasonable manner.
It was a spectacle, a marvel, to drive up the highway and start seeing the vegetables being bicycled to the market. See this one full of light pink radishes? (The photo doesn’t really show the freshness and the delicate pink.) I must have passed fifty of these, pedaling along the road toward the market. From either direction down the road of course, heading toward the haat.
Here, in this photo you can see at least three vegetable mountains being brought to market.
At this market, radishes and cauliflowers seemed to be the current harvest.
Getting closer to the hubbub.
Some of the traffic jam around the market.
Shopkeepers from the city come and barter. Some vegetables are driven into Calcutta on the highway. At some of the markets there must be a rail station which terminates at Sealdah in Calcutta.
I didn’t see pumpkins being cycled in, but there were thousands already there.
I love this market scene. Can you find the guy picking his nose?
Needless to say, most of the produce is FRESH in India.
More pumpkins.
Some eggplants.
I like this photo. One shy guy, and one wonderful smile. One neutral. The vegetable on display is interesting, too. It’s used for pickles (and maybe more?) and is known as a jolpai. Hopefully Gautam or Jyoti can chime in with real info.
I wish my photos could give a better feel for the dynamics of the market. They don’t, though.
After wandering around, we drove kilometers across the area toward Bardhaman city, the center of the district of the same name. Aside from observing the Bengali landscape, my real goal was just to taste some sweets. People travel for different reasons, some for history and some for art, some for nature. I don’t think there’s any way I can tell you how satisfying I found this visit, traveling to eat. It was immensely, profoundly satisfying.
Look at these strung-up boxes, this strung up clay pot. Can you read the label, “Ganesh Mistanna Bhander”? (Ganesh Sweet Shop.) Boxes from the city of Bardhaman, and clay pot from the highway leading there.
First, from Bardaman (you can pronounce it Bird-wan, too) are these twins: sitabhog (right side) and mihidana (left). Sitabhog (blessed offering of goddess Sita?) is a lightly sweetened rice noodle, while mihidana (no guess) is a sweetened semolina treat. Bardhaman is famous for these two.
Here’s Ganesh Mishti Bhandar.
The city of Shaktigarh (shuck-tee-gar) is a couple kilometers north of the highway which runs between Calcutta and Bardhaman. It’s famous for its sweet, the lengcha (“clubfoot”). Entrepeneurs have set up satellite shops selling lengchas on the highway. Of course I stopped.
Gigantic roadside pots. (See more pots hiding below?)
These are sort of like oblong gulab jamuns, to be crude. They are studded with the seeds of black cardamoms and swim in syrup.
Here’s the unwrapped pot I brought home.
And an out-of-focus shot of one cut in two.
My friends seemed to love these. I liked them. But I have to say, I’m a shondesh kind of guy…
January 7, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Jim,
You do me too much honor: I accept on behalf of all the farmers and laborers, and that is not hypocritical, as i have spent my life messing around with and for these folk in exactly this area, the triangle formed by Gadamara, Deganga and Barasat! That is one bloodsoaked area, and one has expended all of one’s life-force in it and for it.
Huge radish mountains in Champadali and Deganga, in the past, don’t know if they now exist. Sneaky buggers: went and changed the pumpkin cultivar on me! Away from the oblong speckled skin ones! Guess the newer hybrids have caught on with a vengeance, I recognize the cultivar even, Sheesh!! Have not tasted it, been away for ages, wonder if it is different from the older beauties?
Those ones could grow anywhere up to 40 kg each, but 10-20 kg was more common. These are more uniform and compact. Previously, the giant winter pumpkins, fulfilling the same functions as the hard-skinned Hubbard squashes of New England, would be hung up on rope cradles from the ceiling of the storehouse, along with the equally large wax gourd/winter melon, to stay for many months.
These large objects for symbolic or other reasons were forbidden to be cut by the ladies of the house. The initial cut or split had to be performed by a male member. Thereafter, the sections could be handled by the women. A famous Bengali saying, embodying a whole cosmos of societal, and economic issues that cannot be expanded quite adequately here, and which is extremely bitter, sarcastic and painful as it touches very many painful levels of a moribund bengali society of the 19th century, goes, “Koomro kaata bot’thakur” : (resident)husband’s elder brother whose sole function is to split the pumpkin.”
A flavor of this type of life may be found in the Bengali classic of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyaya’s Bindur Chhele.
The area is famous for its eggplants, a variety named Elokeshi or Muktakeshi, “She of the Flowing Tresses”! I see some miscegenation in her bloodlines too, but she was a sweet yet niggardly lover, so all for the better, if higher yielding varieties have come to the fore. The paradox is this: it is difficult to increase net photosynthesis but far easier to get the plant to take up nutients and grow larger cells with more dilute photosynthates, less dry matter, lower sucrose contents.
So, the modern cultivation techniques of adding water and fertilizer, along with the newer bloodlines, produce a far less delicious, but dramatically higher yielding eggplant. Its cooking qualities, as with the modern Indian cauliflower, also is dramatically altered, with respect to the demands of traditional Bengali techniques evolved for older types of vegetables low in water content, high in soluble solids and sugars.
Shaktigarh lengcha: when these are special ordered, are famous for their huge size, may be a kilogram or two apiece, with very thin skins, and good proportion of kheer in their make-up.
Barasat: Anandamoyee Mishtanna Bhandar in the Bazaar also used to do good small legchas, for which Barasat had no small reknown at one time.
Jalpai: called Indian Olive for no good reason, cooked down with cane jaggery and flavored with roasted powdered seed spices like fennel, to make “achar” for long storage. Bengali-type chutney often given in “bhog” offering in Kali Puja, as it is harvested then, and newly harvested fruit is offered first in worship.