(The names of the principal protagonists have been changed because they did not want to be identified)
“And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray… when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane.” — Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 Swann’s Way.
Happy XI
The refrigerant business was flourishing downstairs. Old air-conditioners and refrigerators, dumped by stores running exchange offers, overflowed onto the footpath. Acrid hydrofluorocarbons and Puron filled up Trevor Dias’s lungs as he ran up the wooden stairs to his third-storey flat. The British-era house had huge rooms; big enough to slice through like a four-pound cake into small, wall-less rooms like a study, dining, and sitting area. Christmas was not far and Trevor Dias had plenty of baking to finish. After all, he had a whole cricket team to treat.
But that was decades ago, when the street on which Dias’s house stood was named Prinsep Street and not Biplabi Anukul Chandra Street. It was also when the Anglo-Indian community had a sizeable presence in and around Chandni Chowk, and when Dias was a teacher at an Irish Christian Brothers school on Bowbazar. Then the move to Australia happened. The move was always on the cards, but it was hastened by his daughter Irene’s refrigerant-induced asthma.
Much like Bengali children not doing mathematics, Anglo-Indian kids not playing sports were called “boka”. Dias grew up playing different games; he looked up to the Anglo-Indian sporting legend from Kolkata, Leslie Claudius. Long before Sportsworld and Sportstar magazines made their debut in Kolkata, old Australian sports magazines — remnants of his uncle’s yearly visits to India — quietly found their way into Dias’s physics and history textbooks. There he found his new sporting idols. Ric Charlesworth, John Newcombe and Greg Chappell drag-flicked, volleyed and straight-drove their way into his heart and sparked a new love affair with Australian sports.
Today, working as a sports instructor and standing on the artificial turf of a junior sports academy in Sydney, Dias opens a basket of freshly baked Christmas cake for his wards. He is transported instantly to a cold, foggy Kolkata morning, to the silence of a school on Christmas vacation, and to the sound of the willow hitting a cricket ball. Standing in front of him were a bunch of smiling teenagers, all tired after a draining practice session, waiting for their cricket coach, Trevor Dias, to distribute slices of Christmas cake.
Ave Maria
Parallel to where Trevor Dias resided, runs AJC Bose Road. Tucked in narrow lanes, where centuries ago Kolkata’s black town began, was a house named Ave Maria. It had a small statue of Kolkata’s celebrated daughter, Saint Mother Teresa, at the entrance. The Gomes family, residents of the house, proudly proclaimed that they had lodged Teresa when she taught at the nearby Loreto Convent School in Entally.
Elina Gomes left Ave Maria every day at 7.30am. She took a bus from the foot of the Sealdah flyover to teach in a kindergarten school further away in north Kolkata. Anglo-Indian teachers were prize catches for the newly minted English-medium schools in the primarily Bengali-speaking north. The pay was good and the working hours were short. Elina sang and danced as stereos played nursery rhymes. She ate kochuri, alur chop, phuluri, and muri with her Bengali colleagues. The school celebrated Christmas too, where Elina played the role of Santa. But it was too good to last. One fine morning, the owner of the school died. The new management had new plans and decided to do away with the old staff.
In the next few weeks, Elina’s irregular visits to the Missionaries of Charity’s Mother House became regular. Every evening she would sit on one of the wooden benches near the tomb of Teresa and pray. Her husband’s job at a refrigerator and air-conditioner factory was in a precarious state. Elina desperately needed Mother’s blessings to sail through the storm. Every visit to Mother House brought her closer to the Sisters; many of whom were of her age. Soon the days were spent trying to find a passage out of the country, and the evenings (between 3pm and 6pm) were spent chitchatting with the Sisters, showing guests the way to the museum, Mother’s room, and her tomb.
Inside the Missionaries of Charity’s Mother House Kundan Chakrabarty
Ten years later, the aroma of a freshly baked Christmas cake takes Elina back to Mother House. Standing before her kitchen window overlooking her snow-carpeted garden in Embrun, Ontario, Elina remembers celebrating her Canadian job offer with the Sisters. She had taken the cake mixture — her grandmother’s recipe and a family heirloom — to be baked in an oven at J.N. Barua. Family lore suggested that, years ago, Mother Teresa, too, had tasted her granny’s cake. That evening, slices of Christmas cake and cups of tea were shared, along with tears, hugs, laughter, and promises to stay in touch.
But that was years ago, in a part of Kolkata both Trevor Dias and Elina Gomes left behind. Today, it doesn’t matter if it exists or not. It doesn’t matter if Dias’s British-era house has been knocked down to build pigeonhole flats. Nor does it matter that Elina’s former kindergarten is now a premier retail and trade mall. For lakhs of Anglo-Indians, like Trevor and Elina, who reside in Australia, Canada or the United States, Kolkata can’t be whitewashed like walls with political graffiti after every election. Their Kolkata is always within reach, grooved in their memories. Like Marcel Proust, they too can travel back just by savouring the aroma of a freshly baked Christmas cake.
“But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more fragile, but with more vitality, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time…” — Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 Swann’s Way.
Trevor and Elina’s Christmas fruit cake recipe
Ingredients: 400g mixed dried fruit, 125g butter, 3 large eggs, 60ml milk, 125g sugar, 250g self-raising flour, and 2 tsp mixed spice
- Put all the ingredients except the fruit into a large bowl
- Beat together well, but don't overdo it
- Add the dried fruit and stir in by hand
- Carefully put the mixture in the tin and bake in an oven preheated to 170 degrees.
Kundan Chakrabarty is an award-winning advertising copywriter who wants to keep alive the storytelling traditions of north Kolkata rowaks. Reach out to him at kundan.chakrabarty@gmail.com