This year came charging at us, crushed us and is speeding off now. We felt helpless and were able to do nothing. But it is wrong to give up hope. So I will try to do something. I take my cue from a recently established tradition in Bengal.

According to this, whatever recreational activity you indulge in, it must be educational. Everything is a cultural phenomenon, which must be understood as such. This must be immensely helpful in negotiating the lanes and bylanes of contemporary culture and, by extension, of politics, economics and society in general and therefore holds out a glimmer of hope as we look at another coming year with dread. And the rows of coming years. Otherwise why would people spoil fun with learning?

I am referring to the practice of laying out educational material at every place of entertainment at every step. Its earliest manifestation was in restaurants serving Bengali food, where you cannot step in without being instructed on the entire range of Bengali arts and crafts. Handicrafts are just unleashed at you in such restaurants now in the form of kulos, jhnyatas and haat-pakhas, not to mention the solid terracotta owls (from Panchmura, a village in Bankura) and horses (from Bishnupur, also in Bankura). There you go. Or you cannot walk into a Durga Puja pandal and not be informed about the cultural practices of an ecologically vulnerable community facing the challenges of climate change, all on display as drawing room aesthetic in which you find yourself immersed before you get a chance to make eye contact with the deity. Or you cannot enquire about rice grown without chemicals and not be told about the many varieties of rice grown sustainably in North Dinajpur alone — Tulaipanji is the tip of the riceberg — or just in Raiganj. But I cannot afford to eat Tulaipanji every day and so next time I buy my month’s supply from the neighbourhood grocery store, I feel terribly guilty.

Thus every act of consumption is accompanied by an act of enlightenment. So, you see, the act of consumption is the first step. We must keep it up. I will go so far as to say that without consumption, in our times, perhaps even outside Bengal, there would be no enlightenment.

At this point I will make my humble offering. It will be a recipe that you do not need. It will be a tour through the social, economic and cultural worlds that I inhabit, which do not matter, and also delve into my personal history, which you are not interested in.

I will tell you how to make sheddho bhaat, the Bengali comfort food that strengthens and nourishes. The main ingredient is Gobindobhog rice. Gobindobhog, you must know, is cultivated mostly in West Bengal and is a short-grain, white, aromatic rice that derives its name from being an offering to Lord Govinda. It is invariably linked with our memories of rushed, early-morning departures for school when we would have the sticky rice in fistfuls forced down our throats by the mothers with boiled potatoes mixed with ghee. I would call that one of my earliest experiences of trauma, something that I had internalised, quite literally, and still do, with great pleasure.

You have located something as intrinsic to Bengali culture in your own history, which you have interrogated.

Now you take some Govindobhog rice, add all kinds of vegetables, large, small, whole, chopped up, and boil them together till they are done. Add salt and ghee and it is ready.

Before serving it, you mention that Gobindobhog is cultivated in Burdwan, Hooghly, Nadia, Birbhum and Bankura districts of Bengal. Your audience may be thoroughly bored, but you have reimagined, re-interpreted and represented Gobindobhog as a cultural artefact without which it would not have meaning.

Only if Gobindobhog could speak.