Homing through Food

Popular culture in Kolkata and West Bengal—whether literature, cinema, or new gourmet food destinations—has in recent years begun the portrayal of a particular culinary concept that deliberately provokes the nostalgia of a specific group of consumers. The target group for such content are those who have roots across the eastern border of India and hold a distinctive culinary history of refugees from what used to be East Pakistan. The Bangal cuisine, earned its moniker from the term Bangal , which is used to denote refugees coming from East Pakistan into West Bengal.

When boarding the green tin coaches of the Sealdah-Barisal Express, or crossing over the boat train from Goalondo, the once busy port on river Padma, refugees from East Pakistan could not carry a lot. In the cloth bundles that held heirloom relics, religious idols, and salvaged valuables, the culinary secrets of the land left behind also earned a solitary corner. The last dried seed of the mango tree that gave shade to the ancestral home, the oily dregs of grandmother’s mango and tamarind pickle, a small box of dried fish—condiments, which coupled with shaak (local greens) and clams growing around ponds in the rundown refugee camps, created a flavour profile and a culinary amalgamation that is mentioned with mild derision even today in West Bengal.