23/11/08 The Grand Pancake Party of Parbatipur

Bearing in mind the overwhelming generosity of everyone here, I decided that I’d have to make some attempt at returning all the countless favors. Given that my neighbors never accept my protestations that I make the tea this evening, I decided that drastic action was necessary. And thus, the grand pancake party was conceived.

Since I’ve been here, cooking has taken on a much greater significance in my life than ever before. At home, food shopping is simple and cooking doesn’t need to require much thought at all. Here, however, when you don’t know the Bangla names of half the vegetables, and the other half is totally unrecognizable to you, things become a lot more complicated. Add to this basic problems such as the fact that my cooking utensils are basic (Tefal? What Tefal?), and I initially had no idea what to do with my rubbish, problems loom (I actually spent a lot of one night awake, wondering what to do with my rubbish. No exaggeration). One thing I remembered from Nepal, however, was that pancakes are really pretty straightforward to make: the ingredients are obvious, and they don’t require much technology to produce, so I have had many a banana pancake for breakfast.

When Momo caught me a-pancake-flipping one day, and I realized she’d never seen a pancake before, I decided to invite her and her family round the next evening, so that they could taste some ingreji pitha (English cake). And so the next night, I whipped up a batch of my best, unburnt pancakes and laid the table. Unfortunately, I lacked enough plates for everyone to have a big one, so Momo diplomatically insisted that we take the big plate of pancakes next door to eat them. But I think everybody enjoyed them. Rafat ate his with about a hundred-weight of sugar on top. Ratna called her friend Lily from over the road, and she came over with her daughter.

And from that day on, whenever I meet someone new when I’m with Ratna, she introduces me as the bideshi who made ingreji pitha for her. It’s also one of the reasons that she insists that I am khub bhalo (very good): I made English cakes, I will eat achar (pickle), and I do not to kiss boys or let them touch me. Note I didn’t say that I actually am good – just that I let them think I am…