Skip to main content

Shahi Paneer and some memories


Maggie took all the trouble to cook Shahi Paneer because I mentioned some time ago that I missed the dish which used to be a weekly delicacy at the school where we taught in Delhi. Since it was a residential school, the teachers also had their meals with the students. More than 400 people would be seated in the cavernous dining hall, called Mess, and served by waiters attired in clean white livery. The food was delicious most of the time and Shahi Paneer was arguably the queen on the menu.

As I relished chapattis with Shahi Paneer yesterday after a gap of a few years, I realised that it was not the culinary delicacy that I really missed but certain memories which they evoked. Sawan Pubic School in Delhi was the first place where I tasted Shahi Paneer and the dish would always remind me of that school, the institution where I enjoyed working more than anywhere else. The school was killed by a religious cult and the details are given in my latest book, Autumn Shadows.  

Certain memories refuse to die. I mentioned my book above because it carries quite many memories even from my nondescript adolescence.  There is more than one place in the book where certain movie songs appear like phantoms from a buried past. Let me quote one passage: “Whenever I heard this song again, rarely though it was, I have paused to listen.  Recently I downloaded it for listening to while driving.  It has merged into a few other love songs which I have gathered in a single folder.  I am trying to mellow the pain of that lost love by merging it with other loves or love songs.  But I have not understood why songs about lost loves bewitch me insanely.  I never loved a woman until I married at the age of 35, twenty years after the death of Vayalar Ramavarma.”

As Haruki Murakami said, “Memories warm you up from inside. But they also tear you apart.” I like the warmth part of memories. You can’t get the warmth alone, however; the tearing up is a necessary accompaniment. Time makes you immune to the pains of the tearing up, however.   


Comments

  1. That's so true. Memories can affect you unexpectedly.
    Btw didn't know that your new boom is out

    ReplyDelete
  2. Same happens with me.
    but its not paneer.

    www.hautekutir.com

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Dopamine

Fiction Mathai went to the kitchen and picked up a glass. The TV was screening a program called Ask the Doctor . “Dopamine is a sort of hormone that gives us a feeling of happiness or pleasure,” the doc said. “But the problem with it is that it makes us want more of the same thing. You feel happy with one drink and you obviously want more of it. More drink means more happiness…” That’s when Mathai went to pick up his glass and the brandy bottle. It was only morning still. Annamma, his wife, had gone to school as usual to teach Gen Z, an intractable generation. Mathai had retired from a cooperative bank where he was manager in the last few years of his service. Now, as a retired man, he took to watching the TV. It will be more correct to say that he took to flicking channels. He wanted entertainment, but the films and serial programs failed to make sense to him, let alone entertain. The news channels were more entertaining. Our politicians are like the clowns in a circus, he thought...

Stories from the North-East

Book Review Title: Lapbah: Stories from the North-East (2 volumes) Editors: Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih & Rimi Nath Publisher: Penguin Random House India 2025 Pages: 366 + 358   Nestled among the eastern Himalayas and some breathtakingly charming valleys, the Northeastern region of India is home to hundreds of indigenous communities, each with distinct traditions, attire, music, and festivals. Languages spoken range from Tibeto-Burman and Austroasiatic tongues to Indo-Aryan dialects, reflecting centuries of migration and interaction. Tribal matrilineal societies thrive in Meghalaya, while Nagaland and Mizoram showcase rich Christian tribal traditions. Manipur is famed for classical dance and martial arts, and Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh add further layers of ethnic plurality and ecological richness. Sikkim blends Buddhist heritage with mountainous serenity, and Assam is known for its tea gardens and vibrant Vaishnavite culture. Collectively, the Northeast is a uni...

Dine in Eden

If you want to have a typical nonvegetarian Malayali lunch or dinner in a serene village in Kerala, here is the Garden of Eden all set for you at Ramapuram [literally ‘Abode of Rama’] in central Kerala. The place has a temple each for Rama and his three brothers: Lakshmana, Bharata, and Shatrughna. It is believed that Rama meditated in this place during his exile and also that his brothers joined him for a while. Right in the heart of the small town is a Catholic church which is an imposing structure that makes an eloquent assertion of religious identity. Quite close to all these religious places is the Garden of Eden, Eden Thoppu in Malayalam, a toddy shop with a difference. Toddy is palm wine, a mild alcoholic drink collected from palm trees. In my childhood, toddy was really natural; i.e., collected from palm trees including coconut trees which are ubiquitous in Kerala. My next-door neighbours, two brothers who lived in the same house, were toddy-tappers. Toddy was a health...