Lunch, the high point of the day at my grandmother's serene house in a village outside Calcutta, was always a mixed pleasure for me. I loved sitting down to the table covered with stainless steel dishes of fish curry, fried eggplant, pumpkin and cauliflower stews. I'd take a surreptitious sip from my brass bowl of pale yellow dal before I poured the soupy lentils over my rice. I'd wonder what kind of saag the garden had produced today - bitter leaves or mild, green or dark maroon? And what variety of lusciously sweet mishti would follow?
But lunch was also where I, as a half-Indian raised in London and Boston, became most acutely aware of the least comfortable part of my annual visits to my grandmother's house - servants.
Their presence, as they stood near the table to refill water glasses, serve more rice or pass the chutney, made me nervous. I'd flinch when Indian relatives bellowed across the room at them. I'd try to help clear the plates, a gesture the servants greeted with good-humoured bewilderment. I'd praise every dish as lavishly as I could in my limited Bengali, and defensively disagree with my grandmother when she complained of too much salt in the vegetables, not enough turmeric to brighten the fish curry.
My grandmother would look over at me mischievously and say, 'Give all these compliments to me! I taught them how to cook!' Then she'd translate her retort into Bengali for the servants' benefit. I was horrified. They'd collapse into giggles.
In our stolidly left-wing middle-class Bengali family, servants have always been treated with consideration. They are paid well and their health and retirement costs are covered. We refer to those who are older than us with the respectfully affectionate honorifics di or da, meaning older sister or older brother.
And yet the line is clear between their world and ours. They eat the same food, but only after we've finished our meal. They sleep in the same house, but on harder beds, with more patches on their mosquito nets. They share in our family dramas, but are relegated to the roles of bit players. Our weddings, our birthdays, our diseases, deaths, divorces, loom far larger in their lives than theirs do in ours.
Joggeshwar-da, the cook, came to our house as a boy of 14 and, now in his mid-seventies, his lanky frame and dizzy grin make it easy to picture the teenager my great-grandmother first hired to help in the kitchen. Bina-di, who works with Joggeshwar-da, is tiny and frail, her body hunched after a life of labour. Though she's several years older than Joggeshwar-da, she shows no interest in retiring, even on a full salary. Rani-di, whose beauty, reminiscent of a Gauguin painting, has not faded in her forties, is the housekeeper, and helps with the morning's tasks of chopping vegetables, grinding spice pastes and picking through the rice for small stones.
They've been an important part of my life as long as I can remember, but my smattering of Bengali has never been enough for more than the most basic conversations. It was only in my late teens that I discovered another way to communicate - through cooking.
Kneeling beside Rani-di as the morning sun warmed the patio, I learned how to use the shil nora to grind the essential pastes of Bengali cooking - onion, ginger, dried red chilli, garlic, cumin and coriander. She showed me how to roll the mortar back and forth on the pocked stone slab, pausing to reposition the paste with wet fingertips.
In Joggeshwar-da's tiny, dark kitchen, smoky from the coal stove, he proudly demonstrated the recipes my grandmother taught him as a boy. Eggplant cooked with ground poppy seed and mustard oil; egg curry fragrant with cardamom and cinnamon; chutneys made from tomatoes, coriander, tamarind or green papaya. Some - his basic but delicious chicken curry, his eggplant slices fried in lentil batter, his mellow dals - transfer well to my American kitchen.
My discomfort about the servants has not diminished as I have grown up. On the contrary, the spectacle of being waited on by increasingly elderly people has, if anything, become more excruciating. I know it's an inequality no worse than the many others I manage to ignore daily - perhaps it's just that this one is harder to ignore.
My grandmother, who died last August at the age of 93, once explained to me her relationship with the people of her household.
'The people of this house are truly my family. When I die, my children will cry, my grandchildren will cry, but then you will go on with your lives. They will really miss me.'
Visiting her house for the first time without her, I see the truth of my grandmother's words in the faces of Joggeshwar-da, Bina-di and Rani-di. The woman they called 'Ma' was like a fairytale queen - beautiful, imperious, just. To them, she was also an exacting teacher, a trusted confidante, a friend.
Serving me a dollop of his tomato, ginger and tangerine peel chutney, Joggeshwar-da offered the criticism my grandmother would surely have made.
'Beshi mishti,' he said apologetically. Too sweet.
'Yes,' I replied after tasting it. 'Ektu beshi mishti.' A little too sweet.
