Kindly allow me to tell a story.
It took place a week before the much-discussed political dialogue, in which the food served became news for the masses. I was sitting with a few close friends, all writers. We were chatting in a restaurant. In the course of our adda, one of us suddenly remembered a dish that his mother used to cook when he was a boy. He was overwhelmed with memories, saying that the taste of his mother’s recipes was unforgettable, unmatched.
When a Bengali man says “anyone else,” he means his wife. Whenever the thought of his mom’s recipes arises, average Bengali men instantly compare it to their wives -- the natural cook that they inherit through wedlock. Your wife’s dishes are always inferior to those of your mother’s -- that’s the common belief of the average Bengali man; they never can taste something amazing when their wives cook. It’s always the mother who cooks the best.
I look at this issue a bit differently. Whatever my mom cooked was new to me. Her recipes were the first food items that I had ever tasted. The food that I was having as a child was coming with loads of love. At the same time, childhood memories become the sweetest ones when one crosses 50.
When the wife comes in, the child has grown up to be an experienced man, having tasted a thousand other recipes of a thousand other cooks. Therefore, the taste of the wife’s cooking becomes one of those thousands, not unique that a mother’s seemed to be.
This is a state of mind -- this is how we focus less on our partners, and we think less about their contributions to our daily lives.
The situation isn’t helped when we are seen to express various kinds of “oohs” and “aahs” when we taste the food of other people’s wives.
I had consciously analyzed my mother’s and my wife’s recipes. There were some dishes that my mother used to cook best, and there are certainly some dishes that my wife cooks best. I think it’s all about what you focus on. We remember our moms’ recipes with fondness because we miss them in our lives; there’ll also be a time when we will remember our wives with fondness, and at that time, their dishes will also have a heavenly taste.
Having said all this, the point that I would like to make here is that food plays a very important role in our lives. Food matters in diplomacy; it matters in stakeholder management in a corporate environment; food also matters in human relationships.
Our prime minister has shown how to use food in politics. It was amazing how she used food as a tool, in order to divert people’s attention to her opponents’ taste buds. After playing the role of the chief executive officer of the country, she has acquired a larger-than-life characteristic already. The entire media had started publishing lifestyle-like stories about the preferences of leaders who were scheduled to meet her at Ganabhaban.
Food had created an amicable atmosphere.
Food had also played an important role in 1974, when a few Western countries had stopped exporting food to Bangladesh, because they didn’t like Bangabandhu’s approach to governance. We suffered because of the lack of food and an artificial famine created in our country by some external powers.
I believe that the same thing is happening in Yemen, where the attacking powers have closed all routes of importing food into the country.
Millions of children are starving and dying every day. The media has been reporting on the deaths, but it hasn’t been saying much about the lack of food. The attackers have been using food as a tool of war.
So, it is easy to see, how important food is in our individual as well as national lives. I must praise our prime minister for, once again, showing us how to use food as a tool for political diplomacy.
Ekram Kabir is a story-teller and a columnist. He can be reached at ekabir@gmail.com.