While going through some old, really old family photographs (as in, from before I was born), this one popped up and as usual; launched a string of memories.
What you see here is a ‘manda’ – a kind of roti that was served at every single wedding dinner that I attended as a child. One of the many highlights of my summer holidays were the weddings and the dinners that followed (summer being the favoured season for hopeful couples to tie the knot). The wedding would take place in the church and more often than not, the dinner would be served in the compound of the Mission. No wedding halls or buffet dinners in those days. There would be ‘dhurries’ laid out in rows for the guests to seat themselves. The servers (usually family members) would place a large plate in front of each and we would all await the dinner in eager anticipation. Sometimes the cake-cutting and the prayers that followed would take forever, but that only made our appetites keener.
Every wedding dinner consisted of the same dish: manda-gosht. The manda is the larger, heartier ancestor of the rumali roti. To the eyes of the child that I was, it seemed large enough to cover a small table, even when folded several times over. It was always served with ‘gosht’ or mutton curry. I remember how the manda would be handed out first and we had to quickly take it up from the plate before the mutton curry arrived. The plate would soon be covered with spicy, richly aromatic gravy with chunks of juicy mutton swimming in it. (Excuse me, I’m drooling because I can almost inhale that memory)
Then came the tough part (for me)- to scoop up the gravy with pieces of the manda, all the time trying to ensure that it wouldn’t unfold completely. Two things I found almost impossible to do in those days were
- sitting cross-legged on the floor
- eating while sitting cross-legged on the floor.
So, wedding dinners were quite a challenge for me. When I think of all the gravy and yummy tidbits I must have left uneaten in my plate, it makes me almost want to weep. All around me I could see the other guests digging in with gusto, asking for seconds and wiping their plates clean with the final morsel of ‘manda’. And there I was, helplessly trying to finish at least half so that there would be room on my plate when the dessert; usually a couple of fat, crisp, syrup-oozing jalebis; came around.
As the years went by, those dinners moved to crowded ‘marriage halls’, became more varied and were served as buffets. You know- where seating is insufficient and guests try to maneuver long lines while trying to serve themselves a bit of everything and end up at the dessert counter feeling full but unsatisfied.
But I still have my precious memories of those ‘manda-gosht’ dinners and now I also have a picture to go with them. By the way- even Google couldn’t come up with one. I’m not sure where this picture was taken but I think it was at the wedding dinner of my parents. Which makes it doubly precious to me. And deserves a place in the family archive!
butterfliesonmymindblog 