Siddika Kabir – the name may mean different things to
different people but to me she is the woman who taught my mother how to cook. I
still remember my mother scouring through her worn out copy of “Ranna Khaddo
Pushti”, covered with an old calendar page, trying to preserve the actual book
which was coming apart at the seams anyways.
The book was a thing of mystery to me. I could not really
understand the text or the instructions that the book contained but I knew that
the text held grave importance to my mom and everything had to be followed to
the T. She would make notes in a separate notebook, read over the lines over
and over again with full concentration as I would sit by her side trying to
make sense of it all.
Then after sometime my mother would turn to me as though she
had finally uncovered the big secret and was ready to share with me these
secret clues that would help make sense of this big mystery.
The clearest memory I have of one such cooking expedition
was the one time that my mother and I baked an apple pie together. I don’t
remember specifics but I remember how she let me whisk the eggs, peel the
apples, knead the pastry dough, stuff the pastry dough with apple sauce, and
finally poke holes on the pastry top for the steam to escape. She kept me
involved at each and every step of the way. I was so proud of what we
accomplished together.
My mother was a daughter, a wife, a daughter in law, a civil
servant, and thanks to Siddika Kabir she became a cook as well. It’s been over
18 years since I last tasted her food. It’s been over 15 years since I last saw
her copy of “Ranna Khaddo Pushti”. It’s
been over 24 years since I baked.
All that changed in November 2014 when I accidentally found
this bookshop in Chittagong – Batighar. I stood holding the book and reminisced
and decided that I would purchase a copy of Siddika Kabir’s book – just for the
sake of nostalgia – if not for anything else.
Since then, I have read through the recipes, scoured through
the lines, and made notes in the sidelines. This book has been therapeutic for
me – I have found that by scouring through the recipes I am somehow connecting
with my mother. She had once read the same lines and the same recipes as I am
doing today. We are both uncovering the same clues to piece together a puzzle we
started once before.
