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Carefully sliding the bitter gourd fritters under my porcelain dish that had three tiny imprints of some unknown east Asian fruit bearing tree, I felt relieved. My resentment towards anything teto – bitter in Bangla – was fairly high. In those days bitter gourd fritters, inevitable a starter on a Sunday lunch, were unsurmountable challenge, delaying the serving of a thin, indescribably delicious mutton curry, a Sunday special that I eagerly waited for the entire week. So I relate to the “resentment” factor with which Chitrita Banerji’s memoir, A Taste of My Life, begins.
Can resentment even be the starter to a memoir that has its pulse beating in food? Yes, it can, for this is the sentiment that leads to a space ever so personal in this memoir, including the author’s homes, kitchens, her mother’s prayer room, marriages, divorces, immigration, and travels. Ultimately, what withstands everything is Banerji’s love for life, tinged with the colour of a void.
If you have read Chitrita Banerji earlier, you know that she plays mostly on memory and mythology in storytelling. Naturally, it was expected that both these factors would act as the warp and weft of the book, knowing how well she had always woven them. But…