The goddess leaves on Dashami night. By morning, someone has taken the old biscuit tin down from the shelf.
In Hindu households across Bangladesh, this is how one festival gives way to another. Durga Puja, with its crowded pandals and communal meals, is over. Bijoya has begun. The goddess has been immersed, the priests have gone home, and the business of visiting people can resume.
The food changes accordingly. During Puja, there was khichuri and labra, served in generous portions to people sitting in rows. Bijoya requires something smaller, preferably something that can be eaten standing up. A few nimki, a coconut naru, perhaps a piece of sondesh. These are arranged on a plate and carried to the door, where a visitor has usually just bent to touch an elder's feet.
The plate is offered, the visitor protests, and the host insists. Both know how this ends.
In many homes, the sweets come from a blue Danish biscuit tin, the sort that once contained butter cookies and has since enjoyed a longer career as a household container. The original biscuits disappeared years ago. The tin remained, surviving changes of furniture, generations of children, and the arrival of plastic containers that never quite managed to replace it.
Nimki keeps well in it. So does naru. Sondesh is less cooperative, particularly in Bangladesh's humid weather, and must be eaten within a day or two. The tin is opened and closed for a week or more, sometimes well into Kartik, as relatives and neighbours make their Bijoya rounds.
There is a particular sound to the lid coming off, a short metallic scrape followed by a hollow pop. In some households, it is heard more often than the doorbell.
The morning after immersion is usually a busy one. The previous night's procession may have continued past midnight, leaving everyone short of sleep, but the kitchen is already occupied. Someone is scraping coconut. Someone else is watching jaggery thicken in a pan.
A rolling pin knocks against a wooden board. The smell of cardamom and frying dough moves through the rooms and eventually into the lane.
Children are recruited for minor duties. They count pieces of nimki, carry trays, or keep an eye on things that are in no danger of escaping. Their usefulness is limited by a tendency to eat the inventory.
The women doing most of the cooking have generally been awake longest. They work without much ceremony, wiping their foreheads with the ends of their saris, testing syrup between their fingers, and correcting the children who have been given jobs.
Nimki is the least complicated of the three principal offerings, although simplicity provides no guarantee of success.
The dough begins with two cups of plain flour, two tablespoons of ghee, half a teaspoon of salt, and a pinch of nigella seeds. The ghee is rubbed into the flour until the mixture holds together when squeezed. Water is added cautiously. The dough should be firm enough to resist the rolling pin.
After half an hour beneath a damp cloth, it is rolled thin and cut into diamonds. These are fried over moderate heat until golden. If the oil is too hot, the outside browns while the middle remains undercooked. If the pieces are put away before cooling, condensation inside the tin turns them soft.
There is little room for improvisation, apart from the shapes. Subir Guha, a fifty-three-year-old banker, still gets his nimki from his mother.
"Ma's eyes have gone, so the diamonds come out lopsided," he says. "I fry them. Nobody has ever said a word about the shape."
Naru is more temperamental. A medium coconut is grated and mixed with roughly a cup of jaggery, which has been melted with a little water and boiled into a thick syrup. The syrup must reach a precise consistency.
A drop placed in cold water should gather into a soft lump. If it disperses, more cooking is required. If it hardens, the cook has missed the moment.
The coconut is stirred into the syrup until the mixture begins pulling away from the sides of the pan. A little cardamom may be added. Then, while the mixture is still hot, it must be rolled into small balls with lightly greased palms.
This is where experience becomes useful. Too little cooking produces naru that falls apart. Too much produces something closer to a small stone. Once the mixture cools, it becomes difficult to shape.
Older women often learned the process without written recipes, measuring cups, or thermometers. They knew when the syrup was ready by its appearance, its resistance to the spoon, or the way a little of it behaved between their fingers.
Their instructions to younger cooks could be maddeningly economical. "Hold it and see."
Anamika Roy, a thirty-year-old schoolteacher, is still trying to acquire that judgment. Every year, she sits beside her grandmother and helps prepare the coconut.
"The girls in my class think naru comes in a packet," she says. "Dida and I grate the coconut together every year. Her hands shake. She still knows the moment the syrup is ready, and I don't. Not yet."
The knowledge is difficult to write down. A recipe can specify quantities and cooking times, but it cannot entirely account for the moisture in a coconut, the consistency of a particular batch of jaggery, or the habits of an old stove.
Much of the work depends on adjustments made almost without thinking.
Sondesh, meanwhile, demands patience of another kind.
A litre of milk is brought to a boil and curdled with lemon juice. The curds are collected in muslin, drained, and rinsed to remove the sourness. They are then kneaded with the heel of the palm until the grainy texture disappears.
This can take longer than expected. Sugar is added, usually four or five spoonfuls, and the mixture is cooked over low heat. It must be removed as soon as it begins leaving the sides of the pan. A little too long on the stove, and the sondesh turns rubbery.
It is then shaped by hand or pressed into wooden moulds, which leave patterns on the surface.
Of the three, sondesh is the least practical food to make in advance. It spoils quickly, especially without refrigeration. It also requires considerable labour for something that can disappear in two bites.
Nevertheless, it usually occupies the centre of the Bijoya plate.
Not every household makes these things anymore.
In Dhaka, where apartments are smaller, kitchens are busier, and time is often in shorter supply, sweets increasingly arrive in cardboard boxes from shops. Nimki can be bought by weight. Naru comes neatly arranged in packets. Sondesh is available in enough varieties to make the home version seem unnecessarily demanding.
The convenience is considerable. The embarrassment, though mild, persists.
A host offering shop-bought nimki may volunteer the information before the guest has shown the slightest interest in its origins. "From the shop, sorry."
The apology is seldom necessary. Most visitors have brought something they purchased themselves, and few are in a position to complain. Still, the distinction between homemade and shop-bought survives, even in families that have long since stopped preparing everything from scratch.
A homemade naru implies that someone scraped the coconut, watched the syrup, and stood at the stove. A slightly uneven nimki suggests that somebody cut the dough by hand. The food carries evidence of the time spent making it.
Bijoya visits are often brief. A neighbour appears in the late morning. A cousin comes after lunch. An old family acquaintance arrives in the evening, having already visited several other homes.
The younger person bends to touch the elder's feet. There is an embrace, an exchange of greetings, and the usual questions about health, children, and work. Then the plate arrives.
The guest says there is no room for another sweet. The host puts one on the plate anyway.
Some visitors remain standing, shoes still on, clearly intending to leave within minutes. Others sit down and stay for an hour, talking about people who have moved away, children who have grown up, and relatives who have become difficult to visit.
The tin is brought out repeatedly. Its contents diminish at an uneven rate. Sondesh goes first. Nimki lasts longer. Naru, depending on the competence of the cook, may survive several days.
The visits are cheerful, but their occasion follows a departure.
Dashami marks Durga's return to Kailash, ending her annual visit to her parental home. The immersion procession is accompanied by drums, crowds, and farewell rituals. By the next morning, the pandals are being dismantled, the decorations taken down, and the streets returned to ordinary traffic.
Bijoya belongs to the days after this commotion. The goddess has left. People go to see one another.
For older members of a family, the visits can also serve as an informal reckoning. There are familiar faces at the door, but some have disappeared from the annual circuit. A neighbour has died. A cousin has moved abroad. Someone's mother, who once prepared the nimki every year, can no longer manage the rolling pin.
The recipes remain, but the people making them change.
By the middle of Kartik, the visitors have mostly stopped arriving. The remaining nimki has gone a little stale. The last naru has been eaten, or quietly discarded. The tin, which spent the past several days on a kitchen counter or dining table, is washed and put out to dry in the sun.
Once dry, it returns to the shelf.
There may still be a nigella seed lodged beneath the rim, or a faint ring of oil on the lid that the cloth failed to remove.
The tin will remain there for another year. The next time it comes down, someone else may be making the naru.
—
Mahmud Newaz Joy is a freelance feature writer based in Bangladesh