Monday, May 12, 2008  Thanks for all the fish  My mother was
schooled at a convent run by Bengali nuns. From what she
remembers, the nuns were a nice (if slightly batty) bunch of
women with a particular aversion to make-up which in those days
consisted of, uh…kajal. One of her most vivid memories is of the
nuns telling off a serial-kajal-wearer with a vehement, “Chokher
GOO bhore daao!!” [1]  This probably explains why my mother
never really took to kajal, but not why she developed the
inexplicable fascination for all things Bong[2]. She can read,
write and speak the language fluently, has been to Kalighat
about fifty-million times, and has assiduously, over a period of
seven years, acquired a collection of Bengali sons-in-law that
would put your average laal-paar-sari-clad-shashuri [3] to
shame. Lately, she has even taken to wearing the shaka-pola [4]
bangles despite being of, and married into 100% Bihari stock (It
is apparently (culturally) fluid stock).  Fortunately for us,
she kept this fascination largel