West Bengal Government Doesnt Get What Eggs Mean To Bengalis

“Ki khele?”, Dida would ask — as so many grandmothers did around the country and the world — across innumerable Sundays when I was five, six, seven years old. I had just returned after a “day spend” at one of my North Indian friends’ homes.

“Aar?” The follow-up question was tinged with shock and disdain.

“Bhaat,” I would say, and then add, somewhat defensively, “raita aar achar o chilo”. (“Not just rice and rajma, there was raita and pickle as well.)

As the West Bengal government removes eggs from the state’s midday meal, perhaps a story about my deceased grandmother’s long-deceased maternal uncle can provide food for thought.

In the mid 1950s, Dida was young, and India was younger. She was studying in Calcutta, her “intermediate” or higher secondary education, and lived in a girls’ hostel. When she met him on a weekend, her Boro Mama asked her that all-too-familiar question: “Ki khele?” It turned out that the hostel mess had served egg curry, and the ration for each ward was a mere half egg. Boro Mama was, to say the least, unimpressed. Just half an egg for growing girls? A travesty.

The next weekend, a man arrived at the hostel, carrying a large jhuri, or basket with about 80 eggs. Two each, for 40 girls, and a note instructing the warden to ensure that everyone got their fair share.

Dida always narrated that incident with pride, her uncle always the knight in shining armour. Soon after, she stopped studying and was married at an age most of us would now consider late adolescence. Her life was not an easy one. But she could always think back to that time, when someone put her and her compatriots first.

A middle-class Bengali man did for his niece what a government does not want to do for the children under its care.

P.S. — Dida enjoyed, and I still do, a hearty plate of rajma-chawal. Just not for guests on a Sunday lunch

Aakash Joshi is Deputy Associate Editor at The Indian Express. He ... Read More