Friends and fellow travellers in a
lazy mood in second AC compartments of long distance trains would occasionally ask
me a “time pass” question: is there some food item that is typically Odia? Nothing
odd about this question; after all, food is a good subject for lazy talk, and in
a relaxed mood talking about food can be as appetizing as the food itself. That apart, because of a certain history,
which need not concern us here, Odias often tend to view it as a rather loaded
question, meaning whether there is some food item that Odias eat but their
neighbour Bengalis don’t, and more generally, whether Odia culture is not just
an extension of Bengali culture. This of course is not to say that every person
who asked me this question had the above in mind. However the fact remains that
most of us, urban educated Odias, have, more often than not, tended to take this
question far more seriously than it deserves. In fact, it is often taken as almost
a challenge thrown to the Odias; it is seen as a prestige issue. It is hardly
ever realized that this question is based on a fundamentally flawed notion that
political and cultural boundaries are sharp and clear. The fact is that political,
linguistic and cultural boundaries do not often converge. And as for the
specific case of Odisha and Bengal, for hundreds of years, people have migrated
from one state to the other. As a result, there has been close interaction
between them at many levels. Under the circumstances it would be a futile
exercise to look for cultural uniqueness of any one community at the level of day-to-day
life, say, at the level of food or dress. However, since culture, like
language, is not a homogeneous entity, having subcultures, and even
sub-subcultures - like a language has social and geographical dialects - attempt
to answer such a question may not really be all that pointless.
In any case, I have always named three food items – in the secular
context - which I believe are typically Odia: pakhala (pronounced as pakhaala),
dalma (pronounced as daalmaa), and a sweet called khira (pronounced as khiraa). Pakhala is rice-in-water, and is called panta bhat (pronounced paantaa
bhaat) in Bengali, and has been condemned as a worthless, unhealthy food. It
is said in both Odisha and Bengal that pakhala
is a tamasik food, which causes dullness
and stupidity; “eater of pakhala” is
an abuse in both places. Some fifty
years ago, I knew of people, mainly social climbers, who would not say in front
of others that they had eaten pakhala
at home that day. Things have changed now. The status of pakhala is high these days. In star hotels these days one can get it
- the posh variety, with curd, small pieces of green chillies, ginger, coconut,
among others, and elegantly cut coriander leaves, etc. added to it. It is now
recognized as a great summer food.
Pakhala is basically a poor
man’s food. It is this, more than anything else that explains its negative
image. It can be eaten with just some salt, one or two green or red chillies,
and an onion, if there is one at home. In the villages during the monsoon,
people take simple homemade achar
with pakhala. A little chutney of
roasted dry fish goes well with it, but many educated people dismiss it with a
sneer as a poor man’s taste, often quite pretentiously, I think. In Odia rural literature, a farmer’s wife
carrying pakhala to her husband
working in the field is a symbol of Odia peasant life. For decades at least, no
food item has been the target of so much indignity as pakhala, and with the exception of dry fish, no food has been
associated with so much hypocrisy as pakhala.
I like it, in its simple, unsophisticated form, not just for its taste, but
also for the richness of meanings it has come to be associated with down the
years.
