Like a Spider’s Web

On a toasty summer day, I run to our local Asian grocery store in Amherst, Massachusetts with only one thought on my mind — I have to get tamarind sauce and taste that strong, tangy flavor. That sharp citrus that makes me click my tongue and smack my lips with closed eyes speaks far louder than words.

Growing up in a village in Bangladesh, I ate tamarind daily. Even now, seven seas away and decades later, the routine is still etched into my memories. It’s incredible how the mind, heart, soul, and body that usually march on different isles will suddenly agree on one thing — I have to eat a rich tamarind again.

My family and friends from Bangladesh have similar cravings — longing for a food that takes them to a state of euphoria. We lovingly call the dishes our comfort food, since they remind us of our homeland.

When people relocate to a new country, endless possibilities and challenges await in their newly adapted home. While dreams open one’s wings to soar to a better life, memories of the home left behind cast dark clouds over the tumultuous sea.

In their struggles, memories of loved ones —  the shared meals, love, and laughter — weigh them down and dampen their spirit. The loss of familiar home grounds and loved ones can leave a sense of emptiness that affects the gut. Referred to as the second brain, it remembers our old food habits and makes our stomach ache for those flavors over and over again.

Food connects people across communities and nations like a common thread. Because of the universal need for gut happiness, we listen to our cravings. From Brazil to  India, we all happily cook to satisfy our stomachs.

For me, a Bangladeshi, I crave dal-bhat once a week: boiled rice and lentils with a dash of turmeric. Vivid memories of the wafting aroma of glazed onions and garlic in the cooked lentil make my stomach rumble and march to the kitchen to cook. 

I am not alone with these deep, weekly cravings. My friend Angela says she has the same experience, “For us Italians, I have to have my pasta cooked family-style every weekend.”

On the other hand, when colleagues talk about food at the workplace, Maria mentions the Mexican dish beloved in her family, paella.

To cook the dish, she uses chorizo, poblano peppers, and onions, and mixes fish or meat with rice. But the best part of these shared lunches, when we have them? Eating paella and dal-bhat together, the ingredients mixed, with our hands!

However, we also hang out at Wendy’s or McDonald’s for our favorite burgers. Although it isn’t like our home cooking, we sometimes find its scent too tempting to ignore when our other colleagues bring them for their lunch. They don’t have as much fresh or dried herbs as our traditional foods, but they’re still satisfying and filling.

Herbs are another chapter of cooking that both separates and connects the food habits of people from different backgrounds. While rosemary and parsley speak to us in Western tones, Mexican cuisine brings me closer to home with its use of cilantro. Parsley and cilantro have similar appearances, yet a Bangladeshi fish curry would lose its authenticity if cooked with parsley.

Interestingly, Maria compares the Mexican fried tacos to deep-fried samosas, and we are charmed by their similarities. There is something about deep-fried food that has us all hooked; a magic in the crunching sound.

Our many-faced food habits are a common thread among immigrants. But when there are distinct spices and herbs that take priority as we prepare our food. Among fruits, vegetables, meat, and fish available at local grocery shops, sometimes I decide to blend the old with the new.

Coming from fish-rich Bangladesh, I miss the river fish that come in different sizes and flavors. One of my favorites, called chapilla, is similar to canned sardines. So, when the craving is too intense to overlook, I cook a sardine curry with turmeric, chili, and coriander. In Bangladesh, a well-known saying for the substitute is, “Filling the want of yoghurt with buttermilk.”

Spices have significant roles in cooking across different communities. We go miles to shops for spices.

While visiting Bangladesh, my cousin Namiza packs boxes of pachfuron, a mixture of aromatic herbs and bay leaves, to take back. Even though I tell her we can get basic spices from the Asian grocery stores in our town, Namiza says, “It’s not the same; the soil difference adds to the aroma.”

She has a point, but it’s also that we need not need to go all the way back home for spices and other ingredients. A trip to Jackson Heights in New York is like a magic-carpet ride to find large stocks of seasonal fruits and vegetables in Bangladeshi shops.

On a nightly venture during Christmas time to the area, snatches of conversations and songs in the Bengali language made me stop on my tracks. I had to tell myself that I was in New York, not Dhaka, Bangladesh. 

It felt like I had made a wish with Aladdin’s magic lamp that took me to a Bangladeshi open market. Vendors lined the streets selling lungis and gamcha, cotton clothings from Bangladesh. People, young and old, sat in groups, their voices rising with laughter and conversations.

I discovered some restaurants in the area serve delicious Bangladeshi cuisine, including hilsha fish, and authentic sweets. And of course, when in Jackson Heights, how can we come away without a misti paan, a treat of betel leaf and nuts?

After filling my shopping bag and snagging a treat of misti paan, I headed home as classic songs like “Pan Khaya Much Lal Korilam” filled the air. The song’s words mean, “I have painted my lips with the color of the betel leaves.”

Among the Bangladeshi immigrants outside New York, long-planned trips to Jackson Heights are like joyrides. My family would have friends check in and ask if we needed frozen hilsha, with reassurances that they had plenty of space in their large coolers.

Knowing this now, it’s no wonder that I passed several groups of people, shopping as happily as Christmas shoppers. Many walked around the market as they bit into their Bangladeshi pastries.

Bangladeshis, on average, have insatiable cravings for sweet food. Name a good thing in life, big or small; something sweet is needed to celebrate the occasion. For any gathering of Bangladeshi in the U.S.A., we cannot imagine their absence.

When an immigrant’s son or daughter graduates, gets engaged, or is married, the news is shared on Facebook, and the comments quickly demand, “Mishti Koi? Where are the sweets?”

Along with the rice cakes we make for special occasions, like weddings and winter festivals, traditional sweets like, chomchom, kalojam, and sponge-rosogollas take the prize. It goes to show that it is not just eating, but the company of the people that makes a difference in what is served.

Sharing sweet dishes or savory snacks has yet another charm: the need to have tea with sugar and milk — the cha. The average Bangladeshi would not serve tea without some snacks. For us, the essence of tea is cha and ta, meaning tea with something. 

The reason comes from the fact that Bangladesh has rich tea gardens in the northern region. People are deeply involved in tea culture.

The community gatherings called adda would lose their charm without cha and ta in a gathering of different community members. The adda becomes merrier when a friend joins with Japanese green tea or a cup of an English blend.

The universal language of food would not be complete without mentioning the cravings of an expecting mother, especially for first-time pregnancies. Tamarind pickles and chapa shutki, a dried fish prepared in clay pots under the ground, play significant roles for mothers-to-be from Bangladesh.

Our myths state that if the expecting mother does not eat the food she craves, the baby will experience drooling. So efforts are lost by family and friends in bringing some of those foods across the seas to her.

These kinds of stories have no boundaries. Speak in America, Africa, Australia, Russia, or Asia of an empty stomach and we unite over our hunger. Just as we love to eat our familiar dishes, we find joy in exploring the different flavors of other cultures.

Be it rice, paella, burgers, tea, or coffee — food is an essential factor in bringing communities and culture together with a hint of empathy and tastiness.

It’s no wonder I cannot go by without my occasional dips into the tamarind chutney. Like the threads of a spider’s web, food connects us for our sustenance.

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