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Arupendu Gupta
Some months ago I was at Coonoor and was pleasantly surprised to spot a cashew tree in the wild, laden with fruits and the trademark cashew nut hanging below the fruit. I remembered that our cook at Bengaluru was from Belgaum (where cashews grow). I carried a few of these fruits back home, and my cook confirmed that these were indeed cashews. His enthusiasm remained admirably unabated when I said I wanted to taste these and he had to process them into an edible state.
Over the next two weeks, these fruits were ripened, dried and roasted. Most cashews were broken but were quite tasty. I praised him wholeheartedly. I had taken a few snaps of the entire process, from tree to the plate, and shared these with my father. He heard me out and broke into a hearty laughter, telling me the story of Tatanagar tamarind.
In the mid-1970s, my father, a geologist, was camping near Tatanagar (in present-day Jharkhand) as part of a project. There were two geologists and a dozen-odd local labourers. The other geologist was the camp in charge. One day, a senior officer visited the project. Post the visit, as they settled down for lunch under a laden tamarind tree, the visitor looked up: ‘Tatanagar tamarind!’ he exclaimed with barely concealed glee and spent the better part of the lunch extolling the virtues of Tatanagar tamarind, the very best specimen in the entire world. Alas, such exquisite tamarind was not easily available as it was notoriously difficult to peel, clean and deseed.
The camp inmates were unaware of the star status of what they considered to be the humble ‘desi imli’. The camp incharge was wise and by the time the visitor left, there were a couple of packets of peeled, cleaned and deseeded tamarind for him. The visitor was suitably impressed when he was told how, post lunch, one of the labourer climbed the tree, and had personally ‘prepared’ them. The person was called for a special round of appreciation by the visitor.
However, my father’s appreciation turned to suspicion when he went up to the tree again. It looked as full of tamarind as he had seen during lunch. The celebrity labourer was called, who reluctantly owned up that he had not climbed any tree in the past few years, leave alone climbing the tamarind tree after a nice lunch. The tamarind was sourced from the local village. He was sure it was local tamarind and hence qualified to be called ‘Tatanagar tamarind’.
My father didn’t say it but I realised that it is extremely difficult (some may say near impossible) to process raw cashews into edible state at home. Did my cook go through the entire process just to humour me, but finally serve something from the market? He denies it fervently, but somehow, the doubt still lingers.
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