The double-storeyed house had a large compound. There was a grand entrance in front with a circular driveway, and, at the back, an orchard of guava and mango trees. On the right was a bit of land on which paddy was grown. Dinajpur, she had heard her father say – on the few occasions he was with them and in a mood to talk – grew the finest paddy in that region. On the left, behind a wall, were the quarters of the staff: the cook, the bearer, the gardener, the dhobi, the masalchi. She was not supposed to enter the staff quarters but, that morning, there was no one to say no.
She was startled by the smells, the noises and the colours, by the women in their vivid saris and the naked babies and toddlers with black strings and jangling bells around their waists.
In the doorway of one of the huts she saw the gardener. She knew him because he often brought flowers to the house – that is, when he was not bringing accusations against her brother for trampling his seedlings. A woman in a red sari, a naked baby at her hip, lay down a plate in front of him. The plate – with large red and purple flowers on the raised edge – had something like porridge in it. But she knew it was not porridge. The particles looked like grains of rice but they were brown and fat – not like the white rice she had for lunch. It was covered with water and, on the raised edge, were two small onions, two blackened scarlet chillis, and a large pinch of grey crystals. She couldn’t help looking at the plate. Her nose felt funny and she sneezed.
The woman looked at her and asked her something. She was not sure what the woman was saying but the gardener nodded. The woman went to the back, rummaged among the pots and came back with an enamel plate and a small portion of what she had given her husband. There was no chilli on the raised edge, just one onion and a pinch of the grey crystals. The woman gave her a small wooden stool. She watched the gardener mashing the onions and the chillis along with the salt into his rice. She was normally given a spoon to eat but she raised the red watery rice to her mouth with her fingers as she saw the gardener doing. Though there was no curry, the rice was delicious.
When the gardener had finished eating, the woman set the baby down and brought water in a brass pot. The gardener got up and stepped outside his hut. She followed and waited near a small bush with red flowers while his wife poured water over her husband’s hand. His wife then held out a red and green check cloth with which he wiped his hands.
The gardener’s wife had just started pouring water over her hand when she heard her brother call out, “Baji, Baji.” She did not finish washing her hand but ran out to where he was. She couldn’t let him know that she had eaten the gardener’s food. He would tell their mother and she would be punished.
That was her first taste of what she later learned was panta bhat, rice soaked overnight in water and eaten the next day with whatever was available. But, if you were well off and tired of oily curries, you could pour cold water over cooked rice, add ice cubes and salt and have it with a variety of bhartas. That was how she had it when a brother-in-law came to visit from what was West Pakistan and a sister-in-law, renowned for her cooking, invited him to lunch. He would come, he said, if she did not make party food. His brother, her husband, was posted in Narayanganj, as the boss of the Narayanganj Dockyard. Their dining table could seat twenty-four. That day for lunch there were exactly one hundred different bhartas and pickles on the table with a large bowl of watered rice in the middle.
Panta bhat, she said – by now she knew the name.
Pani bhat, she was told. It was freshly cooked that morning. It had not fermented.
After Bangladesh became independent, people wanted some traditions they could claim as their own. One of these traditions was the celebration of Pahela Baisakh but fused with panta bhat. People came to Ramna Park not just as they had come since the mid-1960’s to welcome the new Bangla year with songs, but also to relish panta bhat with aloo bharta, shutki bharta and fried ilish. There were cynics who pointed out that panta bhat on Pahela Baisakh was not a Bengali tradition. But a celebration is always welcome, so, traditional or not, panta bhat has become part of Pahela Baisakh.
But panta bhat is not only a Bangladeshi tradition. Wherever rice is the main carb, rice is soaked in water overnight and eaten with various accompaniments the next day. Open the internet and search for panta bhat. Before you can get Wikipedia’s answer, AI will inform you “Panta Bhat is a traditional fermented rice dish from the Bengal region of India and Bangladesh, prepared by soaking cooked rice in water overnight. It’s a cooling, probiotic-rich meal typically eaten in the morning with accompaniments like salt, onion, and chili peppers, and often paired with sides such as mashed potatoes (Aloo Bhorta), fried fish (Ilish), or dried fish (Shutki)”. You will learn the many benefits of panta bhat, and you will also learn, if you are interested, the different names by which it goes in other parts of the subcontinent: poita bhat (Standard Assamese), ponta bhat (Kamrupi Assamese), zokra bhat (Kamrupi Assamese), bore basi (Chhattisgarhi), pazhaya sadam (Tamil), pazhamkanji/pazhakanji (Malayalam).
When my husband was alive we would have a friends and family lunch on Pahela Baisakh with pani bhat and bhartas. And I would think of the gardener’s wife who gave me my first taste of the dish – which no later plate of panta or pani bhat could replicate. I wondered occasionally whether she had to clean her hut with cow dung because I had defiled it, and whether, in August 1947, she and her family had to flee across the border.
—
Niaz Zaman is a retired academic, writer, translator and small publisher.