Budhan-da’s Ginger Tea And Pumpkin Pakora

It almost feels like a confession, but I do have a cook. Not that he would do the cooking for my blog, but despite I’m so much into food, it’s actually not always me who is sweating in the kitchen. Half of the food we eat at home is made by him. His name is Budhan-da, actually only Budhan and the Da is the Bengali way to show respect to someone who is elder to you.

Budhan-da works in three different houses and cycles for more than 2 hours each day to go from one workplace to the next. In his lunch break he always reads three newspapers and always knows what’s going on. I think I have never seen him in a shirt which wasn’t checked. His parents where farmers in a little Bengali village, but as their land wasn’t big enough to support all of their children, Budhan-da and his brothers had to leave to find work in the city. He is warm, caring and you can always count on him. But he doesn’t like it much to cook, it’s something he has to do for a living and he often speaks about the chances he missed because he couldn’t go to school longer. His cooking is straightforward without frills or experiments. But he has a natural understanding of things we richer people have to learn again, like wasting less or using seasonal and local vegetables. If we buy something at the market which isn’t in season, he’ll scold us and says that it’ll be now our own fault if it doesn’t taste good.

In middle-class India it is very normal to have domestic help, we have a maid, a gardener, a lady who irons the clothes and a boy who cleans the car. We are not rich, but they are poor. There are millions of domestic workers in India, but no followed laws which protect their rights. If they meet on an employer who isn’t considerate, their life can be hard. We try our best to be good employers and I think they like working at our house. But it’s difficult to understand poverty when you don’t know how it feels. Sometimes we wonder how they manage, now, as vegetable prices have risen so much. But then we shrug our shoulders and go on with our own problems.

I always look forward to Budhan-da’s arrival in the evening. He reaches around 7.30 pm and before he even starts cooking he makes us a cup of his special ginger tea. That’s the time I know the day comes to an end, our son will do his last crazy stunts before going to bed. If it’s a cold day or we feel indulgent we ask Budhan-da to make us some pakora and he’ll whip up the best pumpkin pakora in no time.

Pakora is a common Indian snack and I have eaten it hundreds of times, but while working on this post I realized that I actually never made them myself. Probably because of my fear of deep frying and also because Budhan-da was always there. They are one of these simple things which nevertheless can go wrong, my husband was laughing about my first attempt. But now I got it, although not in Budhan-da’s speed. You can make them with a variety of vegetables, but we like pumpkin pakora best.