Buff fry at X-mas

All cities are similar in some ways, writes Uttaran Das Gupta

2018

My friend, T, wanted to have lunch; so I suggested a Malayali restaurant in south Delhi. “What’s good here?” she asked. “Double-fried beef,” I replied, without hesitation. We discuss the recent defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in three state Assembly elections and what it might mean for the Lok Sabha elections next year. Unable to finish all the food, we ask the restaurant staff to pack it up. Even as I pick up the polythene bag, a thought flashes through my mind: Is it safe to carry buff — any meat, for that matter — in public transport? With all my class and caste privilege that provides a natural insurance usually, why do I feel such anxiety?

Will I cook buff for Christmas this year, as I once used to?

No. of people killed by cow vigilantes: At least 8

2017

In Bengaluru for a wedding, there was no Christmas, nor buff. (There was a lot of mutton biryani, though, at the wedding feast.) In Kolkata for the New Year, but no buff: One can actually eat beef here. If you find yourself at the crossing of Syed Amir Ali Avenue and Congress Exhibition Road at dusk, with the right kind of nose, you can smell beef kebabs being skewered at Nafeels, a few metres away. You can go to Olympia or Mocambo. A friend took me to Zam Zam, tucked away at Noor Ali Lane in Entally. We order beef malai — the menu card actually says “beef”. People of a certain class call areas such as this the Muslim districts of Kolkata; sociologists will tell you how liberal Hindu Bengalis don’t like giving their houses out on rent to Muslims.

No. of people killed by cow vigilantes: At least 29

2016

No beef this year either. Al Jazeera put out an interactive video: “The journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, today”, with the introductory text: “Mary and Joseph would have to pass through Israeli checkpoints, occupied land, illegal settlements and a separation wall.” Europe was overrun with refugees from Syria, Iraq, North Africa. A friend who was in Paris wrote a poem on the refugees, adults and children, living on the streets, in the cold. My new flatmate has moved in. He has a Muslim-sounding name and he is from Assam. When the neighbour downstairs, who has obvious sympathies for the more virulent ideas of the Right, asks my flatmate his name, he only gives the first name: Kohinoor. (William Dalrymple told me to get insurance: “Anyone who has the Kohinoor comes to a sticky end.”)

No. of people killed by cow vigilantes: At least 25

2015

No beef this year either, but remembering HLV Derozio, poet and enfant terrible of the 19th century Bengali Renaissance. Maharashtra banned beef in March. Those violating the law will be fined Rs 10,000 or face 10 years of imprisonment. Following this, I started reading Roskina Chaudhuri’s book, Freedom and Beef Stakes, which begins: “On 23 August 1831, yet another scandal erupted scandal erupted... in Calcutta. Four months after the infamous twenty-two-year-old Derozio had been sacked from the Hindu College... his students were embroiled in an outrage... A group of Derozio’s students, who used to gather regularly at the home of their friend Krishamohan Bandyopadhyay, had met the previous evening in his absence to indulge in forbidden food in the form of ruti-mangsho (bread and beef curry)... Having consumed the food, the group then... threw the bones into the neighbouring house, ‘Look! Look! Cow bones!’” Bandyopadhyay was expelled from his Brahmin home and later converted to Christianity.

No. of people killed by cow vigilantes: At least 20

2014

My friend and Russian-American poet Philip Nikolayev stayed with me for a couple of days after Christmas. He was surprised to find me offering him my Kerala-style beef double fry for dinner. “You guys eat beef?” he asked. This is the same recipe I used the previous year, but I was better prepared this time. You don’t get curry leaves so easily in New Delhi. The buff was bought at this meat shop in Hauz Rani, the sunless network of lanes between Malviya Nagar and Khirki village. This is also a Muslim ghetto.  All cities are similar in some ways.

No. of people killed by cow vigilantes: At least 5

2013

The plan was to make buff curry for Christmas. I had never done it before, but how difficult could it be? I downloaded a recipe from the Internet, bought whole spices from the INA Market (Aditya told me where to get it) and beef from Hauz Rani. Safdar showed me the area, where one could get buff tikka and biryani and rumali roti and korma. It takes two hours to make it. There was a potluck lunch at B’s.

No. of people killed by cow vigilantes: Not known

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