Keya Sarkar: Anniversary delights

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When I had first moved to Mumbai from Kolkata 20 years ago, celebrating anniversaries was so much fun. So many more restaurants to go to, so many more gift shops to choose from and so many more friends with money enough to feed you on their anniversary or be fed on yours.

Over time celebrations in Mumbai became an obsession. As our peer group got older, fared better in their careers, birthdays and anniversaries became all about displays of wealth.

Five-star bashes, or food catered at home from posh restaurants, expensive gifts from spouses began to mark birthdays. As they had children, the worries about appropriate "return gifts" on their birthdays somehow took centre stage.

As the media discovered Valentine's Day, Mother's Day and Father's Day and got into deals with gift shops and peddled mithais and cakes and chocolates and flowers, all pre-packed for different price points, most of the imagination went out of gift-giving on anniversaries.

Since for most working couples eating out at posh restaurants was so much a part of their "expense accounts", even the joy of an anniversary dinner was not as special as it was billed to be.

Maybe because our powers of imagination have been blunted, and we take restaurants and shops so much for granted that celebrations in Santiniketan are such a challenge. If you exclude dimly lit, plastic chair infested, washbasins in dining rooms kind of places, there are exactly two restaurants in Santinketan.

Since every time friends come a-visiting we end up taking them there, one more visit doesn't exactly count as special. There is one cake shop, but going by the number of times the electricity goes off in a day, the keeping power of the pastries sold become highly dubious.

There are many liquor shops but the beers available are of brands like "Thunderbolt" as liquor shop owners scoff at idiots who want light beer!

There is no dearth of gift shops as Santiniketan is one of West Bengals' prime tourist destinations. But since you cannot interest anyone you know in clay busts of Tagore or leather hair clips or batik blouses or kurtas with elephant motifs in "kantha" embroidery, you tend to have a problem.

This is compounded by the fact that every garden has flowers and thus florists as a breed do not exist. There are book shops which do sell serious intellectual stuff in keeping with the ideals of Tagore-land, and it is not easy to find literature appropriate for frivolous gift giving.

All that Santiniketan does not have and hopefully will not have despite West Bengal's renaissance under Buddhababu, is what makes celebrations here so very special for jaded city-breds like us. Friends actually call you over and cook instead of feeding you expensive but takeout food.

Dinner conversation centres around the stress of baking, knowing that there may be a power cut any minute! Or how far one has to go looking for the right vegetables. There is no price tag on the effort.

And if you have spent a lot of time thinking of what to give to those who already have more than what they need, Santiniketan makes a refreshing change. There is no compulsion to compete. You give if you find something but not gifting is equally acceptable.

On my birthday this year we drove out of Santiniketan to catch lunch at a dhaba. It was after the rice sowing was complete and the fields were a luminous green. The rains had washed all the trees and no one could have asked for a better ambience than that as we polished off our roti and tadka.

But the best treat was on our way back. Stopping at all the little cha dokans, we finally managed to spot one which was just letting the aloor chop into the hot oil. Oh what bliss, as we bit into it. And what a wonderful way to start to live another year!