By Poulomi Das
The lives of the big-eyed, gentle-faced, and maach-guzzling Bengalis are marred by a potent shadow of the world’s most deadly dose of ABC – ambol (acidity), bodhojom (indigestion), and constipation. It’s no wonder then, that the easiest way to a Bengali’s appetite is through a strip of Digene.
We, the big-eyed, gentle-faced, afternoon nap-loving species nestled in the bylanes of Calcutta, are well known for our varied anomalous penchants. Like vehemently believing that potatoes belong in biryanis or that our homes are incomplete if they don’t possess tubes of Boroline. We are also inevitably drawn to monkey caps in November irrespective of global warming, sincerely practice the art of embarrassment known as “daak naams”, and believe that the sole purpose of watching any film is surmising that “Satyajit Ray could have done it better.”
But amid this intense and all-consuming layer of Bengali snobbery that our identities are often intertwined with, lies a grim tale of suffering that not many are privy to. For, our bhodro existence is also marred by a potent shadow of the world’s most deadly dose of ABC – ambol (acidity), bodhojom (indigestion), and constipation. It’s no wonder then that while the rest of the world lauded Shoojit Sircar’s Piku as a romantic comedy ahead of its time, for us Bengalis, its contents was straight out of a reality-based horror film.
For the residents of the weak-bellied city called Calcutta, every day of our lives is essentially a stark reminder that gluttony comes with a heavy price. Â If there’s one thing us Bengalis fear more than uncultured adaptations of Rabindranath Tagore’s stories into pseudo-intellectual short films, it’s our delicate stomachs revolting against our “reech” (rich) food choices. Enter our nemesis indigestion, because believe it or not, our collective immunity system is weaker than a model surviving only on a diet of tomato juice. In every household in Calcutta then, the Great Bengali Bowel Movement becomes the only daily primetime debate that anyone seems to care about.
Like Bhaskor Banerjee (Amitabh Bachchan) in Piku, most of our waking hours are also dominated by dissecting every bowel movement of our family, friends, acquaintances and even strangers to get to the root cause of the indigestion woes. In fact, the easiest signifier of two Bengalis being close to each other is them shedding their inhibitions and discussing their respective bowel movements in salacious detail. Although, it’s not like that needs any investigation anyway; our weak digestion capabilities are essentially the fault in our stars. At this point, it’s one of the worst kept secret in the world.
Poulomi Das is an author at Arre.
The article was originally published on Arre.
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