Bori brings back boyhood memory

I recently ate bori in our office cafeteria. Boris are sun-dried lentil dumplings popular in Bengal. Bori is comfort food, made usually at home, though the tradition of the home-made bori is fading. You can get bori these days at your neighborhood grocery store. But my best memory of bori belongs in the home.

There is something, apart from taste, about bori that endears it to me -- bori's grandmotherly or motherly connection. I remember my mother making boris with various kinds of lentils -- red, orange, and yellow -- each having its own texture and flavor. I also remember grandmothers in my extended family lovingly making boris, which are shaped like Hershey's Kisses. The store-bought ones, however, have other shapes, less attractive and authentic. The red lentil, or masoor, bori is good for frying and dropping in a tok, or tamarind-based sauce. Ah, the pleasures of bori, and the hazy memories of a boyhood spent on the red soil of small-town India!

I remember also the boris sold outside, but not in a store. Those boris, along with pickles, rode a cart, a covered kiosk, with glass walls, pushed by a man whom I can't recall anymore. His cart had a bell underneath that he would ring, pulling a rope, to entice the women of the neighborhoods he would pass through. I remember how his cart would come trundling into ours, and I would run out to greet the mobile grocery store. Women would follow soon and gather around the cart.

Boris have a rustic charm and flavor. Lau-bori, or bori with bottle gourd, is a classic. Savor it if you get a chance. It is amazing how simple food can transport you to a time long past, when the world was colored with innocence.