Mumlette

 

Mumlette is not omelette mispronounced. It is an altogether different dish (and memories associated with it). Omelette is the fancier cousin…the one who visits Kolkata (from abroad) once a year and stands out with their accent and need for toilet paper.

Omelette is the cheesy perfection that chefs make for you at restaurants (or what you have “learnt” to make at home), usually for breakfast or a healthy lunch. Fluffy, gooey and often loaded with veggies we may not have grown up eating (mushrooms, olives, peppers), it is folded a way that radiates a certain level of mastery in the kitchen.

Mumlette is not cheesy like that (literally or otherwise). No, sir. It is totally comfortable with its rough edges (literally) and that uneven half-moon fold. Often cooked in Bengali households with “shorsher tel” (mustard oil), it is a go-to snack/meal, for anytime of the day. Be it the unannounced guest at 7pm or the “gaaner didimoni” (music teacher) at 4pm on Wednesdays or “onker sir” (Maths tutor) at 9am on Saturday mornings, or the common “Ma khub khidey peyeche” (Ma, I am hungry) after school….a mumlette is the unsung hero of a Bengali household, next only to Maggi (especially in Kolkata). Or such is my memory from my growing-up days, back in the 90s. I am sure the healthier olive oil has replaced the mustard oil in most kitchens in India now….and pastries/cookies/puffs/chicken nuggets are the go-to snacks these days.

But today, I ditched the olive oil, cheese and mushrooms to make a proper mumlette. With red onions and green chillies (coriander leaves would have made it perfect, but I didn’t have any), my mumlette was just the imperfect perfection I was aiming for. And yes, I can vouch for its teleporting powers. I could almost hear my “gaaner sir” play the harmonium and see Ma walking into the room with a tray, carefully balancing the tea and biscuits on one side, and a plate with the mumlette on the other…

15 years in Perth

 

This month, 15 years back, I arrived in Perth…with big dreams and a very small bank balance. Having wrapped up things in India, paid off student loans, packed our lives and belongings in four suitcases…it was like hitting a reset button on our lives, like many immigrants.

The house we rented on a noisy street in Belmont was blue. Literally. The garage door was not automatic. When we came home every night, we would get off the car (a heavy door needed two pairs of hands), unlock the door, push it open while it made that metal screech that makes you cringe, hop back into the car, drive in, get off the car, close the door and finally lock it. An insignificant detail, one would think. But it kind of summed up our life then. A bit messy, screechy and lacking in comfort but not in zeal.

Many of you know the story of the yellow flowers in our rental home. Some of you have read about why we chose Perth in the first place (and why we love it so much). But very few know that a payment of around $12-$15 (three coffees and one fries, I think) on our debit card was declined in our first month here. We had “insufficient funds” after paying the bond money on our rental home, buying groceries and making a down payment for our car. So, until Amit’s salary came in (in a couple of days), we could only hope we would survive without any expenses (our Transperth cards thankfully were loaded…so life would go on).

Those were the days we finally saw the point in the mental maths classes from our school days. Converting AUD to INR in our minds, for pretty much everything we bought (or could not buy), jogged our brain cells like nothing else did. At the butcher’s one Thursday (late night shopping), we were surprised (and delighted) to find how cheap mince meat was (after the said mental maths exercise). We bought 2 kilos of mince (and some other essentials), pushed our shopping trolley to the farthest point we could (without taking it home), and walked the rest of the way home (our no-car days). Back home, we cooked the mince with Jamie-Oliver-esque joy and passion…neither of which lasted long. After our first spoonful, we almost lost our teeth (with no private health insurance still, losing teeth would have been a terrible tragedy). We bit into….what felt like….gravel. Why on earth would mince meat have that many bones?! What appallingly bad quality, for a country that’s known for its dairy and meat, we thought!

Turns out, we had bought “pet mince” (mince your dog would enjoy thoroughly). That explained why it was so cheap. That would also explain why we could never walk past that butcher without grinding our teeth, even months after this incident. But we lived to tell the story :).

15 years on, our mental maths is not so great anymore (we no longer convert between currencies). We have discovered mince meat meant for humans. We have lost teeth and claimed dental benefits from our private health insurance. We have a non-blue home with an automatic garage door (life’s little joys). We have “sufficient funds” for coffee and fries (mostly). But our “meatier” life stories are mostly from 15 years back.