« older | Main Largehearted Boy Page | newer »
April 8, 2022
Madhushree Ghosh's Playlist for Her Memoir "Khabaar"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others.
Madhushree Ghosh's memories of food and place inform her memoir Khabaar in surprising and powerful ways.
Alexander Chee wrote of the book:
"A seemingly effortlessly wise collection of essays that shows again and again the ways writing about food involves more than a story, a political history, or a family legacy, as Ghosh takes the food essay into entirely new directions. The result is a brilliant book about the past and the present that also feels like the future of the form."
In her own words, here is Madhushree Ghosh's Book Notes music playlist for her memoir Khabaar:
Khabaar is an unabashed love letter to my parents. It’s a love letter to the country I left when I was a twenty-two year old as an immigrant to America. It’s a love letter to the country I adopted and made my own. It’s a love letter to Bollywood. While the essays braid immigrant food stories from all over the world, at the end of the day, this is a Desi perspective with Desi sensibilities. Which in turn means, the playlist is also unabashedly Bollywood. Maybe not the usual Bollywood the west is aware of, but more Bollywood-adjacent, more arthouse leaning protest poems which is what makes Khabaar what it is.
I wrote Khabaar over a period of almost two decades during which I lost my parents and my marriage while building my life all over again in San Diego. I wrote about other immigrants and our food that traveled from South Asia to Singapore to Durban to London to San Diego.
The playlist reflects all those sensibilities including how homesickness builds and grows, even as we question the concept of home, wondering where home really is. I’ve focused on the memoir portion of Khabaar for this playlist as it tells a cohesive story of my immigrant life.
Chapter 1: Peyaara Se Pyaar
Song: Ekla Cholo Re
Singer: Amitabh Bachchan
Movie: Kahaani
Year: 2012
This is what I’d call, a typical 1970s Chittaranjan Park (or C. R. Park as some still call it) story—Chittaranjan Park, a South Delhi neighborhood formed post-partition of India where middle-class Bengali refugees moved to, to work in the government in Delhi as bureaucrats, division leads and officers. It’s also the story of Punjabi-Mexicans in southern California, a community formed due to America’s citizenship and miscegenation laws leading to Sikhs being forced to look into other Brown communities to marry, and choosing Mexican women to do so. A complicated, troubling aspect of what it means to be an immigrant in America, I focused on the guava, a very Indian fruit and also a very Latin American (in particular, Mexican) fruit.
When we moved to C. R. Park, it felt like as a family, we were the only ones. We felt alone—in Delhi, where Hindi was the language spoken and we Bengalis don’t fit in—with both my parents pining for Kolkata, the city they came from. Where our house was much smaller than the one in Orissa where I was born, we felt alone, and homesick. I say we because the Ghoshes were always one unit.
I chose this song by poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore, a protest song used during India’s independence struggle to get Britain to leave India. The song, essentially says, even when you call but no one joins you (in the struggle), know that the truth tells you to walk the path alone. Many versions of this, including ones sung by Tagore himself call us to what’s home. I chose the one sung by Bollywood superstar, Amitabh Bachchan in the movie, Kahaani, or the story—a 2012 intensely smart story of a pregnant woman’s search for her missing husband. Bachchan, who reigned supreme as the action hero, the lone man fighting the system in the seventies and eighties has transformed into amazing roles in the past couple of decades that highlight his baritone, his tall stature, and acting. “To walk alone when no one walks with you,” highlights how he is one of a kind, as is the main character played by another superb actor, Vidya Balan, and truly represents Khabaar as a journey where we explore how we came to be immigrants and how we continue to seek the truth.
Chapter 2: Maacher Bazaar or Fish for Life
Song: Oh my darling Clementine
Singer: Bing Crosby
Year: 1941
This essay is near and dear to me, because it’s about my Baba and why he continues to remain such a guiding light in my life. My father was an amazing singer and guitar player—even now I can hear him singing as he climbs up the steps back home. The song that was that of my childhood was him singing “Oh my darling Clementine”, and I didn’t know what “excavating” meant and “dwelt a miner” sounded like “dealt a mynah (bird)” but I sang with him with gusto, because he was my Baba and I did what he did.
Chapter 3: Feeding the In-Laws or Cold/Mess
Song: Why This Kolaveri Di
Singer: Dhanush
Movie: 3
Year: 2011
Or
Song: Cold/Mess
Singer: Prateek Kuhad
Year: 2018
The late nineties is when I met my now-ex, and worked so hard to fit into his very traditional South Indian family. Food was their love language, their language of control and their language of exclusion throughout the nearly two-decades I tried to be South Indian.
"Cold/Mess" by Prateek Kuhad captures the simplicity of love, the confusion and the heartache of the nineties in a 21st century manner. So does “Why This Kolaveri Di”—a hit song over a decade ago sung by Dhanush, who is an amazing Indian (extremely successful in Tamil and Hindi movies) actor—the words make no sense (to me) which is what it was for me in my nearly two-decade relationship in a Tamil family that used a language I couldn’t decipher to save my life.
Chapter 4:
In Search of Goat Curry
Song: Masakali
Singer: Mohit Chauhan
Movie: Delhi-6
Year: 2009
The essay is about how we search for food in our new/adopted countries, in this case, goat curry. I chose a quintessential song that celebrates Old Delhi, the rituals, the traditions of kite flying, the pigeons and the joy of being part of that city. Masakali is a love song, but then, what song from Bollywood isn’t?—but it’s also a song where my city plays a character in. Goat curry is quintessential desi, as is this city and my love for it.
Chapter 5:
When Indira Died
Song: Tere Bina Zindagi Se Koi
Singers: Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar
Film: Aandhi
Year: 1975
Being a shameless Bollywood fan, Aandhi had two of my favorite actors, Bengali queen Suchitra Sen and Bollywood hero, Sanjeev Kumar—and I’ve watched this movie countless times because it touches on female empowerment, the gender roles that push women to erase themselves, and of course, love, because, Bollywood. But Aandhi is also said to be a reflection or a very loose version of Indira Gandhi’s life—given she lived her life with her two sons, separated from her husband, Feroze Gandhi till he died. I don’t know what’s true, but as a Bollywood fiend, this song—"Tere Bina," which basically says, “Without you, I have no complaints with life, but without you, life isn’t life at all.” Poetry.
Chapter 6: Search for Naroo
Song: Monta Re (Ananya Chakraborty)
Cover song: from Lootera
Year: 2021
Or from the movie Lootera
Singers: Amitabh Bhattacharya, Swanand Kirkire
Year: 2013
I wanted to talk about West Bengal with this essay, and what every visit meant for us and our parents when they returned each summer—for us it was meeting our cousins, our aunts, sleeping in the afternoons, eating naroo and shondesh. For my parents it was returning home—for Kolkata was as close to home as it could be. "Monta re" is a Bengali-Hindi mixed song from a 2013 movie inspired by O’Henry’s The Last Leaf, intertwined with a reflection on the crumbling Bengal feudal landowner worlds, and a thief who steals jewels and wealth and also, hearts. The song itself has Bengal’s folk Baul tune and lyrics interspersed with what else—a love song—about how silly one’s heart is when it falls in love.
During the pandemic, in a “Indian Idol”-like competition a few weeks ago, upcoming singer Ananya Chakraborty combined Baul with Bollywood to render “Monta Re” in a spectacular cover that represents Kolkata to me—a hint of Bollywood with a whole lot of West Bengal.
Chapter 7: Orange, Green and White
Song: Zehnaseeb
Singers: Chinmayi, Shekhar Ravjiani
Film: Hasee Toh Phasee
Year: 2014
This essay even though it’s about divorce, even though it’s about abuse, even though it’s about separate paths, is also about love. And what happens when love remains, despite it all. It takes seven tries on an average, for one to leave an abusive relationship. I didn’t leave because culturally I thought I had to stick it out. I didn’t leave because he didn’t hurt me physically. I didn’t leave because he hurt too. I didn’t leave because I fought with my parents to be with him. Even when the divorce proceedings were painful, when my now-ex made it difficult to even try to communicate, I couldn’t hate him because once upon a time, I loved him. The song, “Zehenaseeb” from the movie, Hasee Toh Phasee is a quintessential Bollywood boy-meets-girl-loves-loses-finds-her story. But the song is about love, and how much they love each other even though they are at crossroads at that moment.
I stayed for seventeen years on that path and at that crossroad. The song defined my world when I was there.
Chapter 8: Of Papers, Pekoe, Poetry and Protests in India
Song: Hum Dekhengey
Singer: Iqbal Bano
Year: 1986
The essay was written as a symbol of protest as I watched farmers in India fighting for their right to sell their produce, against government-sanctioned laws that would decimate their livelihood. It was written partly when the discriminatory CAA laws led to mass protests all over India, when people came to the streets to voice their dissent against the Modi government in the age old manner—through poetry, through protest. Parallels to this was Faiz’s poetry that was used for decades during the independence struggle, even in Pakistan when General Zia ul-Haq took over the country. Singer Iqbal Bano sang "Hum Dekhengey" during martial law, wearing a sari (considered Hindu/non-Islamic) and this recording was smuggled out of the country and circulated globally. It gives me chills each time I hear her voice—when she sings, it is us who will bring you down. There is power within us, and there is beauty in protest.
Chapter 9: Memory and What Makes a Family
Song: Nagada Sang Dhol
Singers: Shreya Ghoshal, Osman Mir
Movie: Ram Leela
Year: 2013
I’ve always wondered for someone who doesn’t really adhere to any traditional, religious or cultural rules, why I am such a sucker for Bollywood songs. There’s a joy in these songs, even the sad ones, the drum beat, the singability, the danceability of these unabashedly theatrical routines. As in the essay, with a life in San Diego, pining for Delhi, but trying to find my community, I chose to celebrate Diwali, the festival of lights, in my own way—highlight poetry, friendship, food and love.
The song I chose is "Nagara Sang Dhol" about Diwali, a Romeo/Juliet or Heer/Ranjha love story set in Gujarat, and filmed on the reigning superstar Deepika Padukone—it’s a lot of red, drums, dance, whirling, complicated emotions and yet, it’s a joyous song. My Diwali is all of that, and reminds me of what used to be and what I’ve created as my family.
Chapter 10: The Rituals of The Great Pause
Song: Tu Ne Kaha
Singer: Prateek Kuhad
Year: 2016
I wanted to close the book with where music is headed for me—a bit simpler, a lot indie desi, still a bit Bollywood but with San Diego sensibilities. Prateek Kuhad’s one of the best musicians of the new generation who I’m so excited to follow. This song is yet again, a love song, but the mellowness of the words, the guitar and the declaration of love is what I think of in this Great Pause—that we are in love with life, grateful for what we have, and what else can we do, but fall in love with what we have?
Madhushree Ghosh works in oncology diagnostics, and is a social justice activist. Her work has been awarded a Notable Mention in Best American Essays in Food Writing and a Pushcart Prize nomination. She lives in San Diego, California.
If you appreciate the work that goes into Largehearted Boy, please consider making a donation.
