Lambu: A Blast from the Past

After many years, in fact, after decades, I saw a packet of lamboos in Pintur Dokan, that is, Pintu’s street-corner grocery near our home. It took me down a rather long memory lane.

My academic career being as unspectacular as it was, I do not expect any of my teachers or profs to remember me. I was neither brilliant, nor hard-working, and I didn’t even fail an exam. Recently at a party, I met one of our several marvellous physics professors, who happened to be an exceedingly handsome young man when we were students. He was a minor hero for us boys, and a major heartthrob for girls, much to our irritation at times. (Why are contests in life so bloody unequal?) Anyway, to cut a long story short, when I introduced myself in the gathering, my former teacher looked at me so helplessly that I felt sorry for him. I ought not to have revealed my identity and challenged his memory cells so bluntly.

Although my academic accomplishments – as I have said without false modesty – were seriously unglamorous, my years at our university campus was by far the most gorgeous period of my life, although it was not devoid of minor deprivations, naturally. We lived in spacious rooms practically for free and although our hostel kitchen provided two large meals for an entire month in exchange of 65 to 75 paper-gold rupees, we had to fend for the breakfast and afternoon snacks ourselves. We managed the breakfast somehow, stuffed ourselves during lunch, but would invariably feel famished by four in the afternoon.

If I may share with you a bit about our financial situation, we used to invest a sizable chunk of our meagre allowance on the two local cinemas, cups of tea, and packets of Charminar (possibly the strongest cigarette in the world without the embellishment of a filter, not even the American Camel was nearly as harsh). Consequently, we often found our rather healthy afternoon appetite an insurmountable budget deficit.

On days we were lucky, we would find one of our distant girlfriends in the university cafeteria, and for our generation, it was an immense good fortune that girls didn’t smoke then. So, they always had something to spare, and would often volunteer to keep us alive by offering a samosa or two.

But on days we were not lucky, we had to eat something after classes. After long and painful research, I finally found out the most cost-effective snack, which would be cheaper than twenty-five paise.

It was the LAMBOO!

Now, what is a lamboo? If you have a nodding acquaintance with Hindi or Bangla, you would be aware that a tall lad is often called a Lamboo in these languages. Amitabh Bachchan was the reigning Lamboo in his spectacular film career. In Bengal, no one qualified for the sobriquet as there were no tall heroes in Bangla films. The greatest Bengali matinee idol for the past and future sixty years, Uttam Kumar, was five seven.

Therefore, I will die without solving the mystery how the rotund stuff, the picture of which you see here, came to be known as "lamboo".

Lamboo is neither biscuit nor cake. Genetically, I believe, it is closer to the popular Bihari / Jharkhandi snack litthi, which has a hard central-core and an even harder shell. Woe betide the fool who try to bite a lamboo with less than healthy teeth. But that was only a minor problem for indigent lamboo eaters like us.

More importantly, the lamboo would be baked with the cheapest fat available in the market. Most likely, it would have been animal fat discarded by butchers. Therefore, as you ate it, a fatty layer got smudged to the inside of your mouth. But that too is a minor irritant. Have a lamboo and wash it down with a glass of water, and you won’t have to eat anything in the next four hours. Maa kasam!

The packet of lamboos in Pintu’s grocery brought back all this in a flash. I couldn’t but buy one and taste it. It was like yesterday once more.

Believe me, the lamboo hasn’t changed one bit. The same hardness, same lingering fatty taste, the same earthy granules which wouldn’t be mentioned in the recipe. … It was perfect.

I can safely skip lunch today!

Kolkata
Wednesday, 28 August 2019, 10 AM.