The SteepingMemoirs by Dr Scion Sarma
A moustached dahibara vendor in a pale shirt and a checked shoulder-cloth leans out to serve dahibara folded into a green sal-leaf cone, beside a brass pot of buttermilk and a brass tray heaped with round pale dahibara; in the foreground a smiling schoolboy holds up a small coin; other schoolboys and a 1950s street stand behind, before the red-and-white arch of an old school gate in warm golden light.
Plate I

PortraitsCuttack — 20 November 2005

Bhogirath, the dahibara maker

Raghu Dahibara's death carries a chemist back fifty years to the Cuttack school gate — and to a blind octogenarian who can still explain, in his own way, why the taste will not come back.

Continue readingListen to the discussion