Bulu Hamied's Ramzan Offerings

Bulu Muku Hamied hails from Lucknow and comes from a respected, reputed and influential family. That apart, she is a great hostess and keeps an enviable table  

Think Lucknow and the first thing that comes to mind is its tehzeeb; manners are a cultural forte there. And of course what also comes to mind immediately is its delectable cuisine. Ah, the food that hails from this part of the world is unbeatable. In taste, in variety. A nawabi fare, it is a subtle and a gentle cuisine. Coming down from centuries, food here is cooked with a lot of care and attention, even a certain fierceness.
If you have ever witnessed two or more Lucknowi women in a kitchen, cooking, you will know what I mean. There will never be a consensus on the quantity of ingredients to be used. Each cook has her own andaz, her own measures, her own personal experience. Yet, each one dishes amazing stuff!
I should know, my father hails from there and many an aunt have I seen sticking up her nose at someone else’s cooking. They can even stop talking to each other merely because one says the garlic paste should be added before the ginger paste and the other insists you can mix both, but add it when the onion has turned pink, not dark pink!!
Oh well, well. I am fortunate to have Bulu Hamied live in Bombay. Bulu who represents a slice of Lucknow, right here in our city. In whose house the tehzeeb, the ada, the nazakhat of Lucknow is very much alive. And from whose kitchen wafts the maddening aromas of Awadhi cuisine. Where even the simple chhadi dal has the unique Lucknow flavour. Being invited to her home is a high point for many, for you can be sure of an amazing dastarkhan.
Let me tell you, at the outset, getting Bulu to cook is a lot easier than making her pose for the camera. Totally camera shy, she enquired when I called her for an interview, “Kya humari tasveeray utaarna zaroori hai?” To my emphatic, “Yes!” she gave in, but not before I promised her I would not click too many photographs of her, food yes.
So that out of the way, we settled in at her table to discuss what her family eats during Ramzan, at iftar time. What was the custom at her home in Lucknow where she was born and brought up. Where she went to school at La Martinère and Welham and then to college at Loretto’s.
Hearing Bulu speak itself is a delight. Softly, slowly, with her hands, even eyes. She speaks in chaste Udru breaking into English now and then. Living in Bombay all these years has not contaminated her leheza, her shayarana andaz of speaking. Her ‘Hai Allah’, her “Uff...”
“Woh zamana hi kuch aur tha,” she says nostalgically, “tab aise, aise khane bante the, jo abhi soch bhi nahi sakte hai. Sara khana asli ghee mein banta tha. Aab kya, koi woh khaega?” she questions. No, I guess not, people hesitate to even smear rotis with pure ghee. Diet is the catch word. And guilt, the dominant emotion.
Bulu never really cooked, not until five years after she got married. There was no need to. Yusuf and Ramzaan took care of the kitchen in Lucknow. They were amazing khansamas, she says. “When we returned from school there would be an array of European tea time goodies. Yusuf had trained as a child at a memsaheb’s home so he was aware of nougat, pastries and cream scones and what not. And he made these things in copper handis!” exclaims Bulu, clapping her hands in glee at long forgotten memories coming to the fore once again.
Bulu had a different sort of childhood. She was looked after and brought up by her maternal grandparents. Her parents, Nishat and Hafeez-ul-Rehman, were world citizens and it was not practical for a child in those days to be shifting base, changing roots. Bulu’s father was a diplomat in the Foreign Ministry and was stationed in various capital cities all over the world. Only once did Bulu join them. In Australia, for four years when she was two years old!
But turns out it wasn’t a loss at all. For her grandmother, Ayesha Begum, who Bulu used to call Bibi Amma, but now addresses her as everyone else, Bibi Jaan, was an enlightened, educated, liberal thinking woman. She was a recipient of the Kaiser-e-Hind medal. It was an award during the British rule, given by the monarch to extraordinary people who served India in its advancement in public interest, in some unique manner. “Bibi Jaan was unique alright. To begin with, she was beautiful. Her skin was like alabaster. And she washed her hair, only with besan. Whenever my mamu came home, he would tease her saying, “Yeh kya baat hai! Itne besan mein kitne bhajiye ban jate!”
Bulu’s granddad, Nana Abba, Gulam Hasan was a justice at the Supreme Court, so she did grow up in a rather eclectic house. Just so that you get the picture, a person who was a regular visitor at their home was Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Apart from other mundane reasons for his visit, an important one was that he was very fond of eating paya cooked by Bibi Jaan. Sarojini Naidu was another person who worked closely with Bibi Jaan. And it was Bibi Jaan again who introduced Ishtiaq Abbasi’s wife to respectable Lucknow society, who until then was appreciated only as Akhtari Bai Faizabadi, yes we are talking about the same; Begum Akhtar, the melodious ghazal diva.
“Lucknow is in my blood. I go there three to four times a year. And I catch up with all my friends. Bahut maaza karte hain. Bade ache ache khane bante hain. Naach ghana hota. We all sing songs even if totally tuneless,” she laughs. Bulu once lived in a grand house in Chandiwali Baradari at China Gate Bazaar, which had 11 bedrooms each with attached bathrooms, kept cool in summer by khus ki tattiya, (fragrant straw mats) and which was Nawab Wajid Ali’s mahal, now lodges the Taj, Lucknow. They let go of the house which today is with the government used as a law court, and fairly ruined.
Now Bulu divides her time between Bombay, Lucknow and London, where her son Karmil lives. Her daughters Samina and Rumana are her lifelines along with their three kids. Bulu is Muku Hamied’s wife. Muku, of Cipla Pharmaceuticals fame. So private is Muku, I wouldn’t dare invite him to be part of the photo session. But he is an adorable human being and a food connoisseur. How could he not be, hailing as he does from Aligarh and influened by his father, Khwaja Abdul Hamied, the founder of Cipla. When Bulu married into the Hamied family and came to live in Bombay, the cook, she says, was  simply outstanding, “Muku’s father kept an excellent table. The cook was so good, you couldn’t tell the European food was cooked by an Indian with no culinary degree! Also the Indian food he made was to die for! And then he died! That was such a calamity. It’s only then that I got into the kitchen. Muku was also very fond of good food, so I started to cook, oversee the kitchen,” says Bulu.
She has fond memories of all the family cooks who looked after them so well. Particularly Yusuf, who left the house when he turned 75, saying, “Ab gaon ja raha hoon, apne ghar ja ke mithi karoonga.” Meaning he wanted to go home and die there. That is Lucknow, refined to the last breath.