Shahnaz Ahsan recalls how shopping and cooking with her Bengali family in Manchester shaped her life and her debut novel
There’s a saying among Bengalis that we only truly care about three things: politics, educating our children and, most of all, food. This was certainly true of my grandfather, Habib Ullah, or as I used to call him: Nana Bhai. Nana Bhai arrived in Manchester as a young man in 1956 and was one of the first from his village to make the journey from northern Bengal to northern Britain. Like most migrants, his original intention was to graft for several years to save up enough money before returning home – and, like most migrants, his plan never quite came to fruition.
The three passions of Nana Bhai’s life – politics, education and food – were obvious to all who knew him. My mother recounts how she used to accompany him to the polling booth for every election. He would lift her up so she could see the ballot paper on the little ledge and her job was to point at the box which said “Labour” as Nana Bhai was unable to read or write English. Then Nana Bhai, a lifelong socialist, would mark that box with a confident “X”. Perhaps because of his own lack of opportunity, Nana Bhai fiercely encouraged the academic success of his six children, taking great pride in their achievements. Despite being incredibly bright, he had been unable to complete his own education, having to leave school in order to support his younger siblings and mother after his father died. But Nana Bhai’s priority in life was to ensure that his loved ones ate well. While my grandmother bought us gifts for birthdays and Eid, Nana Bhai showed his affection through stocking the pantry with all the things he knew we loved to eat before we came to visit: boxes of mangoes or an entire jackfruit would welcome us at the start of each school holiday.
I learned how to properly clean chicken and gut a fish. I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was learning how to cook
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