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Spectator by Seema Goswami: It’s playback time
Traipsing down the memory lanes of childhood feels like a game – of finding out what changed, and what stayed the same
As I have said many times before in this column, the Christmas-New Year period in Calcutta – where I grew up – is truly magical. So, this year, my husband and I decided to bring in the New Year in the city of my birth – and the city in which we first met. The idea was to enjoy the lights of Park Street, make a pilgrimage to Botanical Gardens, and relive memories of our youth.
But it was in pursuit of a childhood memory that I decided to venture out to some nearby mishti dokans to buy the favourite sweet of my growing-up years: The gaja. But no matter where I went, the shop assistants informed me (with a certain grim satisfaction) that they no longer made gaja. Undeterred, I asked some local friends for help and they very graciously tracked down some shops that still made gaja and sent it to me. Sadly, though the sweets were tasty enough, they were nothing like the gaja of my childhood.
I happened to mention this when I visited my childhood friend, Kavita Walia, and she very kindly sent out for the gaja from the same shop that I used to frequent in my early years. Back at my hotel, I very excitedly opened the packet and took a peek inside. Oh yes, this looked exactly like what I had been dreaming of. The dream crumbled, however, when I had my first bite. Don’t get me wrong. It was delicious. But, sadly, it was not the gaja I remembered from my childhood.
This whole experience got me thinking. Could it be that some tastes only exist in our memory? And that no matter how much we try and recreate them later in life, we can never get it quite right? Or is it just nostalgia we are tasting in our minds; and that is impossible to replicate in real life? In other words, was I just imagining that the taste of the gaja was different so many years ago, because my mind had imbued that childhood memory with magical qualities?
Another childhood taste memory that I have tried to recreate – without much success – is the shredded coconut ‘cake’ that my mother used to make to celebrate Lord Krishna’s birthday on Janmashtami. This was truly a labour of love, with the coconut being freshly shredded, then cooked with lashings of sugar syrup, and set to cool in a circular bowl so that it looked like a cake, which would then be ceremonially cut and distributed as prasad at midnight. I can still taste the unctuous sweetness of the sugar, the crunchy chewiness of the coconut, which came together to create a taste bomb that we kids couldn’t get enough of.
A few years ago, on Janmashtami, I decided to pay tribute to my mother’s memory and recreate her special ‘cake’ for Krishnaji. I followed her recipe as closely as I could, and sat back impatiently, as the coconut cooled in a round dish. When it had set, I cut out a slice and took my first bite. It tasted great; but it simply wasn’t the cake I remembered from my childhood.
So, I guess some tastes do exist only in our minds; and the only way to enjoy them is to use our own imagination.
From HT Brunch, January 10, 2026
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