I was born in Bombay, a city in the process of shedding its colonial cloak and returning to its roots: Mumbai. In 1987, my family immigrated to New York, and we spent our first five years in the United States living in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, next to the Belt Parkway highway, amid brick buildings teeming with the immigrant dreams of recently-arrived Russians and Ukrainians.
It was in Brooklyn where I first learned to twist open an Oreo to lick out the sugary vanilla cream and first relished the phenomenon that is melted mozzarella atop pizza. Pizza was such a treat in those days! We went to Tony’s Pizzeria, where I studied the man tossing the dough into the air, only to practice the technique at home with laundry. There we ordered two slices for a dollar apiece, requesting that they be cut down the middle to feed four people.
I remember Sunday walks to Key Food supermarket with my father; they always involved a stop at Weissan’s Bakery where he treated me to an éclair that I could have all to myself. I had never eaten anything like this in India: vanilla cream hidden inside a moist, soft pastry topped with a chocolate glaze.
Ice-cream sandwiches, bubble gum superior to the white Chicklets of India, Frosted Flakes whose sugar-coating dissolved in cold milk, orange Kraft cheese that was the body and soul of my school cafeteria’s grilled cheese sandwiches— it was through food that I assimilated into American culture.
Shortly before I entered the third grade, my family shifted to Stuyvesant Town, a verdant, rent-stabilized suburban paradise, just north of tenement-studded Alphabet City. In Stuyvesant Town, children played unsupervised in parks, squirrels foraged for acorns, and blue jays perched themselves atop benches. I thought Stuyvesant Town was perfect, and still think it is, even though all the buildings are identical, unimaginative twelve-story structures with green window frames.
I wonder if I would have ever left the arbor of Stuyvesant Town had Uros Zver, the Beast, as his language would translate his surname, not approached me in our college dining hall one Sunday afternoon. My mouth was filled, nearly overflowing, rather, with pieces of crepe suzette.
“Hi, I’ve seen you around. And I think you’ve seen me too. I’m Uros.”
Somehow, my name managed to find a way out, past the delicious obstacles within: “I’m Vanashree.”
We shook hands then, and three years later, were married in a civil ceremony at City Hall, New York.
Today we live in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Ljubljana seems to have jumped out of the pages of a Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale; at the center of the city sits a white castle atop a hill, below which flows a narrow river flanked by willow trees whose branches drape over the banks, like locks of a lover’s hair. Sometimes, when I walk alone through the twisting cobblestone street at nights, I expect to see an elf scurrying home or a witch sitting in front of a window, spinning wool while casting spells on the passersby.
Living in Ljubljana, I feel like an immigrant all over again. I am learning Slovene, where nouns decline six times and the whole language starts following a new set of rules when it comes to discussing groups of two. (Complain to native speakers about the dual, and you will find no sympathy, only pride hailing the existence of the dual as the unique beauty of the language.) I am learning the layout of apartment buildings, not to expect an elevator, not to expect the hallways always lit, and to distinguishing the light switch from the doorbell to avoid waking up the neighbors at eleven o’clock at night. I am learning the particulars of setting the table, to place the dessertspoon above the plate, and lay the napkin to the left. I am learning to live life slower than in New York City, to while away an afternoon drinking coffee with a friend and thinking of it as time well spent.
But my favorite lessons have been the edible ones. Soft crescent-shaped kifli rolls, cured prsut ham and bean-laden soups specked with bits of sausage started off as a palatable introduction to Slovenia’s geography, subculture and history, but ended up as additions to my diet.
I write this blog to share my culinary experiences in Slovenia, as I wade through new and familiar flavors, working to find a place for my palette in my new home.
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