The Bengali Love Affair With Postor Bora
For any Bengali, one bite of a postor bora is guaranteed to simultaneously evoke homesickness and cure it altogether.
On the face of it, a postor bora — patties made out of ground white poppy seeds — can seem like an easy thing to make. The most basic version, for instance, includes just three ingredients: poppy seeds ground to a paste, salt, and mustard oil. But as any Bengali will tell you, there’s no preparation more exacting than the inconspicuous postor bora, a typical fried accompaniment on most Bengali lunch plates. The process of grounding the seeds into a woody-nutty paste — one that is capable of holding shape — is time-consuming, labour intensive, and rarely forgiving. Any miscalculation can jeopardise both texture and flavour, prompting one to start afresh. To make a postor bora then, is to stare down your own incompetence until it stops getting in the way.
Much of the appeal of the dish lies in showmanship — the promise that every bite of postor bora resembles the other is a delicate dance of precision and harmony, culminating into what my mother likes to call “necessary poetry.” In that, postor bora relies on skilled hands to give it form and rhythm — hands crushing the paste, hands carefully measuring the amount of water needed to grind the paste, then kneading and flattening it into round discs that come alive with creamy flavour when fried.
Crisis Creates a Delicacy
There is no postor bora without women. Known as posto in West Bengal and Bangladesh, khus-khus in Hindi, kasa kasa in Tamil, and afu guti in Assamese, the tiny, dried seeds are essentially formed after the drug is extracted from the latex of poppy pods. The idea that poppy seeds were nothing more than by-products was reinforced during the British Raj when the East India Company cruelly took over agricultural land — meant for food and cash crops — to cultivate poppy for opium. Forced to produce batches of poppy, impoverished farmers ended up generating endless mountains of poppy seeds. Instead of dumping these seeds as trash, their wives started experimenting with it. It is their inventive hands that stumbled upon the versatile gifts of poppy seeds: a quick smash revealed a paste that complemented the pungency of mustard oil; it could not only be added to vegetables and fish preparations but also eaten on its own as a relish. And just like that, crisis gave way to delicacy.
Today, almost any Bengali dish can be elevated with posto: it is at once a spice, a condiment, a paste, a thickener for gravies, or a postor bora. It is a testament to the versatility of poppy seeds that everyone is likely to have their own preferred way of eating posto. Still I’d argue that there’s no posto preparation that is as much of a sensory overload as a postor bora. That is because for any Bengali, one bite of a postor bora is guaranteed to simultaneously evoke homesickness and cure it altogether.
The Invariable Rules of Postor Bora
Having cooked variations of it her entire life, my mother has strong opinions on postor bora: it shouldn’t be ground too fine; minimal water to be added to make the paste; and most importantly, never dilute the taste of posto by adding fillers. Still, she is also the kind of person who wouldn’t think twice before personalising a postor bora with ingredients her daughters are fixated with — even if it means additional time in the kitchen refining a dish that is otherwise muscle-memory to her.
Over the years, she has introduced several versions of postor boras to the lunch table: my mother has fashioned postor boras filled with dal, shorshe (mustard), onions, and even, chingri maach bata (smashed prawn paste), each unparalleled in taste. If I had to pick, my two favourite flavours are the addictive aloo-sheddo postor bora (ground poppy seed patties with potatoes) and the crunchy sojne phuler postor bora (ground poppy seed patties with moringa flowers).
Over time, she has perfected both of these boras, which she first conceived to accommodate her family’s culinary preferences: at 9, I had once dramatically claimed that I would eat nothing if it didn’t have potatoes in it; at 12, I couldn’t stop talking about the sojne phooler torkari (a spicy mixed vegetable mishmash made with moringa flowers) that I had at my best friend’s home. I forgot both these claims in a couple of months but my mother remembered, adding these ingredients in as many preparations as possible just so that I could enjoy my meals that much more.
At the time, when boras started popping up on my lunch plate regularly, I couldn’t imagine the varied ways in which they would inform my palate or refine my approach to flavour. I didn’t look at them as gifts; I saw them as two extra treats on my plate. I wish I thought of them the way I see it now: unshakeable evidence of the generosity of my mother’s caregiving; her ability to convey her love in the tiniest of gestures — especially through a tiny postor bora.
To this day, my mother believes that a postor bora is best enjoyed without frills — add as little to it if you want the soporific effects of the posto to shine. Yet, every time I go back home, a familiar sight greets me: a dining table that has enough room for aloo sheddho and sojne phooler postor boras.
RECIPE: SOJNE PHULER POSTOR BORA
Ingredients
1 cup sojne phool (moringa flower)
1 onion, chopped fine
1/2 cup raw posto seeds (poppy seeds)
1-2 green chilli, chopped fine
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
3 tsp mustard oil
1 tablespoon posto seeds for coating (optional)
Method
Soak posto seeds in water for an hour. Drain the excess water and grind the posto seeds to make a coarse paste. The paste shouldn’t be too thin otherwise the bora will turn out soggy.
If using a stone shil-nora (mortal and pestle), grind the seeds with minimal water until you’re left with a grainy paste. My mother prefers this method because it allows her to have complete control over the texture of the paste.
If using an electric grinder, skip soaking the seeds completely. Dry-grind the posto seeds in short pulses while adding half a teaspoon of water each time until a coarse paste forms. (Add as little water as possible so that you can avoid using rice-flour for binding. It dilutes the taste.)
Wash the sojne phool under running water to clean out any dirt. Rest them on a strainer for a couple of minutes to drain out excess water.
Take a mixing bowl and add the ground posto, salt, chopped green chillies, sugar and sojne phool. Mix them thoroughly by hand.
Poulomi Das is an independent film and culture journalist based in India.
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