The Story of Boti and My Father

Seller of boti at the market. Karwan Bazar, Dhaka, 29 February 2020

When I was in Dhaka, I was a guest of two families for three weeks. At the first apartment, when I’ve just arrived, I fell in love with the boti from the first time I saw it.

Boti (also called bonti or bnoti) is a cutting instrument typical of the Bengal region, a kitchen tool used by housewives or maids to peel and slice fruits and vegetables, consisting of a sickle blade facing towards whom use it; perfect to be used sitting on the ground, comfortably, or on a small low chair, so as to keep the handle locked with the foot. There is also a hand-held version used in the Chittagong and Sylhet area of Bangladesh, called Dao or Daa. In Tamil it's called Arivalmanai.

In all the houses where I have been, the maids used it and I still remember, in one of the last days I was there, when I was in a large outdoor market in Karwan Bazar, there was a man who sold dozens of them. I thought, I’d bring one to my mother, but I realized it was not a very viable idea and I didn't want problems at the airport.

In the end, I make my photographs suffice as a souvenir of the boti.

Using boti in the kitchen. Dhaka, 15 February 2020

And, here I am back in Rome, in the  Covid-19 confinement, with more time to spend with my family, and to talk.

It was precisely during one lunch that I begin to tell my mother and father about the boti, joking with my mother, saying that I wanted to bring one to Italy to teach her to use it.

Then I realize that my father looks at me curiously, and asks me: “What shape does it have?”

“It's like a scythe with a small pedestal and the blade facing upwards,” I told him.

He tells me that some time ago he found in the cellar an instrument that belonged to his father, of which he never managed to understand its use.

“I asked all my friends: nothing! Nobody has ever seen it, or understands what it can be used for,” he said disconsolately, getting up to go and get it down in the cellar. “See if it's this.”

And when he came back, to my great amused surprise, I saw him holding an old rusty big boti.

“Oh yeah! This is exactly the boti, Dad!”

But where did it come from?

My father has no idea: it was among some old things of my grandfather, memorabilia from the Second World War.

My grandfather was born in Galatina, in the deep Salento. He died when I was four years old. I remember it because he loved to play tricks. Indeed, he and my grandmother also lived in Rome, but I have no memory of him here: the last visual image I have of my grandfather is at his home in Puglia, sick and elderly in his bed, with me at four years old entered into the room and he jokingly threw against me a slipper and almost hit me. This is the last polaroid of his life in my eyes.

He has never gone anywhere else, while boti is used only in the South Indian Continent.

My father made me look at some memorabilia that he kept from my grandfather, during the Africa Campaign of the Second World War. From small mysterious photos of African villages and a woman, perhaps Italian, with Berber clothes and make-up, as Italian women who lived in those places of war used to pose then. His Commemorative Medal in 1939, the Farewell Letter of '37. And the boti.

Photographs taken by my grandfather in Africa

Commemorative Medal for the African Campaign to my grandfather, 1939

But how did it get there?  

Of course!

The process of decolonization, during the Second World War, meant exploitation of human resources of their colonies by the colonial powers in times of war, as happened for example in Africa. The Indian Army fought alongside the British, before the independence of India in 1947 and the various partitions between Pakistan and Bangladesh, in the same campaign as my grandfather's Africa, against the Italy and German.

Certainly it was in this way that the boti has reached those places in Africa, Somalia, Eritrea, Ethiopia... Maybe my grandfather saw it in some markets and bought it as a souvenir, bringing it to Galatina. And now it's in my father's hands.

I showed him my photographs of how it is used, and he went to look for more information on the internet; so he decided to polish it, removing the rust. He worked on it an entire morning, and came back to me.

“Look here, what do these symbols mean?” he told me. “They came out when I removed the layer of rust from the blade.”

The characters Bangla on the blade of the boti. Rome, 29 March 2020

They are characters, an inscription, although I still do not distinguish well whether Bangla or Hindi.

So I sent a photo to a Bangladeshi friend of mine in Italy.

“Gopal,” she replied, “It's in Bangla characters, and is the name of a Hindu.”

Alamak! As they would say in Malaysia. Blimey!

“Incredible, tell me.” I ask her.

She explains to me that Gopal is a typical Hindu name. Gopala means the “Protector of the World”, from Go (world) and Pala (protector), or “Protector of the Cow”, and it was the name of Krishna as a child.

At that time, some jobs, such as making cheese or making certain utensils, such as boti, were mainly carried out by Hindus, and then they signed the tool with their own name.

Then, from Indian territories, that boti made by Gopal traveled with the Indian army to East Africa. My grandfather, a soldier, in his spare time bought it as a souvenir of that War and brought it to Puglia.

There he stayed until they came to live in Rome and then he died, and my father took it with him besides other memories of his father, keeping them in the cellar for decades. Without knowing what it was.

Now, it has a name, he knows how to use it, he has made the blade return to its almost original color, and he has also discovered the name of who made it. And it's all happy.

The confinement from Corona virus has brought back a history long in time and geography, from Salento to Rome, passing through India and Africa.

Imagining the bearded and wrinkled face of Gopal, in his workshop, making the boti.

My father with his boti. Rome, 29 March 2020

 

Italian version