“Snip, snap, woosh…” a spark.

Swapan Thakur

A bright red crackling element rises as if in a lithe dance. It bears the gifts of warmth, of light, an untamed element that wreaks havoc when unchained. The men present on the eve of this discovery look at it in awe and name it: wisdom, knowledge, and other words of divinity. A sense of higher power on Earth; fire.

With the advancement of time, men have learnt to anchor the power of fire. They have built fireplaces to gain comfort, they have also learnt the art of cooking. Our story starts with the idea of cooking as one knows the easiest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.

Sneaking into the kitchen to steal food is a common blasphemy. A sin that even led Lord Krishna astray, one who even received the name of Makhan chor. However, as a kid, the workings of an unun were what gobbled at my curious little brain. Ranna-ghor was a den of aromas that enticed my belly and the steam rising off the unun called at my mind.

Grammo boujhider unun er mukhe lomba tiner nol diye phoo dewar shomoy hajir hole dekhte petam dhumro kundulir boloy rekha binindito kunchito olokdam shobhit shohashyo krishnakolider kanthashor.

(The women were known to primarily handle the duties of ranna ghor. They used to light up the unun via a long thin tin pipe and start the cooking process. One would have to discern their shapes amidst the smoke swirling up from the unun. The long mane of hair together with the ringlets of smoke would create a scene of mystery, and you would only recognize the person from their voice.)

Unun has changed to the stove and then to an induction cooker, but the raw beauty of steam covered mess is lost now. From the age of gadgets, if we look back to the first phase of the Copper Age, in the civilization of Mangalkot, three fan ovens (teen pakha unun) have been unearthed in the period from 1200 BC to 600 BC.

Pakha has several meanings in the folk language, for example, the two walls (that support the roof) on both sides of the earthen terrace house are known as pakha (pakha pere bari). Similarly, an unun that consists of a singular entrance for fuel but has three consecutive burners is known as teen pakha unun. 

Unun building is a separate art form, one that was passed on through generations of women. Even today when we visit rural Bengal, we find the women making and remaking an unun every day like in a loop. Unun kara (making of an unun) is their everyday ritual, a hobby that has crossed the boundaries of necessity and now falls under the category of art. 

This type of unun that they build daily is called tola unun, it is portable, modern, and has a dynamic formation. Amidst the mundane chores of household, they keep out an eye for any waste that can be utilized for unun making. The material ranges from an aluminium bucket to a kadhai. The trick is to recognize the material based on its capability of providing strength and structure to the unun.

The fuel for tola unun is known as gul koyla (coal briquettes), a compressed block of coal dust. The jhink (lumps on three sides to support a utensil) is shaped using doash mati (sandy soil) and left to harden for forty-eight hours. Once the basics are completed, barir ginni ra (homemakers) wash over the unun with gobor jol (liquid made with cow dung and water).

The other kind of unun is pata unun. It uses all kinds of organic wastes for its fuel: dung cake, wood splinters, rice husks, etc. Unlike tola unun this is stationary, and the craft requires more manpower. The smallest pata unun is of the size der pakha, this is used by the women to cook rice and daal together. 

The size of this kind of unun is directly proportional to the muscular strength required to build it. Firstly, you need to make a hole, an opening in the ground, and then start the work of picking up the soil on all sides (jhink). Made directly on the ground it is static, you would find pata unun in the open yard of many country houses. However, the chances of coming across this visual have gone down majorly because its need has deteriorated.

On the brighter side, you might come across bhiyen er unun. These ununs are used for community festivals. Customized to size as per requirements, the shape defines the flame of the unun. During bhoj these ununs are used to cook Rosogolla and Ledikeni (sweets of Bengal). Specific wood types like guye babla and shona babla are used for fuel purposes, to light up the unun, and start preparations for bhiyen. 

When commercialization hadn’t reached its peak and the idea of caterers was unknown, celebrations were marked with the entire village joining in a cooking gala. Celebrations called for building a joler unun, one that required manly prowess. The sheer size of 8 feet, defined these rectangular ununs as masculine. The women oversaw the dicing of vegetables and precooking procedures, whereas the main cooking was done by men. Handling the joler unun, and cooking for the mass was a separate feat in itself.   

If I sat down to count the varieties of unun to exist, I would be at a loss. There’s tola unun, bhater unun, aancher unun, chayer unun, dhaan sedhor unun and many more. It might humour you to realize that ununs can be differentiated based on their femininity and masculinity. Tapal unun used for boiling rice has a rugged shape. This gives away the artist, a man. 

However, certain ununs have the intricacy of a woman even when made by men. Ununs specifically made for manufacturing jaggery from sugarcane, have a beauty that is in stark contrast with tapal ununs. 

They are ten cubits long with a width of four to five cubits. An outlet of about four feet is cut into the ground. A mud wall is made about four feet high with a one-foot gap in front. The smoke escapes from a circular, six-foot-tall, round, earthen pipe. The insides hold two large iron pots, and the gaps are filled with soil. The juice bubbles in this pot, and the mechanism removes impurities while giving the jaggery a viscous and pure texture. 

You can marvel at the work of this unun in parts of Rahr Bengal. This unun serves as a personal favourite, the bias being my sweet tooth. As a child, I would wait for one taste of the honeyed liquid, while wondering about the beauty of the apparatus.