Sure A Not

India’s space chief says a giant metal dome that washed up on an Australian beach was definitely part of a rocket – but may or may not be Indian.

“We can’t confirm it’s ours unless we analyse it,” S Somanath told the BBC.

There has been wild speculation about the object ever since it was discovered at Green Head beach, about 250km (155 miles) north of Perth, at the weekend.

Some even said it may be from India’s latest Moon mission launch last Friday but experts quickly ruled that out.

The cylindrical object, about 2.5m wide and between 2.5m and 3m long, has generated a lot of excitement among the residents of Green Head beach.

It was initially speculated that the wreckage could be a part of MH370 – a plane that went missing off the west Australian coast in 2014 with 239 passengers on board.

But aviation experts soon clarified that the item couldn’t have come from a commercial aircraft and that it was possibly a fuel tank from a rocket that had fallen into the Indian Ocean at some stage.

The Australian Space Agency then said it was possible the giant cylinder could have fallen from a “foreign space launch vehicle”.

This resulted in speculation that the object was a fuel tank of a PSLV – the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicles that the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) regularly uses to launch satellites into space.

Since one was most recently used last Friday to send the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft into orbit, it led to speculation that the debris came from that – despite experts saying the object had been in the water for at least a few months. Photos showing its extensive barnacle cover support that argument.

Mr Somanath, who heads Isro, told the BBC that there was “no mystery” about the object, confirming that “it is part of some rocket”.

“It could be a PSLV or any other and unless we see and analyse it, it cannot be confirmed,” he said. The Australian authorities have yet to release more details.

Mr Somanath, however, confirmed that “some of the PSLV parts are known to have fallen in the sea beyond Australia’s Exclusive Economic Zone” and said that the object “may have been floating for a long time and finally reached shore”.

He added that there was no danger associated with the debris.

Authorities in Australia, however, have said they were treating the item “as hazardous” and police have requested people to keep a safe distance. Some experts said it could contain toxic materials.

What can a 1904 cookbook – written in the Bengali language and filled with dessert recipes – tell us about colonialism and food habits? A lot, writes journalist Priyadarshini Chatterjee.

On a scorching summer afternoon sometime in the late 2000s, I returned home to the unusual sight of my aunt skittering about in the kitchen of our house in the eastern city of Kolkata in India’s West Bengal state.

“I am making cheesecake,” she announced, as she crumbled some paneer (considered an Indian equivalent of cottage cheese) into the decades-old mixer. She must have seen the flicker of doubt on my face.

“Cottage cheese,” she quipped, stressing on the cheese, before she told me how she had coaxed the recipe out of a friend.

What my aunt turned out that evening – and many times since – was a decidedly sweet and firm mousse-like dessert, pristine white in colour, that sat on a layer of crumbed Marie biscuits cemented with butter.

We loved the comforting simplicity of the dish, except we had to hurry up and finish it before it melted into a runny mess.

Was it a cheesecake? No one could confirm or deny, simply because none of us had tasted one. Not yet.

In his 2013 book Calcutta: Two Years in the City, author Amit Chaudhuri wrote, “Oddly, colonialism hadn’t introduced the cheesecake to the Indian middle class, but globalisation did – triangular pretenders that were dead ringers of the original, but tasted exactly like mousse.”

I also had my share of feather-light, wispy, sweetened aerated cream in the name of cheesecake before I ate my first spoonful that was dense and creamy, with a hint of tang that clung to my mouth for just a little longer. And every time I had cheesecake, I associated it with the cosmopolitan, post-liberalisation India (the country’s economy was liberalised, or made open to the world, in 1991).

So imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon a recipe for cheesecake in a Bengali book published more than a hundred years ago. It seemed colonialism did after all introduce cheesecake to the Indian, at least the Bengali, middle-class.

In 1904, Bipradas Mukhopadhyay – writer, printer-publisher and a columnist – published a book titled Mistanna Pak dedicated entirely to sweets.

Although written in Bengali, the book is a veritable globe-trotter. Traditional Bengali sweets like sandesh, chandrapuli and pantua rub shoulders with sweets from around the Indian subcontinent like the Rajasthani ghevar and Sindhi roth, and European treats like rose-flavoured Portuguese cake, ginger cream and orange custard.

It is a dessert heaven, an amorphous space where borders dissolve. And right at the end are two different methods for making cheesecake.

Mukhopadhyay’s Mistanna Pak is particularly unique not only because it’s perhaps the earliest book of its kind to come out of the subcontinent – a specialised cookbook exclusively dedicated to sweets – but also for its spirited cosmopolitanism.

In Bengal, a land with an unparalleled confectionery heritage, sweets have historically been of two kinds – those made at home by the women, typically with easily available ingredients like coconut, jaggery, rice, lentils and milk solids, and those made by professional confectioners that focused on cottage cheese.

Mukhopadhyay’s cookbook, aimed at the new-age Bengali woman, clearly suggested that their repertoire of homemade creations now included a range of cakes, puddings, flavoured cream and cheesecake.

The book, in fact, reflects this spirit of a time in colonial Bengal when food came to be defined in more complex terms and played a crucial role in the construction of the Bengali middle-class identity and self-fashioning of the modern Bengali bhadralok (gentleman).

And the Bengali bhadramahila (gentlewoman) was placed at the centre of this change, made responsible for shaping a new cuisine and culinary culture that remained rooted in tradition while embracing the new.

An 1874 article in a Bengali women’s magazine Bamabodhini Patrika stated that a bhadramahila should be able to cook everything from native Brahmin dishes of rice and curry, meat in the Mughal style, traditional Bengali sweets and Western-style jams, cakes, biscuits, puddings and bread with equal ease.

Mukhopadhyay’s cheesecake is a far cry from cheesecakes we are familiar with today that are made with soft, satiny dollops of cream cheese. It might even appear a misnomer – there is no cheese in his cheesecake.

In one recipe, chunks of bread are added to a pot of buttermilk, followed by eggs, sweetened with sugar or sugar candy and flavoured with lime zest, and cooked on a stove top until the ingredients are reduced to a thick consistency and allowed to set.

In the second recipe, butter, sugar and lime are simmered together, whipped up to a fluff and allowed to harden.

History tells us that not all cheesecakes are made of cheese, least of all cream cheese. Cream cheese came to be incorporated in cheesecakes only in the 1920s and 30s. But cheesecakes have been around at least since 2BC, in various forms.

As British food writer Alan Davidson wrote in the Oxford Companion to Food, “It is clear from 18th-century English receipts that not all cheesecakes contained curds or cheese. Many are thick custards of cream and eggs, flavoured with lemon or citron peel.”

Through the 18th Century, recipes for cheesecake often featured in cookbooks published internationally as also those written by European expats living in India. The Indian Cookery Book (1880) featured a recipe for “Excellent Cheesecakes” combining whey-free curd with butter, egg yolks, sugar and shavings of nutmeg baked in a quick oven or patty pans lined with puff paste.

American journalist Margaret Dod’s 1826 book The Cook and Housewife’s Manual has a cheesecake where sponge biscuits soaked in cream are steeped in lime juice and beaten up with fresh butter, sugar and eggs. Seasoned with cinnamon and nutmeg, the batter is poured into small pans lined with a light thin paste and baked. It’s finished with a garnish of candied lemon peel.

Mukhopadhyay’s recipes seem to combine elements from various recipes to adapt them to indigenous kitchens, following the trend at the time. Recipe writers and compilers like Pragyasundari Devi and Mukhopadhyay innovated, improvised and modified recipes of non-indigenous food to suit Indian, particularly Bengali, pantry and culinary culture.

Considering how Mukhopadhyay wraps up his cheesecake recipe with a note of praise for European food as more nutritious and urging Bengalis to include eggs and meat in their diet or how he dedicates a section of his book to the right method of toasting bread, it is clear that many of these food items were still new to the book’s middle-class patrons.

And this novelty perhaps also left some space for minor manipulations and certain inaccuracies went unchallenged.

But there’s no denying the unmistakable cosmopolitanism of Mistanna Pak and Mukhopadhyay’s efforts towards globalising the Bengali palate long before globalisation became a buzzword.

BBC News India is now on YouTube. Click here to subscribe and watch our documentaries, explainers and features.

The Myotsuji temple sits in Aisai, a little known city in the Japanese prefecture of Aichi.

Located more than 9,000km (5,600 miles) from her home in Sri Lanka’s Kadawatha district, it is the final resting place of Ratnayake Liyanage Wishma Sandamali.

Wishma died on 6 March 2021 at an immigration detention centre in Nagoya, Aichi’s capital. She had been detained there for seven months after overstaying her student visa, and requesting refugee status.

“Even in our dreams, we see our sister,” 30-year old Wayomi Ratnayake told the BBC. “She was only 33 when she died. She could have lived for many more years.”

Wishma was the 18th foreigner to die in Japanese immigration detention since 2007, according to media reports. The country has one of the lowest refugee acceptance rates in the world and her death has increased pressure on officials to reform how people held in such centres are treated.

She lost 20kg (44 pounds) in detention due to a stress-induced stomach condition. According to activists who visited her, her health continued to deteriorate from extreme stress. In her final days, Wishma was vomiting blood.

She repeatedly asked to be taken to hospital and granted provisional release, but these requests were denied.

An investigative report by the Immigration Services Agency of Japan in August 2021 concluded that staff at the detention centre showed a lack of awareness of human rights, and had failed to share details of her illness. It added that some detention officers thought the detainees were faking illness in order to obtain provisional release.

However, prosecutors declined to bring charges against 13 officers at the Nagoya facility over her death. An independent judicial panel later ruled that this decision was unjust.

Led by Wishma’s sisters Wayomi and Poornima, 28, the Ratnayake family is suing the Japanese government for damages, alleging it failed to provide Wishma with proper food and healthcare. The case has been ongoing since March 2022.

“If she had got the right medication, she would not have died,” said Wayomi. “We want justice for our sister. The Japanese government is responsible for what happened to her.”

There are some 295 hours of CCTV footage of Wishma, taken at the Nagoya facility in the days leading up to her death.

Five hours of that footage has been presented to a Nagoya court as evidence. The family’s lawyers released some of it to the public in April.

In clips shown to the BBC by the family’s lawyers, a frail looking Wishma is covered by a blanket as she lies in bed and converses with facility staff. “I can’t drink anything,” she says. “I can’t breathe. I’m going to die.”

Japanese media also reported that on 23 March, Wishma is seen repeatedly asking to be taken to hospital after vomiting: “I’m going to die today.” A guard responds: “Don’t worry, I would be troubled if you died. Let’s think of something else.”

On the day of her death, two staff members are seen attempting to revive Wishma. “I think her fingertips feel kind of cold,” says one. Another yells: “Ms Sandamali! Can you hear me?”

It was harrowing viewing for Poornima, who was allowed to watch some of the clips in court, but could not bear to do so continuously. “She should have been in a hospital. The people in the detention centre did not care for her.”

Wayomi added: “There should be a change in the Japanese system so that inmates in the detention centre are protected.”

Wishma’s death sparked an uproar in Japan, forcing the government to scrap a controversial immigration bill.

But more than two years later, the proposed amendments to the Immigration Control and Refugee Recognition Act were passed in the lower house of parliament and will come into effect next year. It permits the deportation of those who repeatedly apply for refugee status.

According to official data, only 202 out of 3,772 applicants were recognised as refugees by Japan last year.

Teppei Kasai of Human Rights Watch told the BBC: “If the Japanese government had taken concrete steps to end the indefinite detention of migrants and asylum seekers, [the] deaths [of foreigners in detention], including Wishma Sandamali’s, might have been prevented.”

He earlier noted that Japan’s immigration and refugee policy has long been mired in red tape and “unnecessarily restrictive measures. Some refugee applicants are held for prolonged periods in detention centres without judicial oversight, sometimes without adequate access to medical services, he added.

Wishma arrived in Japan in June 2017 on a 15-month student visa, attending a Japanese language school in Chiba prefecture.

A fan of Japanese drama series like Oshin, the English teacher loved Japanese culture and wanted to live in Japan, recalled Wayomi. “She was very innocent and sensitive. She was like a mother to us, very caring and considerate.”

Poornima, who was closest to Wishma, fondly recalled her eldest sister. “We would cook together, and we liked to dance.”

The sisters spoke over the phone on a daily basis, sometimes twice a day. Wishma later moved in with her Sri Lankan boyfriend, whom she met in Japan.

According to the investigative report commissioned by authorities, Wishma stopped attending classes in May 2018 and was expelled by her school the following month.

She started working at a factory in Shizuoka thereafter and applied for refugee status in September. Her application was denied in January 2019.

The following August, she turned herself in to police, alleging domestic abuse. However, she was arrested for overstaying her visa and detained in Nagoya.

Wishma initially wanted to return to Sri Lanka but was unable to get a flight due to Covid curbs. Having changed her mind in December 2020, she remained in detention.

She began suffering from ill health from January 2021, said the report, and her condition began deteriorating the following month.

But all of this was unknown to the Ratnayakes. Their mother last spoke to Wishma some time in mid-2018, where she told them not to worry if she didn’t contact the family.

Wayomi received a text from Wishma in October 2019, congratulating her on her wedding. Subsequent attempts to contact her were unsuccessful.

Then on 8 March 2021, the family was informed by Sri Lankan police of Wishma’s death. “We were so shocked. There are no words to describe our grief,” said Wayomi.

When the siblings went to Japan in May to identify their sister’s body, they could not recognise her. “When we saw Wishma, her face looked like our grandmother’s,” recalled Wayomi. “She had lost so much weight.”

It was the first time they had seen her in two and a half years. They were unable to bring Wishma’s body home, due to Covid restrictions as well as the prohibitive cost.

So she was cremated in Nagoya. The sisters attended the funeral, but their mother did not. “She was not mentally fit to see Wishma’s body,” said Wayomi.

The siblings gave up their jobs in Sri Lanka – Wayomi was a cashier, Poornima a nursery teacher – in order to pursue their case. They are currently staying at a friend’s apartment in Japan. Their living expenses, as well as the lawsuit, is being funded by donations from Japanese citizens.

But not everyone has been sympathetic. In May, lawmaker Mizuho Umemura was suspended by her own party after suggesting in parliament that Wishma’s death may have been caused by a hunger strike instigated by activists.

In Sri Lanka, Wishma’s case has been widely discussed, with clips of the CCTV footage being circulated online. Opposition and other figures have also urged the government to take up the issue with Japan.

But Sunday Observer editor Pramod de Silva, who heads the largest English newspaper in the country, told the BBC that he does not think the case has affected Sri Lankans’ “overwhelmingly positive” views of Japan.

Japan is one of Sri Lanka’s biggest aid donors and investors, and Mr de Silva reckoned that Japan is likely to grant a “substantial quota” for Sri Lanka as it opens its doors to foreign labour and foreign migrants

For Wishma’s sisters, the fight goes on. “We will not give this up. We will fight this till the end.”