Coconut is a very important part of Bengali cooking and lifestyle in general. Bengalis are known for their chhana'r (cottage cheese) sandesh, but that is a much more recent phenomenon. Sweets made from coconut and jaggery have been around for thousands of years. If you look at the simplicity of a recipe like narkeler naru—made with just two ingredients and shaped by hand—you will quickly realise that this is something we have been eating for ages. There are so many more, fancier sweets in the Bengali cook's repertoire now, and yet is there anything that signifies Bijoya Dashami better than this humble lump of coconut and sugarcane jaggery? Why do we keep reaching for the jar of naru when there is no dearth of intricate and refined desserts? It is because the naru connects us to all the people who came before us, who lived, loved, and ate narus here in this fertile land that we call home.