Food for Thought

“Think of the Lord before you start to eat. Food is the complete nurturer, Brahman itself. The act of eating is as holy as performing a Yagnya!”
My grandmother assiduously reminded my cousins and me about this important couplet whenever we were about to dig into the piping hot delicacies prepared for special occasions. The one which specially stands out in my memory is my cousins’ ‘Upanayana’ or thread ceremony, because we had been up since the crack of dawn with not much by way of food, thanks to what were ‘millions of rituals’ to our puny minds. We were thus the proverbial starving little mouths and wanted nothing more than to dig into fooooood…..any foooood!

While there is nothing better than a healthy bit of going without food to appreciate it, the world definitely abounds in people who are as finicky, fastidious and fussy as two -year-olds when it comes to food, even though they may be perfectly sane and reasonable at all other times. In a country like India, blessed as it is with a rich diversity of the palate, it is pretty commonplace to see and hear people worrying about what the lunch menu is even before they commence breakfast, and about the dinner menu before the dirty dishes from lunch are cleared away. All our special occasions, right from the time we are born to the time we bid an adieu to the world center around specific types of what else? FOOD! We LOVE to live to eat and not the other way round.

“My little prince only eats the rice and curry I make! (Why is it always prince and not princess I wonder?) He only wants the specific tempering which I have honed to perfection!” declared many a proud Mamma of yore, as if her little bundle of trouble had calculated the exact value of Pi, written the sequel to the Iliad and Odyssey and discovered the answer to the space-time conundrum all within the space of an hour. And this is where the seeds of fussiness over food were not only sown but also well irrigated and fertilized so that the ‘Picky Eater Tree’ not only sprouted but waxed tall and strong to cast its long shadow over all and sundry. For the little boy now basking in the glow of his mother’s approval, being fussy had just proved to be extremely rewarding. These reinforced beliefs did not take very long to turn into traits and habits. What Mamma failed to realize is that she wouldn’t be around to make tempering all the time and fussiness was going to cost not just her little prince, but also the people whose onerous task it was to appease him with delicacy after delicacy in the later stages of life, while she was limited to only watching his antics from the relative safety of the heavenly clouds. And thus, households rang with the stentorian voices of many an authoritative mother-in-law addressing the daughter-in-law “Don’t you know that your Papaji does not eat this unless prepared in this way?”

Women of my generation have thankfully long since shed such notions of culinary invincibility and tried our best to raise children (princes and princesses) who while being connoisseurs while it comes to the good life and good food are not fuss-pots and will happily appreciate what the auntie-next-door cooks in addition to what Mamma makes! However, whether we can claim resounding success in this endeavor remains to be seen. Put the clock back by just twenty years or so and the world suddenly abounds with people who will eat only a specific type of food cooked in a specific way. As I have already mentioned in one of my earlier screeds, there are quite a few middle-aged gentlemen and silver haired eminences at large, who cannot tell the difference between toor and chana dal except when they are eating them!

Now that my family is flourishing, so is the picky eater tree. I have had to pick a lot of fruit off this strange flora which has sprung unbidden in my back-yard. In an idyllic time long ago, I used to dream of food, delicious dreams which left me drooling. Marveling at the succulent dishes which my mom’s kitchen turned out with unerring regularity. Though not very interested in many things culinary, (in my more wayward moments I’d dreamt of a chef for a spouse) I was quite willing to learn, knowing that I would have to tend to one of the most basic of human needs, sooner rather than later.

But now that I helm the kitchen, the dreams have developed a mind of their own, rather in the way of a wayward teen and morphed into nightmares. I find myself waking up drenched in a cold sweat, already sniffing the air for the smell of burning food, which I could have sworn I left on the stove just a moment ago. As far planning the daily menu goes, I am sure Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman our esteemed or reviled (depends on how you look at it) finance minister will agree that planning the annual Indian budget is child’s play compared to the shenanigans which are part of this arduous task. I think the secret behind the snow- white hair she now sports, is having to plan the menu and cook food according to her mother-in -law’s exacting tastes!

Closer to home, I battle on bravely. On a typical day, the offspring refuses to eat what the venerable ones (read parents-in-law) want for breakfast. The spouse in the meantime is in a hurry and wants food produced out of thin air at the drop of a hat, barring which he will depart with a shake of his head which manages to convey sorrow at having to make off on an empty stomach and disdain at my incompetence in producing the required sustenance out of said air, in equal measure, an art which he has perfected by constant practice in the space of two decades. Short of meeting Molly Weasley pronto and taking a couple of comprehensive lessons from her on the art of quick food conjuring, I don’t think I can do much about it. I have instead developed a hide a rhino would be proud of and continue to ignore his lugubrious looks, deciding that he can survive off body fat for a fortnight if he so chooses. Come lunch time, and the drama has slightly increased in intensity, thanks to the fact that the offspring is now terribly hungry, thanks to three rigorous hours of online schooling. A look at the various types of vegetables, mainly beans, leafy greens, eggplant et al on offer and her face grows darker than the proverbial ‘Neelameghashyam’ cloud. Meanwhile, a mere sighting of cauliflower, cabbage or spinach draws a deep frown of disapproval from the venerable-in-chief.

Mushrooms, cheese, pasta (home made with lots and lots of vegetables to assuage guilt) and fried rice is the fare which the offspring seeks, while the looks of horror that these newfangled foods draw from the venerable ones make me wonder if I somehow managed to pull a China and buy unspeakable stuff from the wet market of Wuhan. I no longer have the energy to contend with overly dramatic scenes for teatime and dinner and give everyone the ‘take it or leave it’ short shrift. The running about which all this gathering and cooking has involved in the meantime manages to put me off food altogether, but much to my chagrin this great sacrifice on my part seems to have no effect whatsoever on my ever expanding golden middle. And so, the saga of the Great Indian Kitchen continues, churning out different delicacies to suit every palate, despite several New Year and Birthday resolutions on the part of yours truly to put my foot down on the food (only figuratively, not literally) and to leave it in the capable and capacious hands of a cook which regularly come to naught, thanks to a conspiracy from a higher power!

While I still stick to my stand that we are trying to raise a newer generation who is unbiased as far as different tastes go, the advent of Swiggy and Zomato, those life lines of undomestic goddesses, have managed to supplant grumbling about food by providing one with the option of doing away with the day’s menu altogether if it does not suit one’s tastes. And thus, the prince’s life comes full circle. If you don’t like the tempering which your better half made as it does not taste just like Mamma’s, there’s no need to get shirty. Just call the friendly neighborhood delivery guy who will restore your temper in a jiffy.

And so, I say to all the nitpickers who abound, especially now that the festival season is round the corner, that you will do well to remember that whether or not you are capable of putting cooked food on the table, the right to criticize another’s offering a`la Michelin tasters is certainly forfeit, much in the same way you wouldn’t want them to criticize say for example, your driving or accounting or cleaning skills! And to the kindred souls sailing in the same boat as me, take heart for the food which you put on the table though perhaps far from perfect, definitely offers succor to several souls!