Some of my fondest memories have an element of food attached to them. In fact I have managed to find a food angle to some of my disastrous memories as well. Is it any wonder when one of my favourite quotes perfectly captures two of my favourite pastimes – eating and thinking:
“Indian thought while valuing thought also values food. Food is nourisher, healer as well as happiness provider. Thought maybe god but food is the goddess. One cannot exist without the other.” Sita, Devdutt Patnaik
Cheese toast, mango shake and ketchup – this daily breakfast whenever I visited my Nana-Nani is so deeply intertwined with childhood, every time I eat it I remember how Nana would make toasts loaded with cheese slices and mango shake before leaving for work. That taste is – yes the way he made it was different even though we use the exact same ingredients – still so fresh in my head as if I ate it only yesterday.
And what’s the ketchup connection you ask? Us cousins used to take so much of it with our toasts, we would end up wasting half of it. Finally my Nani told us to take only as much as needed and till today I cannot bring myself to waste ketchup.
I am lucky to have a set of friends who are as obsessed – we are the people who start thinking of dinner while we are eating breakfast – with food as I am. We even have a joke among us – the best way to keep us quiet is to put good food before us and later hear us complain how we over ate.
It’s fascinating for me, my obsession with food: feeling happy, treat yourself. Feeling sad, treat yourself. Is there a festival? Mom will make special festival food. A special occasion? What do you want to eat? Food is such an integral part of my life, I may not remember what happened but I will remember what I ate…or at the very least how the food made me feel.
Talking of feelings, all happy memories and birthdays are surrounded by kheer – just thinking about it is enough to bring a smile on my face and a ton of saliva in my mouth! In fact my sister – who has recently become acquainted with this DSLR – will now only take my photos when I’m around books or food. Kheer by the way is also how I judge other people’s cooking skills. It is also the dish Nani and mom fought over when trying to win my affections. Ha!
Also Dadi ke haath ki alubukhare (plum) ki chutney with mathri. I learnt how to say that rather difficult word just so I could tell her to make it for me every time we visited for the holidays.
I have often thought of starting a food series to pay tribute to one of the most important things in my life but haven’t got around to doing it because I don’t have the patience or the skill to put across just how much I love to eat. Since that series never took off, here’s a small post to commemorate and corroborate.
Dear Food, I love you. You keep me satiated and I promise you’ll always have my fullest attention. Yours truly.
PS: Finding a header image for this post was hard. Staring at all those food images made me hungry.
tales of Suchita 
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