Food for thought

You’re wondering about something to which you attribute your existence.

A funny incident that happened on a cricket field years ago comes to your mind. Ian Healy seemingly couldn’t help wagging his tongue at the bulk of Arjuna Ranatunga at the striker’s end and yelled to the bowler, “Hey, Warnie, throw a Mars Bars halfway down the pitch”. Ranatunga looked back at Healy and replied “Not to worry, Boonie at forward short leg will get there before I do” to peals of laughter from the Aussies. Not funny, your food-o-philic alter-self scoffs. You know you could have given Boonie a run for his money yourself.

The kid looks robust to his mum, pleasantly plump to others. Chapattis for lunch everyday add to the kid’s adipose tissue. The kid has his little gang who crowd around him for a share in the chapattis. The kid has other ideas though. Out of the half a dozen chapattis his mum packs for lunch, he grudgingly parts with one, to be shared by a dozen others. The others fall upon the solitary chapatti like vultures on dead meat. The kid still grumbles. That is a sixth of his lunch gone.

Your brother-in-law made sure all of you ate out once in a while. You know he appreciated people who in turn appreciated good food. In all those restaurants he’d taken you to, you’d made sure you feasted on everything of importance, everything that appealed to your taste buds. You wanted to try your hand at non-veg sometime, but not with your sister around. The look on her face when you suggested Mongolian kebabs told you that you’d be better off telling her that you were eloping with a Venezuelan. Maybe some other time, you thought. You recollected your best friend and advisor the Pharaoh trying his hand at fish a couple of years back in Goa. De-bone-ing the fish had proved to be a cumbersome issue, so the Pharaoh decided he would go after the chicks (woops! And boy, I think he did!) instead.

Dad, mum and the kid are on the way to the capital city by air. The kid is pretty excitable, for the journey spans four earth hours, and that means food while they are airborne. So when along comes the air-hostess, the kid has the make-shift table in front of him laid out, and ready to attack.

“Veg or Non-veg?”


Dad points his index finger at himself, mum and the kid, and says, “All-veg.”

Now, this is where the story is rather hazy - you don’t know if there were altitude issues high up there or if the air-hostess was partly done in the ear. The kid opens his meal, and finds something fluffy and robust on the side. Cauliflower? Of course. He figures dad and mum aren’t hungry yet. Mum opens her meal pack a few minutes later.

“Mum, the cauliflower gravy is brilliant, give it to me if you don’t find it too appealing.”

One look at the cauliflower gravy and the colour on mum’s face changes from normal to pink to violet. One of the nearby air-hostesses catches her flummoxed look and grins, “Oh, your son likes chicken!” Mum has a fit and almost passes out.

Your love for Pizzas is a known fact among your circle of friends. There was even a time when you invited your friends over for a pizza dinner and they ended up admiring your appetite more than the magnificent house. And while the others decorated their blogs with fancy, hotshot pictures of nature, deserts, cars, guns and fighter planes, all you could think about was garnishing your blog with pizzas, quesadillas and a ghee roast. Oh, and if there’s anything you’d rather not tuck into, it would be fruits and curd. Your mother wondered why fruits and curd are akin to clay for someone who actually bit his poor finger which was on its way out after delivering a mouthful of sambar rice. Such hurry to get the food to its destination always comes with a price. You were caught red-handed ;)

Dad distributes chopped fruits to his girls and the kid. The girls are not voracious eaters like the kid, and reflectively, they are not what one would brand as plump either. But still, from time to time, they derive a bit of hedonistic pleasure by deliberately treating the kid to offensive odours emanating from curd and mangoes and papayas. The kid is affronted. He sulks and mopes. Dad chuckles quipping that the girls might not have anything to feast upon, if the kid were to smack his lips at the sight of fruits and curd too. Who knows, they might run out of food supplies. The girls guffaw at this. Mum is not impressed. The kid gets extra dosas at night.

Your efforts at the treadmill at your brother-in-law’s place lasted a fortnight. All those vows to shed some skin evaporated once you started “working” late. The early morning yoga exercises took an extended break too. Chocolate icecreams were as regular as the BMTC buses, and you decided you’d rather stay this way. So what if you had a few extra pounds? The hell with fitness anyway. You had one life. Eat it! Erm, rather, eat through it!

At six in the morning, the kid wakes up to the sound of his alarm echoing between the walls of his hostel room in college. He puts on his tracksuits, a pair of old socks and his running shoes. He’s been doing the drill for a couple of weeks now, and feels good about running six rounds everyday. He tells anyone who would listen about how his biceps and triceps are taking shape, and how visits to the gym are bearing fruit. In parallel, the Pharaoh does his best to spread malicious stories that involve the kid fainting and throwing a fit in his very first gym session. Of course, all this is part of the propaganda to mar the kid’s reputation. The kid pledges to carry the fitness routine on for the rest of his college life. It takes just a silly tut to break the kid’s perseverance. The daily routines become weekly routines. A month later, the kid is back to evening cheese pizzas at Skylab, a popular eatery in his college.

A few of us eat to live. While others live to eat. You mull over both the implications, letting them run over your mind for a while. You look for an in-between point, a compromise, a consensus somewhere…you try to make up your mind…

I need a bite.