Food for Thought

                                  
    
                                   



We all know that the 3 basic needs of any human being are food, clothing and shelter. Technically, air for life sustenance comes even before it. But, often I forget about air – and focus on the other 3, ehm… mostly food. It was a great revelation for me when, amidst a group discussion during my college days, a teacher mentioned that food is something you have for nourishment and sustenance and that we eat to live and not live to eat. I think I had learned this some time during my primary education, but had quite conveniently chosen to forget that basic definition of food which assumed various dimensions in my mind enhancing my corporeal dimensions.
 
 There are many jokes running in the family and among friends about my interest in food. It is always assumed by anyone who knows me that my permanent activity is self-nourishment unless specified otherwise. My dad refers to my diet as “see-food diet”, implying that I eat everything I see.

I must have inherited this penchant for food from my mom who, (as told by my grandparents), as a kid had once asked her uncle if the sevai in the temple would have chutney along with it. Only the uncle was talking about ‘nadaswara sevai’ (classical instrumental music of south India).

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Later in life, I realised that I am not such a great exception in this field. There are many more like me or even worse. For instance, there was this room-mate of mine during my P.G. days who once woke me up at 2 a.m. and said she desperately wanted to have chilly chicken puffs and black forest cake.

                                                         

                        

  There is another friend of mine around whom it’s difficult to be when she is savouring any of her favourites like shawarma. She actually moans, caught in throes of ecstasy, while having these delicacies that the picture may be misconstrued for something else.

Now, moving to the other extreme, there is another class of people following the “see food diet” in that they just see the food and not eat it. Not because they are dying for size 0, but they have never felt the need to eat. Eating is tedious ritual for them. I have actually been told by a friend that she failed to understand how people accomplished this task of eating thrice a day…..!!!! And I still fail to understand how she can even think so.

I take great pride in the fact that my tolerance window for food is very wide. As kids, my sister and I were trained by our mom to respect food and not to fuss over or criticise any kind of food. She never allowed any kind of individual likes/dislikes to affect her menu. Her oft-repeated words were “you’ll eat whatever I make; of course, you can choose not to eat at all in which case the same item (warmed up) will continue to appear on the dining table until it gets over”. So we were always eating whatever she cooked. Oh!! What an easy life she had! Actually, the fact that she was a pretty good cook also helped. I am certifying this for more than one reason. You shouldn’t be left with the feeling that we had a tortured or discontented childhood; nothing could be farther from truth. But most importantly, my mom is going to read this post and it would be in my best interest to keep her happy in view of my impending visit to her.

Thanks to my mom, the reverence for food is so deeply rooted in my mind that wasting even a grain is like committing a sin. But later on, we got to hear from the health and nutrition experts that you shouldn’t consume food to prevent it from going waste as that would only add to your waist which is anyway a waste.

I have been taking the middle path for some time, trying not to add to the waist or to the waste. The prospect of wasting food haunts you especially when one thinks of the hungry emaciated kids in many parts of the world. My sister recently quoted from ‘The Big Bang Tele series” wherein a young guy enters, his arms loaded with pizza, and remarks to his roommate: “Hi! Hope you’re hungry” to which the latter replies-“A friendly sentiment in this country- a cruel taunt in Sudan”.

Now that’s really food for thought…..

Picture Courtesy:

1. http://beaconholidays.com.au/beacons/useritineraryOperation.do?method=userItineraryInfo&itineraryDto.itineraryId=261
2. http://random-thoughts-jotted.blogspot.in/2010/02/see-food-diet.html
3. http://cosmokitchen.blogspot.in/2012/05/sevai.html
4. http://sangeethamegham.blogspot.in/2011/12/nadaswaram-recital-of-wedding-songs.html
5. http://www.chocolatemaking.in/blackforest-cake.html
6. http://tiki.oneworld.net/food/food_home.html
7. http://www.yipscookiesandmore.com/puffs
8. http://www.designmom.com/2012/02/french-kids-eat-everything/
9. http://pufflist.blogspot.in/2010/05/kutis-harlem.html
10. http://sadhillnews.com/2011/05/12/2-million-elementary-school-food-surveillance-program/food-surveillance-food-face-faces-with-food-school-lunch-sad-hill-news001

Just Once More...

Sometimes in life, quite unexpectedly, we meet some people who remain in our lives as an everlasting memory. The interaction with the person may not have lasted long, but the impact of it has. Their faces, we might forget but not their words or deeds. Often you wish you could meet that person once more, just once more.

I can relate an episode with someone, an old lady named Janaki Amma, whom I met in the train while travelling from Palakkad to Calicut. She embarked from and disembarked at some stations in between. This was at least 15 years back and she must have been around 75 years then and I am not sure if she is still around.

From the moment she got into the train, she was entertaining and enlightening us with her light, yet wise words spanning varied topics. I cannot recall the entire conversation as such, but I do remember a few highlights, like when she referred to the refrigerator as a ‘kemudruma’- ie., responsible for lack of health, wealth, wisdom and righteousness. She spoke of how people these days, even her own family, are reluctant to share any of their home-made delicacies with friends or neighbours as the refrigerator allows them to preserve it for themselves. The refrigerator, she said, not just makes us selfish but unhealthy too as old food contributes a tamasic diet thus making people dull and depressing. She felt that love and bonding comes from sharing, but the neo-kemudruma makes a lesser man of a man. A new perspective for us, the not-so-wise souls.

One of the fellow passengers was a young advocate to whom Janaki Amma said that lawyers are the cause of most of the troubles and animosities among people. Most of the disputes which would otherwise have been more or less amicably resolved after a little bit of tongue-lashing are now becoming a mega series of court sessions, red-tapism and a lot of ill feeling, thanks to the intrusion of the lawyers who seem to be the only party benefitting from these tiffs.

She went on to narrate a particular land dispute between 2 brothers in her village that ended with the land being bought by an outsider at a very cheap rate (no one likes to buy disputed land) so that they could meet the expenses of the court case. The interesting fact, she added, was that the buyer was the lawyer himself. I have to mention that throughout this entire anti-lawyer lecture she was giving to the lawyer girl, there was no personal ill feeling transpired.

Yet another matter that I remember her saying is a Malayalam quote that translates to “when four ones come, all four will become one”. For those of us who didn’t understand, she elaborated that the year 1936, in which the Temple Entry Proclamation was made in Kerala, is denoted in the Malayalam Calendar as Kollavarsham 1111. Thus when four 1-s came, all four castes-brahmins, kshatriyas, vaisyas and sudras- became one with the temple entry proclamation allowing people of all castes into the temples. I don’t know, if she had quoted somebody else’s words or if it was her own observation. Anyway, I have never come across such an interesting coincidence any time before or after this incident.

I was just a school girl then, and was too young to actually absorb the essence and significance of her words. I wish I could meet her one more time to experience once more her insight and acumen, to take in once again those words of wisdom, honed by age and experience