"We are not the breakfast, lunch, dinner generation Mom! We eat on the go!" I said, with more emotion in one sentence than what my mother can handle in about a week. "No wonder your generation has weight problems!" she retorted with more below the belt sarcasm than I can handle in a month. My mother is naturally gifted at cutting out nonsensical drama. "Take a look at yourself!" she said. "One month away from home and you have gained so much weight! Aise to tum..." and she left it hanging there. Ah! That hurt. This is Day 1 conversation during my first trip to Delhi after having settled down in Coffee City. I would vote for Nirupa Roy any day against my mom. Ms Roy would never have such a conversation with her celluloid kids, even if they cast Randhir Kapoor or Sanjeev Kumar for the role!
The conversation started with my boasting about how well stocked my new kitchen was with.. er... all kinds of food..umm... of the instant variety. You can't call it junk any more, can you? We have maggi noodles packed with iron, calcium and dietary fibre, with the goodness of REAL vegetables added to the pack. Every pack now comes pre-loaded with 2 peas and 3 pieces of carrot (I assume) of 1 cubic cm size, each. Now that is real nutrition. Then there is instant soup, instant pasta, popcorn, lays, instant curries, frozen parathas, all kinds of namkeens, salami, sausages, dips, cheese cakes, muffins, juices... well, you see... THE WORKS! This didn't go down too well with mom.
But let me explain. When I went about the tedious, arduous, tiresome task of stocking up my kitchen, the problem statement at the back of my mind was - "What will I eat when I feel hungry in the middle of the night?"
Now is it my fault that during all those years of living in Delhi, middle of the night was the only time ma would not be there to handle my food crisis? I mean.. Really! It's the only time I had to worry about food.. the only time I was faced with the "what do I eat now" problem. At all other times food was just something that appeared on the table miraculously, even before one felt hungry. Breakfast, lunch, shaam ki do chai ke saath nashta, dinner and then dinner ke baad ki chai... I never really gave it much thought.
Now, of course, I give it more than just a thought and there are two distinct and serious issues here.
One - I can't really buy veggies. For two reasons - one, I can't identify most of them except for the very basic potato kinda stuff; two - I can't figure out the goodness/freshness quotient. I can handle the rest of it - milk, bread, eggs variety. But veggies - NAAH! Why can't they stamp 'date of production' and 'best before' on vegetables? Beats me!
Two - My concept of portions is distorted. You see, I learnt (whatever little bit I did) how to cook in the early 1990s when our house used to be packed with college-going-hostel-residing-at-local-guardians-home-over-weekends-for-enormous- amounts-of-ghar-ka-khana-and-non-stop-carrom cousins. Hence, no matter how much I try, I still end up cooking large portions of food which my dear maid-of-honor gets her precious paws on every other day. In fact going by the amount I eat and what she gets to take home, I am eating left overs!
Anyway.. I had to convince ma that things were not as bad as she thought. So I told her I also have five kinds of dal stocked up in my kitchen. Huh! NOW what would she say???
"Name them", she said. Ouch! Stumped again!
"I can name the colors."
"Try."
"Black, Yellow, Light yellow..."
She had stopped listening by then. Clearly she knew me well enough so who was I kidding.
Almost on cue sis-in-law walked in. I was so happy to see her.. more than usual thanks to the timing. And then she said, "Hey! Bangalore suits you! You have gained so much weight!"
Hmmm... :(
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