Food For Thoughts Of Food

After blowing the last trumpet over the exams with a mixed bag of emotions, I began the long haul back home. While commuting to my place, I found a strange lamp. Always a believer in fairy tales, especially if you count in The Arabian Nights, I rubbed the lamp with a zip. Nothing. Once more, followed by twice more. Still nothing other than my hands getting soiled with the dirt. Drenched with disappointment, I resumed my journey. Half an hour more of mulling over the exams, and the loss of the three wishes that should have been rightfully mine, I enter my house hollering, "Khaane mein kya hai? (What is there for lunch?)"  throwing out the question to anyone who could pour out an answer for me. Mother of all surprises, it was my mother who answered, "Roti, daal, sabji (flat-bread, lentils, and a plethora of vegetables which could make a dead man jump out of his grave in fright)," she threw back at me. And poof- all my excitement bobbed under the ever-present sense of dread. Grumbling, I went into my room, changed my clothes and, with the dread still persisting in my veins, entered the dining room. The scene, oh the scene, could make a glutton turn to guillotine with a snap, literally. The table, concealed over the very dishes which led to the Origin of Dread even before there was an Origin of Species (sorry darling Darwin), seemed to call out to me from under those, with two large watery eyes that were actually identical utensils filled with some sabji or the other prepared by someone who had neither the dexterity, nor the patience that my mother possesses while in the torture-chamber she calls her kitchen; torture-chamber because of the barbarous manner in which she deals with those who do not follow her orders to the word, and, in case the dish demands something special, to the very tips of the alphabets of those words, going to the extent of measuring even the number of quarks to perfection (sorry Gell-Mann. You are the man.) In a few short words, I would, on the dining table, have to face what they( meaning those who worked in the kitchen with my mother) faced in the kitchen. With a resigned look on my face, I took my seat, ready to accept the whip.

With a Wodehouse on my lap, my stomach grumbling, emulating the way I grumble, and my mood faring no better, I stomached the dread and got ready to stomach the meal. The meal was not exactly as bad as I made it out to be but, well, I make it a habit to exaggerate things as long as it suits my purpose. Carrying me through it as only a Wodehouse could, the book kept me from complaining too much. Being done, I promised to myself the way Clive Lloyd did after the dreadful Australian tour- Never Again. That was the day, and this is the day after that- I have, in the meanwhile, cooked two of the intermediate meals myself. Yes, my usual flair could not find its true companion in the vegetables given that I usually limit myself to the more proteinous dishes( if you get what I mean), but it is to my credit that my mother, who has a tongue which is as sharp in whipping out castigations as it is in praising good food, never got a chance to berate me. 

                                                          That having been said and done, the skill to really charm the chemo-receptors, that people usually refer to as taste-buds, out of their comfort zone like cooking wizards of yore, still evades me. The tingling of the taste-buds, which never seem to get their fill of the tingling sensation, and puff-ups of the gorgers- the way they gush, praising the almighty for having given them the opportunity to taste the ambrosial meal- has still dodged me and my food.. But I am still a new hand and have time aplenty. One of my favourites, Frost would have pointed out as he did in Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening- The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

              But I have promises to keep,

              And miles to go before I sleep,

              And miles to go before I sleep. 

And I, readers, promise to forge ahead for the road of life twists and turns and no two directions are ever the same. Yet our lessons come from the journey, not the destination.