Dial F for Food

As I lay on my bed with a cheerful book in my hand on Ugadi, with a cool gentle wind lapping at my feet, the proverbial mind wandered & I found myself in my Granny's house during my class 6 summer vacations.

It was an average middle class south Indian household. We did not normally have breakfast and managed with two cups of coffee. This was because lunch was eaten very early, around 10 am, and it was a substantial meal. Rice and sambar, rice and rasam, rice and curds, vegetables, appalam, sandigay, mor mozhaga and pickles.

On the days when it was a holiday and the folks remained at home, there was a second lunch around 1 pm which consisted of rice, curds and pickles. We joined the elders for tiffin served at 3 pm and had the appetite to wolf down dosas, idlis, adais, vadas and similar delicacies. Dinner was again rice-based and similar to lunch. In between, there were snacks to be had.

My granny used to say that I was a growing boy, used to fret a lot, and therefore the snacks had a special significance. These were mostly crisp murukkus, thengol, thattai, manoharam and so on. You could conveniently pop them into your shorts' pockets and run out to play, distributing them to your friends or exchanging them with the goodies that they had brought from their homes.

This procedure of constant eating was called poha vara which, roughly translated, meant 'going and coming' - we were eating all the time, whether going or coming.

Despite eating so much all day, I never fell ill, lost my appetite or put on weight(even if I did, I'm sure I didn't notice).

This was also the time when my obsessive addiction to all kinds of pickles began. My granny had.... I donno how many varieties of pickles all stacked up in pingani (porcelain) jars on top of the kitchen closet. But I was allowed to taste just 1 variety of pickle with each meal, & that too only with curds. So after she had served me the curds, she would ask me to select which pickle I wanted & would then serve me exactly one spoon of that variety. And those decisions... to decide which pickle to select, were probably the toughest decisions I had made during my entire childhood life.

I can never understand how pickle could be anything but just GREAT for anybody's health.

More on food... next time.