rest in piece, aam ras.
PN is my mother. She believes that no matter whatever the hell is going wrong with your life, eating is vital. If you run out of your home when an earthquake strikes and it happens to be just at lunchtime, you should wait for things to settle down and go to the nearest surviving restaurant and sit down and eat.
Whatever the hell is the matter with your life, it has nothing to do with eating. If someone is breaking up with you, eat through it. If you are happy, eat lunch. If you are angry, eat angrily.
So, in the light of this information, you can only imagine where reasons like “I am in a meeting”, “I didn’t have time”, “I didn’t have money”, or the worst of it, “I didn’t feel like eating” will get you.
So, today, when I heard an urgent knock on my door when I was hurriedly getting dressed, I prepared myself for the ‘breakfast discussion’, which, if you want to know, goes typically like this:
“Shall I make roti?”
“No.”
“Do you want dosa?”
“No.”
“Let me make aloo rice?”
“No.”
“Do you want to drink coffee?”
“No.”
“Shall I pack some puri?”
“No.”
And so on until one of us gives up. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see that there was no plate with breakfast being shown to me when I opened the door. I walked into the kitchen to see her with the saddest and most ashen face I have ever seen in my entire life.
“Do you know what happened………?” she asked, while I wondered what the fuck happened???? She proceeded to tell me how our maid had thrown away the milk that she had lovingly prepared for about 3 or 4 hours last night to get it into the perfect consistency, which is so very important, for which she has brought 6 kilos of mangoes, so she could make aam ras in the morning, which she could pack for all my collegues also. Thrown away! Because the maid thought it was bad. “Why didn’t she ask?” she asked me while I stood there at a loss for words. She didn’t have anything else to say. She looked around the kitchen quietly and realized it was truly a lost battle and walked slowly into the living room to read the papers. It was sad. I was sad. She was heartbroken.
I don’t know where her attachment for food comes from. But I’m glad its there. Because even beautiful Paris cannot offer me perfect aam ras and puris that I can refuse.
