Who moved my Parathas?

Towards the end of Sawan [my Delhi school]

I love to try varieties of food though I am not a glutton. Not a gourmet, either. A philanderer with food, if you like. I can relish Khasi tribal foods as heartily as Kentucky Fried Chicken. It was a sheer pragmatic need that taught me to love whatever the man on the next table ate.

Rather, woman, I should say. My experiments with food started when I was working as a teacher in a high school at a place called Jaiaw on the outskirts of Shillong. Jaiaw is just a kilometre, as the crow flies, from the main market (Bara Bazar) of Shillong. But it had no pretensions to being anywhere near the capital of the state. Jaiaw was like a small junction in a village for all the eight years I worked there. Nothing ever changed: the same narrow streets, the same houses on either side of them, the same small shops. There was just one small Khasi restaurant which looked more like a shed than a tea shop. I had my lunch there every day for quite some time along with a few other colleagues from school who were all women since I was the only male member in the whole girl’s school in those days. Those affable Khasi ladies introduced me to the flavours and savours of Khasi cuisine.

It wasn’t at all easy in the beginning to get to like that bland food. The Khasis hardly used spices. Eventually I got used to the food which was more like boiled vegetables and boiled meat. A time came when I didn’t even mind trying doh-jem (intestines) and doh-khlieh (tongue and brain) though my instincts didn’t permit me to go too far with these.

When Maggie entered my life traditional Kerala food returned. She doesn’t like to experiment much with food. Even when she ventures to experiment, the frontiers are clear: ends at Thiruvananthapuram in the south and Kasargod in the north. But she has lived with me in Shillong and Delhi for many years.

Delhi brought me in touch with the typical North Indian foods. The school where I worked for 14 years offered us free food in the dining hall along with the students. On all working days I shared breakfast and lunch with the boys (yeah, it was a boy’s school unlike the Shillong counterpart). I immediately fell in love with the pure vegetarian North Indian food. I loved those parathas and chapattis and the infinite variety of dishes made of potato with umpteen combinations. I loved the ubiquitous leafy vegetables [and there was an endless variety of them which I now miss in Kerala] as much as the occasional Shahi Paneer.

When I travel, I would like to try the local varieties of food just to understand the flavours of the culture. Maybe, there’s something very lovely and loveable in those cultures. The truth is that I miss North Indian food now.

PS. Inspired by: In[di]spire

PPS. I have taken a personal look at the cue but the answer to the question is implied in the post though subtly.