Shahi Paneer and some memories

Maggie took all the trouble to cook Shahi Paneer because I mentioned some time ago that I missed the dish which used to be a weekly delicacy at the school where we taught in Delhi. Since it was a residential school, the teachers also had their meals with the students. More than 400 people would be seated in the cavernous dining hall, called Mess, and served by waiters attired in clean white livery. The food was delicious most of the time and Shahi Paneer was arguably the queen on the menu.

As I relished chapattis with Shahi Paneer yesterday after a gap of a few years, I realised that it was not the culinary delicacy that I really missed but certain memories which they evoked. Sawan Pubic School in Delhi was the first place where I tasted Shahi Paneer and the dish would always remind me of that school, the institution where I enjoyed working more than anywhere else. The school was killed by a religious cult and the details are given in my latest book, Autumn Shadows.  

Certain memories refuse to die. I mentioned my book above because it carries quite many memories even from my nondescript adolescence.  There is more than one place in the book where certain movie songs appear like phantoms from a buried past. Let me quote one passage: “Whenever I heard this song again, rarely though it was, I have paused to listen.  Recently I downloaded it for listening to while driving.  It has merged into a few other love songs which I have gathered in a single folder.  I am trying to mellow the pain of that lost love by merging it with other loves or love songs.  But I have not understood why songs about lost loves bewitch me insanely.  I never loved a woman until I married at the age of 35, twenty years after the death of Vayalar Ramavarma.”

As Haruki Murakami said, “Memories warm you up from inside. But they also tear you apart.” I like the warmth part of memories. You can’t get the warmth alone, however; the tearing up is a necessary accompaniment. Time makes you immune to the pains of the tearing up, however.