Friday 7 December 2012

Food

This post here is dedicated to all those people who stay in hostels or away from home. Especially to a very dear friend of mine. I had always taken the food my mom cooked for granted. I used to complain even if there was a pinch of salt too less in the food, I used to whine when she used to make things I didn't like( this used to happen a lot as I used to be in a joint family), and i absolutely hated( still hate) brinjal.

Then the day came when I had to go live in a hostel. I realized the value of my mom's home-cooked meals the very first day. I missed her cooking more than I missed her in the beginning. Most of the vegetables were undercooked, the food was either too salty or spicy,mostly it was bland. But after about a month of that food my palate actually got used to it. The only thing I could not get used to was the burnt rice.

The only way I could survive this ordeal was because of my friends. They used to get food for me from home every time. And they introduced me to a lot of restaurants. I was from a small town and we didn't really go out to eat much. But once I got to Hyderabad it was tradition to go out at least once a month. We started going out for birthdays at first. Those were one of the best times in my life. I made great friends over food. I introduced my friends to food from my hometown and they introduced me to lasagna, pasta,etc.
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This past summer my mother tried(emphasis on the tried) to teach me to cook. I learnt how to make rice, dal and bhindi and aloo fry. It brought me much closer to her. This was the same summer we finally got a microwave oven. This brought out all the  cookery books dealing with microwave cooking my mom had bought over the years. We experimented with a lot of things. We baked a cake, I made pasta( which came out really well even if I say so myself) and my mom baked biscuits. The funny thing was the first batch of biscuits were perfect but the second batch were burnt. My father and i could not contain our laughter. But my mom had the last laugh as we had to eat the burnt biscuits.

This is the second hostel I have been in in my life. And I have to say the food is great, especially in comparison with my former hostel. Maybe this is because the menu is decided by a committee of students. And having a friend on the Mess committee doesn't hurt does it. At SDM we have Wednesdays' as a mess off ( dinner). So we go out to have dinner in the beginning of the month and stay back and have Maggi at the end of the month when we're strapped for cash( or atleast we plan on it. We've only stayed in twice maybe). In just a span of three months i have gone to more places to eat than I did in the three years I was in Hyderabad and I've had loads of fun. We've revealed to each other the kooky side of our personalities over dinner. Then we come back and probably play a game of charades.

What I am trying to say with this diatribe is that food is a necessity, not just for nutrition or to survive, but it brings people closer together, makes you open to new ideas and it's just plain fun. I have come to appreciate food a lot more now thanks to my stay in hostels and a lot more recently thanks to my friend Chaitra. It has helped me make friends and also helped me to enjoy life.

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