Unforgettable

For food lovers only!

Photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash

Ever notice how you can never recreate food memories? Because you can cook the food, but the sights, the sounds, the smells, the people and the conversations will never coincide again.

The orange I ate almost fifty years ago, sitting in my grandparents’ garden in Allahabad. The burst of fresh citrus that hit my eyes and nose and the juice that ran down my hands. The bright green patch of grass surrounded by flowers scenting the quiet, winter afternoon. The butterflies that caught the sun on their wings and bees that buzzed around the hollyhocks.

The cake my mom used to make when I was little, that came out with a dark brown crust to die for, filling the house with a smell that wafted out and wrapped itself up amongst the Bougainvellia bushes in the garden. The way it crumbled in my mouth, still warm from the oven, and the sound of my brother going munch, munch, munch.

The fowl curry we ate on a trip to the jungle, with the taste and the smell of the forest in it. The rest house was a tiny speck in the vast wilderness and in it, I was a little girl clinging on to my mother’s pallu, scared of the shadows the lanterns threw this way and that. I heard the table being laid, the clinking of the cutlery mixing with the sounds of the jungle. The curry, cooked with simple spices in mustard oil was was smooth, spicy, nourishing and piping hot.

The kheema-paratha we ate out of paper plates on a train, over the sound of the wheels, rocking to their rhythm. It was night and the darkness flew by outside. Suddenly, another train rushed past, lit-up window after window after window, until it had vanished into the night, its mighty roar fading slowly with the distance.

The fish curry my mother made when I visited for a holiday, my own family now in tow. The taste of the brinjals cooked with nigella seeds in mustard oil. The taste of home, mixed with familiar sights and sounds and smells. The pigeon that sat just outside the window, its head bobbing from side to side almost in welcome. The familiar, faded, lavender coloured curtains framing the window, the sound of brooms sweeping the yard next door, the wind in the trees outside making the branches sway a little against the sky, a red-chested bulbul flitting from one branch to another.

Perhaps the one food memory that we recreate again and again in our family is our neighbour’s biryani which they have turned into a livelihood. For twenty years we have had it home-delivered on special occasions. It arrives with clockwork precision, fills the house with its signature aroma and we pounce upon it and do not rest until our plates are licked clean.

The good part is you keep making food memories! The coffee you will have tomorrow at your favourite cafe? There is a blazing sun outside the glass window, but you are cocooned in AC coolness, and a young girl whose smile you have come to know brings you your cup. On the froth, she has drawn not the usual heart, but a swan, the neck perfectly arched. She is proud of her artwork and beams back when you smile. The coffee is perfect!

Here are two deliciously nostalgic books you should look up if you are a little food-mad like me! 😁💕

And here are some of my own favourites from my Pull A Meal Out Of A Hat Series. This series is dedicated to my memories of shedding real tears when I was a young mother, could not cook to save my life and the cook did not turn up! I would stand at the window, watching and waiting for her to appear at the end of the lane until my husband suggested that perhaps she wasn’t going to come that day!