The Love and Hate Relationship with "Food"

A packet of freshly bought baby corns today reminded me of the time when I had cooked palak baby corn for someone, although it doesn't sting much at all reminiscing about the past. I haven't cooked for a long time. I began cooking whimsically. Food inspired pseudo creativity in me. I fantasized of cooking exotic dishes with prawns, chicken, noodles, lettuce, mushroom and bell peppers. Today I fantasized about cooking something akin to dumplings. Though I have never kneaded dough, or cooked anything which required kneading a dough. However I have experimented with cooking a variety of things- noodles in soy sauce, chicken in myriad ways, biriyani, and a lot more. As the packet of baby corn sits on my dining table, I wonder what I can cook with it. I'm not sure whether I have the zeal of cooking again. I pass by this man who sits in the subway under the railway station selling baby corn and mushrooms, I'm tempted to buy mushrooms from him each time I pass through this subway and make my way towards home, but my mother told me not to buy mushroom from roadside places, and that mushroom should be bought from the department stores.

I don't exhibit signs of "Bengaliness"-- fish is not palatable to me. But I particularly like fish markets with it's abundance of blood, scales, and huge boti, as a subject of photography. I travel through one such fish market every morning. I wish to stop one day and click photographs of close-ups of dead fish and blood smeared boti.

My relationship with "food" has been on again off again. Sometimes I lack appetite, and eating seems like a painfully dull and tedious activity which I want to be done with as soon as I can and sometimes I'm suddenly seized with hunger. Although the former is far more common. I've often thought that I'm perhaps anorexic, but I don't genuinely feel any of the reasons for not wanting to eat. I simply don't have appetite, and my weight hovers around 45 kgs. I had a colleague once who called herself "fat", she ate far less than me during meal times, and ate far more than me in between meals. I was seized with this urge to comment on her eating habits. I told her one day that eating that much fried things wouldn't really help her to loose weight, which is rather unlike me, I hardly bother to disabuse others. When all the world seems to be getting fatter, I am becoming slimmer.

Talking about that colleague reminds me, I always found tea breaks especially painful during my short work life. I don't like tea, but well, I don't specially hate tea either, but drinking a cup of tea along with other people is rather painful for me. I can't seem to drink at pace with others. I'm left the last one sitting on the bench of tea stalls. I can't seem to drink tea as fast as most of other people, without burning my tongue. But I can't refuse to drink tea either, for as much as I hate to admit- "man is a social animal".

Same way black coffee is hateful. I like coffee with generous dollops of milk and an abundance of sugar. There's a breed of people who like "black coffee", and who fail to understand the preference of people who like their coffee sweet.

I fancy outdoor cafes, once a hotel I stayed in had a little cafe opposite the street- a cosy, little cafe, easy on the pockets. On one Valentine's day, I sat in this cosy cafe, watching college couples romancing. I especially like to order an ice tea in such places. I don't like "coffee houses" (as Bengalis often call them) though, with their very limited items on the menu, hardly having any dish which doesn't have bread in it. Here I must add that I don't like dishes which have bread in it like burgers, wraps, sandwiches, vada pav, and the likes, which brings me to say next the kinds of food I actually like.

We have a small restaurant in my home town, people swarm to this place every evening, it serves fish chop, fish fry, chicken cutlet, chicken pakora and variety of vegetarian snacks. This small restaurant has always been in this town ever since I moved here. And in the evenings when I would get hungry, I would want something from this place. My recent apathy for food however has even changed my preferences. I no longer find their fish chops as savoury as I had always found before. I had also savoured chicken pakora from another restaurant in my town. This one has also always been here since I can remember. A popular dine-in place, with not so impressive a menu. I no longer crave to eat out very often, infact I don't want to eat out at all. And I have still not been able to understand why an otherwise healthy person would suddenly find the idea of "food" not palatable. I have never been given any physical diagnosis of why I'm unable to eat. And I'm not especially depressed, neither happier nor sadder than most other people. Well maybe not as happy as most other people, but definitely not very sad either.

So all this while when I have been thinking of what to cook with the unopened packet of baby corn, I suddenly find out that alas the beautiful baby corns have been pan fried without my knowledge.