Food i.e.

While I sit in the library at 7 pm, pondering over the possibility of writing a compelling personal text before midnight, I wonder how food can be a reflection of one’s personality. Can food affect me in ways I have never thought of before? This sends me on a nostalgic trip, a recurring mode of mental travelling I undertake when I pine for better times, especially when I have to miss my dinner and write a hungry text.

The vivid memory of using food as a means of protest against my mother’s dictatorial cooking comes first to the mind. If the dish was not of my choice, instead of shunning food, I would eat “more”. “More” till the point my mother would start feeling that “more” can cause harm. It sometimes took 14 chapatis with 3 bowls of the pulses, the ones I hated the most, for the dish to not be repeated for a long time. As a teenager, I used to believe this was a Gandhian way of protest. The university mess does not respond to such whimsical forms of protest, so skipping an unappetizing meal has become the new solution. But to register a protest with close friends even now, the best method is to not have food with them.

I look around the library to observe people hypnotized by their laptops and books. Leaving the coziness of one’s room and visiting the library requires a certain motivation to learn, or to get things done. Sometimes food plays a catalytic role in such wanting scenarios, especially when the fear of failing a test, or a late submission is not sufficient enough to push for action.

I remember my IIT-JEE preparation days in Chandigarh. The thought of visiting Pik-n-moov, my favourite haunt for Butter Chicken, was always running through my mind while returning to the hostel after almost 12 hours of academic grilling. As the visit days had to be chosen with care due to the lack of funds and time, they were usually the ones when the test results were below expectations and thus warranting food therapy to keep myself on track for the preparation. Such was the positive effect of those visits that I do not remember what I ate the day I cleared JEE, but I remember the visits to Pik-n-moov.

I fear I will run out of innovative ideas to keep this piece engaging. Moreover it is 8:30 pm, which is not even close to the time when I am most creative. I do believe some of my most creative discussions have happened between 3–4 am, and usually over a late night cup of chai and snacks…

…well, a friend dropped by and I had to go for an early Chai and Snack session. It is 9:20 pm now, but courtesy a discussion with the friend, I have a validated version of how food enables my creativity. When food is available round the clock, it gives me motivation to be up till late night. With a semi-conscious lucid stream of thoughts, I end up striking gold if the conversations centre on problem solving. It was in such a state that I had named an anti-pollution campaign as “Vivek — We Wake”. It reeks of sleep, but I am sure surrealists and Sigmund Freud would attest to this theory.

The thought of nearing the last paragraph is making me hungrier, but the nostalgic trip is demanding a just end. An army of cherished moments is flashing through my mind breaking the order I tried setting previously.

Beyond being essential to survival, food has acted as the life-saving ice-breaker during first dates, as restaurants are the favoured places for such inductions. Food enables the first dialogue I have with a new place I visit, where without understanding the local language, I learn about the place through the unspoken words of a meal. By speaking this unspoken language, food can break national and cultural boundaries which humans create artificially.

I believe any thought which talks about creating a world without boundaries is an apt one to close the piece. The only reward I need now is my much delayed dinner.

• Samarth Mahajan