Foodie

   SHARE THIS ARTICLE

Every mother, you have come to understand, has a weapon of choice when it comes to getting through to their offspring, understanding that they see the world through objects, all sensory organs focused, like a laser, on that singular object which will reveal their universe. Books, clothes, music, bicycles, footballs… your friends’ moms picked these for raising them up. Yours chose food as her medium of instruction and it has served you well. Badami Kulfas in Summer have taught you that happiness is fleeting and must be gorged on before it melts, Karela Gosht (after flunking O’Level Chemistry) that bitterness can have an aftertaste; a sweet spectre that comes to those who persevere through the acridity, and the Pulao, that salted ambrosia she gave you for the first time that night, it told you that your dad was never coming back.

But the world has been getting less linear of late. Little, if anything, makes sense and less so after being surgically cauterized from what made you whole. This inert state of not knowing, not wanting, not feeling is new; you do not like it and would like to dispense with it.

And so you wait for the semester to end so you can make reservations on the evening train to Rawalpindi. Salik says you should take the plane, something about beelining home. It’s true. You do want to beeline but you need the train; planes move too fast. The world is not that fast now. Besides, trains award a healthy glow of weariness, one that will hide the wrinkled tarmac beneath your eyes. Your mom will know, though. Moms always know– but one has to keep appearances.

The journey on the train is longer, just like you thought–about six hundred ifs and buts longer and it allows you the time to run permutations of ‘why’ while your stomach rumbles like a rickshaw trying to start up. A kid half your age is chewing betel nut outside your door, moving berth to berth armed with Sohn Halwa. You look at the circular discs stacked up in his tray and for a moment their truck-like graffiti almost sways you into reaching for the sweaty five hundred rupee note in your jeans. He senses your hesitation and extends his arm, giving the halwa-can at its end a joggle to see if you need the push.

“It’s Multani, Sahab.” He coaxes and you relent—almost relent until the salty taste in your mouth catches up with your brain. The part of your tongue where the sweet buds used to be feels like reptilian hide. You wave your hand and the boy leaves, the celery sticks hanging from your t-shirt reinforcing the idea that you are probably one of those picky anti-halwa sub-urban kids who always have KFC tucked into their backpacks. You don’t.

You are not a heavy eater but you like food. Some people think it does not make sense but you want the food to take its time in your mouth, help you unravel the secrets in its chaos of conflicting tastes. You want to eat your food, not consume it. And so, you’ve asked your mother to make Mutton Pulao. People do not like Mutton Pulao. It is tedious to chew and nearly impossible to taste– precisely why you enjoy it. It is a dish that rebels against the silly velocity of a world nodding yes to every ‘would you like fries with that?’ It forces you to stop and pry into its hidden tastes of cardamom and cinnamon sticks, making you wonder if they were one before some ancient cataclysm tore them apart. They probably were.

Beyond your window the twisted reality of sky and ground running in opposite directions is slowly coming to an end. You are almost at Rawalpindi station. The rumble of the train weakens and it jerks to a stop, juggling everything inside with such vehemence that it takes you a while to regain your composure and luggage.

On the platform, you notice the warm hum of human life spaced between shouts. Colorful words from the bowels of Punjabi language hit your ears as you trip a man in checkered dhoti, both of you struggling to navigate this human mess. Your backpack is causes less grief than the suitcase which has you tilted to the left, giving the apercu of one leg distinctly shorter than the other as you bounce around like a pinball condemned into a maze, gnashed with such disdain that your body starts making a vengeful note of all the things it hits: a farmer’s shoulder, a carpenter’s elbow, a mechanic’s leg, his wife’s chest– you see her aim for your face and apologize immediately, making a mental note of keeping your hands and elbows in at all times.

One infinite juggle and you are through the gate of the railway station, besieged by warring factions of rickshaw and taxi-drivers. It is six o’ clock and the world looks like the interior of a tangerine.

“Satellite Town, Sahab?”

“Adiala Jail, Sahab?”

“Seham Road, Baadshao?”

You leave them behind and make your way towards the Honda Civic parked near the rotting glory of an F-86 Sabre skewered in the middle of a roundabout. Rais, your driver, waves emphatically, and upon your acknowledgment, rushes to emancipate you from the suitcase in your hand. He says Salam and you reply ‘Wasalam,’ managing a smile as he lunges for your luggage. You wave your hand and proclaim that you do not need his help before surrendering the weight into his arms anyway. You look at the handle-grooves etched onto your fingers and wonder if they had always burned your skin this much.

The car launches with a jolt and you realize that you are inside now.

“You are too sure of things…” she had said, dabbing at her lips with a satin napkin last Thursday. She had barely eaten.

Rais takes a smooth turn to the right and as you tilt in the opposite, you see that he is not really watching the road. You remember that Zainab, your house-maid, his wife, passed away some three odd months ago and inquire if he is holding out well, realizing immediately the redundancy of said question as a silent expectation of producing something elegiac slowly creeps up and makes you squirm.

Death is merciful, Rais. At least you know she cannot come back. The truth sticks to the spaghetti like structures of your forebrain and avoids your mouth. You tell him instead that you hope her departed soul finds peace, even though it is his soul that you worry about.

Rais says Zainab knew it was time. Maybe Alya felt the same seeing as how she never really wanted to eat anything from the start. The fact that she flipped out when you told her the fork was supposed to be on her right was only an excuse. She was looking for an excuse — maybe Zainab was too — though it would have been more prudent if she had said something before you told her about the table for two at the Pearl Continental, or so you believe.

Your mom has asked you to ‘come for dinner’— the first words out of her mouth when you called last week. You know that she knows because she rarely asks you over now; your mom, big believer and veritable product of the post-industrialist mantra of ‘give them space,’ would rather you exhaust every (now exhausted) avenue before she intervenes and brings order back to the universe.

You, yourself, have never seen her perform this cosmic overhauling but are convinced that it works and are secretly looking forward to the process, eager to know if it will be a protracted affair of bringing cogs and kinks apart and together or if it will be something spontaneous like throwing a puzzle-set into the air and having it land solved, each piece perfectly in place with immunity to and impunity from laws of probabilistic outcomes.

The car turns upward into the driveway and your head tilts back. You realize now that of all the dishes Pulao has always been your favourite because it does not play twenty questions as you juggle the rice and meat inside your mouth. No, it tells you, like an earnest friend unafraid of the wrath that pours from having your failings pointed out, what you need to hear. It is brutally honest and does not lead you on, does not wander around for hours on end in the taste centres of your brain, haunting you until you sieve the required meaning which will seldom be more useful than a ‘be yourself’ plastered over a rear windshield.

The car halts. You exit and head for the screen door to your right where your mother is wiping her hand with a floral kitchen towel, its pink and orange flowers barely visible through the gauze. Ordinarily, you would reach for the suitcase first but you see Rais lifting the trunk door and at this point it strikes you as disingenuous to stop the man from doing what he wants. And so you continue your stride towards the door which opens with a flourish and you enter her arms. She hugs you just right, not too hard because she knows it flusters your mind, avoiding pats because you have been known to cry and gently rubbing your shoulders because the muscles get taut from train rides. You take the time to breathe her in and notice that she smells of something sharp, something different from the lingering redolence of cooked mutton and steamed rice. It burns at the back of your nose and like a star suddenly becoming apparent at the corner of your eye, you recognize the Garam Masala. The hug ends and you give her a searching stare. She sees this and rubs her hand gently across the side of your face.

“You must be tired. Wash your hands and face and then come to the table. I think you will like what I have prepared.”

She leaves, loosening the strings of her brown apron as she walks through the corridor and disappears into the kitchen, leaving you standing, one foot inside one foot outside the screen door. Your nose is clamped shut, some Freudian defence keeping you from opening the passage and trying to place scents that you are certain now flood the house. You become unsure of every sensation there is, hesitant to take either this foot out or bring that foot in your asphyxiated moratorium.

“What if I don’t like the food?” Her words bring a primal fear of hunger and uncertainty combined. You find yourself running now, crashing through the corridor as you turn into the dining room and see it: Azure and Teal snakes crisscrossing across white porcelain from which another steamy serpent rises and slithers invisible.

You look at the oblong disk and stand stolid, the fate of your universe in flavors you do not know, cannot trust and want to escape from. You are about to wheel out of the kitchen, out of the corridor and out of the door, dying to burst out gasping from all the air you’ve held inside when your mom comes in and pulls the lid off the porcelain.

“Eat.”