Tea, coffee, chai, vada...

I usually don't eat a lot. I'm happy for people who know me to disagree, but that's besides the point. I'm more than happy with my 3 sq. meals a day, sometimes even 2 are more than sufficient. However, I become a different animal altogether when I travel.

I'm not quite sure what harmone travel ticks off, but the moment I hit the road, sea or air, I start eating. It's almost like my stomach sends a petition to the brain. I think I've even figured out what the petition says:

                                              Memo for internal use only

Issuing department: Stomach and surrounding areas in collaboration with Tongue and Co.

Intended recipient: Brain

Dear Brain,

We note with a great amount concern that our ecosystem, i.e., the human we inhabit, is showing signs of increased movement. This, to us indicates that the human is travelling. As you are, no doubt, aware, travelling results in a great deal of action and involvement of other organs. To give you a few examples, the eyes are flooded with new information and sights, the ears are treated to new sounds and the skin, overall, senses new things such as weather, clothing etc., we, the stomach and surrounding areas in collaboration with Tongue and Co. (hereinafter referred to as "the petitioners") do not get any action at all until the destination is reached. Even there, depending on the human, we are sometimes provided with the same old food to process.

This results in daily taunts and bullying of the petitioners by the rest of the body. Unable to tolerate this anymore, we hereby humbly request you to issue an order to make the human feel like eating during travel.

Thanking you,

Yours sincerely

The Petitioners

Having received this petition, the brain, which happened to be in a particularly good mood, what with all the new sights and sounds of travel that it was suddenly reminded of, issued an order. A standing order, no less. The order stated simply: Granted. Human to feel like eating at all times during travel.

Whether that is the sequence of events, I will never be sure, however, it is pretty close to it, that I'm positive.

Ever since I can remember, I've always felt the urge to eat DURING travel. Whether it was during trips around the Nilgiris with my father on the old Avanti Kelivinator, or annual holidays to some place in India, travel became associated with eating. My father would take care of that. He would buy more or less anything and everything vegetarian to eat and he would buy it often.

Back then, the best trip I could think of would be on a train with a pantry car. That automatically ensured a steady supply of food. With a huge variety of food dished out by the IRCTC (the catering arm of the Indian Railways), the whole trip was filled with vadais, masala vadais, samosas, bread omelette (all time favourite, more on this below), all variety of dosas, idli (not very often, as it was not my favourite food), puris, tea and coffee (the coffee used to taste really bad, but we'd drink one anyway). Every major station would vastly improve the list to include parottas (also a fav.), biryani, varieties and varieties of rice.

The ideal trip was by Inter-City Express from Coimbatore to Chennai or Bangalore. This particular train had a very good pantry and the journey was only 6-8 hours long, which meant you could eat all of the above in 20-30 min intervals and not have to repeat the process till the return journey starts, a few days later. Besides, the cost was also sustainable as a whole day of eating would typically set us back around Rs. 150, this level of spending couldn't be sustained on longer journeys. Longer journeys meant the first day or two were covered by food from home, typically puries and my favourite type of potato curry, which we've helpfully named picnic curry, followed by biryani, puli sadam and thayir sadam which my mother would have packed and kept ready. These journeys were all about family time, with such a lot of food to be polished off!

Later on, as I grew older, the tendency to eat while travelling did not wane. Any road trip I took would be interrupted by food stops roughly every hour and a half. I remember one particularly adventurous journey from Coimbatore to Chennai (a distance of around 525km). I had managed to evade parental radar and travel by motorcycle. I left home at 5 a.m.

With the initial adrenalin kick of taking such a long trip on two wheels and the fact that I wanted to put enough distance between myself and Coimbatore before what I had done was discovered, thereby rendering an order to ask me come back to base and take the train futile, I made it non-stop to Salem, a distance of 150km in 3 hours, which, for the state of roads at the time, was faster than taking a bus and just half an hour slower than the train. As I entered Salem, I had to take the ring road to continue along the highway towards Chennai. Around 10km into the ring road, stomach and its henchman decided enough was enough. They had put up with me and kept quiet up until that point simply because of the control adrenalin had over them. With Salem breached, there was no way a return to base order would come now. They decided to erupt in protest and I became despertately hungry. Helpfully, there was a Saravanaa Bhavan in the vicinity and I started my first pitstop. Turned out to be a longish one since it took me the best part of an hour to start the bike up again.

Satisfied, I hit the road again and from then on, I would stop at every town that had more than a tea shop. Remember, I mentioned that at Salem, I was faster than a bus? Going by that logic, I should have reached Chennai around 3pm that afternoon. When I actually pulled into Chennai, it was well past 7pm, closer to 8, in fact. Around an hour of that delay could be reliably attributed to enjoying nature. The rest is all food.

The love of food during travel did not end when I left the shores of India to start my first job at Dubai either. Needless to say, I munched my way through most of the first flight of my life. Once there, I fell in love with discrete little tea shops that dot the highways of the middle east. These are all, invariably, run by a bloke from Kerala. These guys have the knack of making the best every omelette sandwich.

At this point, I feel obligated to differentiate the famous bread omelette of the Indian Railways and Gelf omelette sandwich. Please indulge me here. The bread omelette, is made up of 2 thickish slices of the softest white bread I have eaten in India. For some reason, I have not been able to find bread of comparable softness outside the railway. I do not, for the life of me, know why. Anyway, between these slices, there would be some ketchup and a perfectly spiced omlette made from 2 eggs with very finely chopped onion, tomato and green chilli. That is it. Nothing else. The Gelf omelette sandwich on the other hand was not exactly a sandwich. It consisted of a piece of malabar parotta, the layered, fluffy one, which would be made into a roll. The stuffing was a perfectly spiced omlette made from 2 eggs with very finely chopped onion, tomato and green chilli. That's right, the omlette was the same taste, not complaining though!

On the average trip of 200km in the UAE, I would make around 2.5 stops. Bear in mind that my average driving speed then was 100kmh, so that's 2.5 stops in 2 hours...just saying.

The UK is no different, the only difference being there is no one food that I can look forward to. Every 20 miles on the motorway, there is either a Burger King, starbucks, Costa or some such equally bland choice of food, but I still hit the brake every 2 service stations!

Moral of the story... this is an appeal to any enterprising Malayalee reading this post, my request is, the UK sorely needs an omelette sandwich and chai shop. Please invest!

Has China invaded Chennai?

One of the weekly rituals that the wife and I indulge in is to give the old cooker a break and head out to eat at London's finest. Well, finest within reason of course. The old pockets are rather dusty, shallow and unlined at this point. Finest with a budget. Budget finese. One gets the drift. One of the places we frequent is a nice little Indian restaurant called Tulsi. Unlike other 'Indian' restaurants in the UK, this one actually serves Indian food. None of its dishes are named Madras. Or Curry. Or Chicken Vindaloo.

So it is that when the mind desires north Indian food, the mind directs the legs in the direction of Tulsi. During one such visit, an item on the menu caught our attention. It was catchily named Idli Manchurian.

While at school, I was famous for one thing, being bad at history and well, pretty much every subject that called itself a science. However, even I know that an idli has never been involved with China. Heck, only in the last 30-40 years has the humble idli had the guts to go beyond the borders of South India. In much the same way that it is well documented that is not possible for idlies to have visited Manchuria and gotten romantically involved with local dishes, it is well documented that Indo-China relations have, at best, been strained. So even if an idli managed to sneak across the borders, this unholy matrimony could have never happened.

I suppose the same argument can be given for almost every other Chinese dish, such as 'Gobi Manchurian' and 'Mushroom Manchurian'. However, one can also argue that 'Gobi' is simply Hindi for a cauliflower and a cauliflower is something that is global, so Gobi Manchurian could very well be a desi name for cauliflower made in Manchuria. The same goes for mushroom manchurian. It's not particularly hard to envision a cook in China picking up a mushroom and plonking it in a wok of manchurian sauce just to see how it tastes. However, an idli is an idli in any language and I am sure ingredients that go into idli batter are not the same ones that go into rice pancakes.

While I have analysed and ruled out the possibility that an idli made it to Manchuria, there is a school of thought that considers the reverse to be possible. After all, China is the de facto supplier to the world. Everything is manufactured in China now. So, is it possible that in this global invasion, China surreptitiously slipped some of Manchuria's finest into South India on a covert mission to covert South Indians to their way of eating? It is a distinct possibility.

It remains unclear how and where this fusion of the Chinese staple and South Indian staple happened. However, one thing is clear; it was created by a genius. The spongy idli perfectly soaks in flavours, juices and manchurian sauce and the resulting taste stays inside the idli until the last bite. Unlike gobi manchurian, which has fried cauliflower with flavour around it, the flavour resides inside the idli. Delicious. I cannot help but wholeheartedly endorse the alliance. Long live the idli manchurian.

Stick around and you are toast....burnt toast

I'm not quite sure who did it or when the fire alarm was invented and I'm too lazy to check it up on Wikipedia. It's normally an extremely useful device when things go wrong. Although I am sceptical at times on the real use of the thing in small houses. I mean, when there is a fire, one could possibly see flames, smell the smoke, feel the heat or even hear the crackle of burning furniture. For an alarm to be of real use, the person in the house on fire would need to be completely challenged of all sensory perceptions or they need to be unconscious, in either case, the alarm itself is moot. If a person cannot hear, see, smell or feel, I suppose there is no point in an alarm screaming its little heart out or flashing all colours of the rainbow. I am aware of a certain camp that insists fire alarms are creatures that warn you in advance and all that, they may have a point. Maybe it is, I don't know. The only experiences I have had with fire alarms have all been unpleasant, comical even.

Situation #1:

Back in the heady bachelor days, there was a strong urge to create food. I use the word 'create' deliberately since chefs in many hotels do believe they 'create' food and make sure this is adequately reflected in the description of the dish in the menu. Said urge to create food stemmed from the fact that I was too lazy to leg it to Chennai Dosa for a decent Indian meal and there is only so much pizza you can order for delivery. And don't even get me started on the costs...

While the mind understands these factors, the stomach wouldn't and it would begin nagging the brain at regular intervals and my brain, weak as it is in these matters, would let me know I'm hungry just to shut out the din the stomach was creating. Everyone knows the brain 'controls' all actions of the body, however, my body is more democratic and my legs would, well, put up its legs and say, "no way I'm going out in the cold all the way to the hotel, just so the lump of lard above me can fill up, I ain't movin' out of my place." The brain would then run to my hand and ask if it was willing to help out in the overall scheme of things. After initially rejecting any notion of movement, the hand would grudgingly agree to help. Persistent fellow, this brain of mine. Once the support of the hands was obtained, the brain would take the hands and stomach along for support and convince the legs to make their way to the kitchen. That's the story of how I began cooking. Each day. Bi-weekly to be more precise. God bless the refrigerator.

I digress, as usual. Countless films and an even greater number of youth have discovered that cooking is an unforgiving art and it takes only the smallest error in judgement or the lightest delay for the food to burn. I'm no artist; hence the burning function would happen quite often. All it takes is a bit of smoke from the burnt food to set the smoke alarm, lovingly placed just outside the kitchen, off and it would start clanging away. And boy, does it clang! It would take an adrenaline filled few minutes to fan the smoke way from the alarm to make it shut up.

My question is this, why did the blasted thing go off? Don't I know I'm burning my food? For heaven's sake, I'm going to eat the ruddy concoction, burnt or not, so I, of all people would know the food is burnt. I see no need to advertise the fact to anyone who cared to hear.

I have battled the urge to connect hammer to smoke alarm several times and got married before my resolve weakened. The wife, I'm glad to say, has only set off the alarm twice in her 10 odd months in the kitchen in our house. The fire alarm lives to this day...

Situation #2:

My job requires me to visit different clients, virtually one a day. An office is a commercial establishment. All commercial establishments are plagued by the misery that is health and safety. Different clients have different approaches to fire safety. While all of them would kindly advice you to run like the wind should the fire alarm go off, they have different approaches to ensuring the alarm goes off in the first place. I might need to mention that none of them test the alarms with burnt food; they should try it, highly effective.

Some client's test the alarm once a month on a designated date and time. Others test them only at the frequency required by law. Still others test them every week. There are client's who are in buildings with more people on health and safety than the number of people who built the building. Here the tests are insane. Twice a week, random tests, extended tests, PA test, this test, that test. It's bonkers.

The alarms themselves are different in tone and method of notification. I have tried to reproduce some of them. Since I am running out of ideas on how to emphasise the type of notification and the urgency of notification. The urgency is denoted by the space (dots) between the tones.

My office: beepbeepbeepbeep...beepbeepbeepbeep...beepbeepbeepbeep...beepbeepbeepbeep...beepbeepbeepbeep...beepbeepbeepbeep...
Client#1: krrrrrrrrrr.krrrrrrrrrr.krrrrrrrrrr.krrrrrrrrrr.krrrrrrrrrr.krrrrrrrrrr.krrrrrrrrrr.
Client#2: tingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingtingting and my favourite,
Client#3: Attention please........attention please.........we are investigating an alarm condition..............it MAY be necessary to evacuate the building..........please stand by for further instructions.............................Attention please........attention please.........we are investigating an alarm condition..............it MAY be necessary to evacuate the building..........please stand by for further instructions.............................

You guessed it right, the maniacal testing of the alarm happens at Client#3. I've never quite stopped doubling up with laughter each time they test it. An alarm, as the word quite rightly puts it, is an alarm. The very sight/sound of it ought to invoke an adrenalin rush, which in turn is supposed to trigger the fight or flight mode in humans and make us get our backsides out of the place ASAP. Telling some it MAY be necessary to evacuate the building conveys no sense of urgency. If the makers of this alarm wanted to have a human voice for an alarm, it should probably say, "ATTENTION YOU LAZY BUMS, THERE'S PROBABLY A FIRE SOMEWHERE IN THE BUILDING AND IF YOU DON'T GET YOUR BACKSIDES OUT OF THAT CHAIR AND GET THE HELL OF THE BUILDING, YOU'RE PROBABLY GOING TO BECOME HUMAN BARBECUE AND THEN GO TO HELL ANYWAY, BUHAHAHAHA!!! MOVE, NOW!!!" Now, that would get people moving not someone telling people they MAY get fried if they stick around...

What I'd like to know is this: is the rage I have towards fire alarms normal?

De ja vu....no, this has nothing to do with Paris!

The news hit me like a ton of bricks. I'd seen this happen before a couple of years ago. Back then I wasn't worried for I was constantly around him and could see my 'touches' in a lot of his pranks, arguments and the way he wound my sister up like a tightly strung guitar. It all brought back some strong memories. Memories of my mother's strong hand to be precise. It was all very amusing and even a little helpful, for I could bust him just when he wasn't expecting it and in ways he hadn't thought of, for I had the benefit of hindsight and knew exactly what I, as a budding teenager would have overlooked.

I also knew that the moment I moved out of Dubai, my influence on him would diminish to some extent and he would go on to become a good boy and all would be peachy. The call from my sister proved me wrong.

I moved out of Dubai a few days into 2008. So, I haven't been around the fellow for a quarter under 2 years. He's only met me at my engagement and wedding subsequently. The import of that call from my sister was that he has begun eating thayir sadam exactly the way I do, almost 2 years later! I was, understandably shaken, but not stirred. I was secretly thrilled that my lineage will continue, that my eccentricities will continue to live on. Until last night. Now I can be openly thrilled!

Allow me to explain. I've mentioned before, that I have always loved writing, but until I started this blog, I've never had the discipline to sit down and write. As a teenager, the only writing I could get done was called homework or something like that, and that too only got done with a gun pointed firmly in my direction. The moment the bally homework got done, I'd be out of the house before you could say, "Jack Rabbit". My ultimate fantasy those days was to have a secretary to dictate to, who would write in my handwriting, while I played cricket or tennis or football or whatever it is that I wanted to play.

Unlike me, thankfully, my nephew is not a lazy bum and he has decided to put pen to paper (or finger to keyboard as the case may be) and has come with this thoroughly likeable and frankly honest account of his trip from Fremont to Seattle while visiting my other sister. I couldn't help but reproduce it below:

"One fine day, my grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousin and I set off on a trip to Seattle on the evening of the 3oth of June. We drove for approximately 2 hours before we reached our first destination - Red Bluff, where we stayed in a well-known hotel named Best Western. It was very comfortable. We stayed for the night until next morning when we vacated after a good dose of cereal, bread and pancakes for breakfast. Barely half an hour passed when we entered into a long stretch of scenery on both sides. Saumya chitthi took control of the car and we were heading along to the day's planned destination - Mount  Shasta followed by a visit to the famous Crater Lake.

On the way we spotted a Chinese restaurant in which we had an enormous lunch where I mainly stuffed myself with large amounts of  Tofu, a Chinese souvenir to show the expertise of American chefs on Chinese cuisine: they had made it so well. We resumed our journey (Chitthi still at the wheel) afresh with food, toward the beautiful snow-capped Mt. Shasta (formed due to volcanic activity). It was quite a long journey but we made it pretty fast and had lots of time to gaze at its scenic beauty with eyes glued to the pair of binoculars I had brought along with me.

While climbing up we almost went hurtling down the cliff if it had not been Chitthi's sharp eyes and a big boulder at the end of the road! We laughed heartily at the near escape and my granddad and I started piling up more rocks along the edge of the cliff. We paused for a few minutes to take in the fresh air and stunning view of the mountain from that area. We took a few pictures, imaginarily pushing the boulder which we owed our lives to. We were quite low in gas and made to enter a gas station as soon as we descended from the mountain into a small village at the base of the mountain. After refuelling the car we resumed the journey toward Crater Lake which is one of the deepest freshwater lakes in the world with a depth of about 2000 feet below sea level. Upon reaching there we witnessed the natural beauty of the lake and soon found out, that its diameter was 5 miles across and was created by the action of volcanoes not unlike the formation of Mt. Shasta. When we looked down into the lake from the magnificent vista-point provided, it looked like still water but it was actually a trick played on the eyes. After many pictures (Keena included in most of them) we tore our eyes away from it and continued the journey downwards.

I dosed off while Chitthi drove through an unnaturally silent and lonely road for 3 hours without any sight of other cars and reached the yet another cosy Best Western in a village called Rice Hill. All the pictures we took had been uploaded on the laptop by Sri Chittappa who had brought it along with him. Keerthana who had had a tremendous time (with the exception of a lot of visits to the toilets in different places!) and was jumping around on the bed apparently thrilled with the sight of the mountain and the lake. I too was enthralled by the visit to these two famous landmarks and was eager to visit more of the planned sites. So next day as per schedule we started off in the morning toward the big city of Portland where we saw a very large port with many ships and boats dotting the bay. The view was outstanding from atop one of the bridges that we used to cross the port and we could see miles and miles of water surrounding us on our sides. We crossed the bridge and entered the main city of Portland where we entered a store named FRYS ELECTRONICS where we searched for a suitable laptop for my grandparents since there was no policy of tax in the state of Oregon in which Portland is situated quite unlike the regulations of San Francisco. It was the 4th of July, widely celebrated as the American Independence day."

I've not edited anything other than breaking it into a few paragraphs. At his age, I know I suffered from a horrible case of bad spellingitis and it warms the heart to see a clean essay from a hyper active photocopy of myself. Keep it up Sid! I'm proud of you and keep eating thayir sadam the way you are now!

P.S.: I can't help but notice the emphasis on food in his essay. Yet another trait of mine?

Of chips and teenagers

This one is ‘dedicated’ to that soul who put up his status message on Google Talk as “Kovai A1 Chips…Yummy!!!” – You know who you are. Hope you get the loosies from OD-ing on those chips.

With that out of my system, I can now move on with what I want to say now.

While Lovedale was a lovely place – peaceful and calm, safe and secure, paradise on Earth etc., - to cut a long story short, it was the perfect place to grow up. Nevertheless, there was one major gripe I had with the place – the lack of eateries. It wasn’t possible to sneak a visit to a nearby restaurant to grab a tasty bite, heck, there wasn’t even a decent place to buy snacks apart from the school Tuck Shop, but I couldn’t go there because Joe Uncle, the Tuck Shop manager was also the local ration shop keeper and in that capacity was good conversation terms with amma, worse still, he would go straight to appa, the Dean of the School, and spill the beans about my snacking exploits, leading to a money laundering style enquiry on where the money was obtained from and why I was wasting it on such frivolities as snacking, so that was a no-go. The only other place was Pitchies below Prep School. The risk with that place was that to sneak down to the shop from Prep School, I had to pass by Mrs Vaidyanathan’s house or if I took the long winded route from behind Prep School, I’ll have to pass Raghavan uncle’s, Jadgeesh Pandey’s, and finally Ms Virk’s house, all of which would for sure lead to the enquiry mentioned above.

So here I was, a boy in my early teens with hormones or plain hyper activity making my ravenously hungry all the time with just 3 square meals a day to look forward to (5 if you include morning and afternoon tea). Yes, I know it sounds shallow, what will people not getting 1 square meal a day and all that, but try that argument with a hungry, spoilt 14 year old and you’ll be amazed at the power in those little arms as they give you a fat lip.

That’s not to say there wouldn’t be snacks at home – appa would stock up on snacks like there was not tomorrow, but they didn’t feel the same as buying your own on the sly (though this didn’t really prevent me from stuffing my face, it’s a question of satisfaction, you see). There was only one exception to the rule – banana chips from A1 Chips in Coimbatore. Appa was not only the Dean, but also head of the school’s purchasing committee and that capacity resulted in him having to go down to Coimbatore ever so often to buy provisions for school. Each time he went, he would come back with A1 Chips (approximately 1kg each trip) and it would last, on average 2 days in the BBC household (appa’s nickname in school).

The only time I did OD on those deliciously crisp, yellow fellers was when I finished an entire kilo in one sitting without sharing. Needless to say, the following two days were spent in the immediate vicinity of a toilet.

Now, I can only dream of those chips for I have searched high and low in London and just cannot find any crisp that can hold a candle to A1 Chips. I miss them and just when I think about moving on in life, I have the status message “Kovai A1 Chips, yummy…” staring back at me, I want those chips!

Aunt S and a little more food

Prologue

It started with my wife complaining of a headache and tiredness. It came long and strong. Yes, I am talking about advice.

You see, soon after the wedding, we (my wife and I, duh!!) took it upon ourselves to visit every conceivable temple and submit an application, in duplicate, with every God in a 500-kilometre radius, that our life as a couple should be trouble-free, happy and prosperous. Add to this, some “special” prayers to which my wife had committed herself (I shall refrain from any further reference to these prayers on account of what we, in Britain, fondly refer to as “reasons of health and safety”. i.e., I’m going to be a wuss and chicken out of any further comments on the abovementioned special prayers). As a result of this, we ended up spending 15 nights ensuing the wedding in 15 different places and would end up wondering which city we were in each morning.

Such a lot of travel and holiness does take a toll on one and one gets tired.

Chapter I: Don’t pick on your food

We were in Chidambaram with me trying not to open my mouth, lest it be stuffed with food. My newly wedded wife woke up with the mother-of-all-headaches and general fatigue and made the mistake of saying so to her aunt (S), who, bless her, took it upon herself to make sure her child was well fed and watered for the duration of our visit.

Aunt S began with a scathing attack on youngsters of today and how they pick on food, ending up looking listless and weak. And promptly sat us down to eat. Now, I must digress here and remind readers about the kind of food we had been eating in the recent past. You see, in each of these different towns we had visited, we not only had temples in varying quantities, we also had relatives. By now you will be we versed with the equation: marriage + relatives = feasts. To cut a long story short, in the week preceding this incident, we had collectively consumed 60 idlis, 45 dosas, 4 kilos of rice and an bath tub size pool of sambar and rasam. Each. So, when Aunt S mentioned again that we youngsters pick on food, I promptly chocked on idly number 61.

Chapter II: The trip back to Coimbatore

The route from Chidambaram to Coimbatore is a treacherous one. So treacherous, that it even has a few patches of road in between, just to confuse you into believing it is ok to drive faster than 20kmph. Therefore, we decided to take a train from Kumbakonam.

Sometime earlier, I had professed my love of driving to my father-in-law. The morning after I arrived in Chidambaram, I came down from the flat to stare into the business end of a Hyundai I10 car that was to be at my disposal until I caught the train at Kumbakonam.

Many hours of happy driving, avoiding flora and fauna, defensive driving, close brushes with death later, it was time to take a final drive to Kumbakonam, 70km away. By bus, the journey takes a little under 2 hours and by car, it takes around 1.5 hours. I was quite looking forward to the drive.

Aunt S spends the night before our journey mustering up the courage to ask me what I would like to eat during the journey. In the morning, she asks if we want rice, idlis or chapattis on hand. There is no choice between whether we want food or not, just this or that.

Aunt S: “Shall I pack some idlis and curd rice?”

Me: “No, thank you.”

Aunt S: “You are going by car only, you can take some food with you, I’ll pack a little.”

Me: [Blink, blink]

This is something users of cars often encounter – just because they are going by car, carrying mountain loads of luggage is somehow automatically justified! Even if we were only going by car, its still us that has to eat the food, right?

Now, based on the foregoing paragraph, do not, for one moment think that I am in any way thinking about health and weight control while denying food. I merely have my sights set on the food that is sold on the train from the pantry car!

After much convincing and cajoling, we are allowed to get into the car minus food. Aunt S bids emotional farewell to us and looks at me behind the wheel and says, “Drive carefully, do not cross 30kmph.” I do the blink, blink routine again, and reply, “Don’t worry Aunt S, I will drive carefully, but I need to catch that train today and not tomorrow,” and set off….

Epilogue

The journey to Kumbakonam took me a little under 1 hour and I must have been the only bloke in the entire district to have driven with a seatbelt on!

Now I know what it feels like...

More often than not, when the maapilais (sons-in-law) of our house come visiting, I used to have quite a lot of fun at their expense looking at the royal treatment they would get from their in-laws, i.e., my folks. Mind you, my sisters did not approve of the said treatment, but they got it anyway.

The memory is as fresh as can be, when Sri, my second athimbere (I've never called him that), came home soon after his marriage to my sister, he was left totally pink faced with the treatment he received from my parents, something that had me in splits for hours on end. Little did I know that one day, I would be sailing in that same boat!

In order to put things in perspective, I must digress and tell you a bit about myself. I am a person who does not know what it is to be respected. I was trodden over by friends and juniors in school, am the youngest in my family and when my sisters gave birth to 1,2 and eventually 3 bundles of joy, who are also referred to as my nieces and nephew, they refused to give me any respect. Let me put it this way, the doormat in my house has seen better days than me. That's not to say I'm not loved, I know they adore me and I love them all to bits, but there's no respect.

So take a bloke who has never been treated with respect, add a pinch of the title "son-in-law" - where you get truck-loads of respect and you get the perfect formula for being pink faced.

Right from the time I went for the "ponnu pakkara padalam" to date, I have been treated like some kind of god by people from my wife's side. They wouldn't sit on a chair in front of me, they would refer to me with various titles from "Saar" to "Maapilai" with tonnes of "neenga", "vanga", "ponga" etc., thrown in for good measure.

The way South Indians eat food is well known, but nothing prepared me for what comes when you are served by your in-laws. If ever there was a time when no one listened to what I said, it was when I said enough to food. I'd have to do a fair bit of planning just stop eating food when I was overfull as opposed to splitting at the seams (eating the right amount was not an option). For example, if dosas were on the menu, I would have to time it perfectly and start grumbling about how full I am around the 4th dosa (any sooner and they see right through the plan, any later and its too late) and I can finally stop eating around the 9th.

After the wedding, whenever I went out, there would be a car waiting to whisk me away to wherever I wanted, maapilai shouldn't walk, you see!

Another memorable incident is at the temple in Chidambaram. Apparently, it was some special puja day when we visited and the temple was packed to around 10 times over its capacity. We squeezed in and I prepared myself for a long, sticky wait to get a glimpse of the deity. AS it turns out, the temple chief pujari is the father of my wife's friend and when he knew who I was, we were taken right through the crowd into the shrine, with a special archanai thrown in on the house (or temple)!

After much cajoling, I have managed to convince (although with limited success) close relatives of my wife to stop treating me like god and have given up trying to achieve any kind of normality with other relatives. I just have to let things be and get on with life, can't let this get to my head because, after all the royal treatment, when I get back to my house, my nieces are going to treat me like dirt...