FOODOSTALGIA

A thought on food, especially good tasty food still leaves everyone drooling. A deliberation on food is always subjective. When some people prefer to eat what they like, a majority satisfies themselves with what they get to eat and for millions and millions a frugal meal per day or two or week is a privilege. Hostellers eat to exist and that glues them to the second category of people.

Boarding school life and its strictness teach you the importance of eating on time. As you grew up in that atmosphere, the obsession of doing things on time also grew along with you and the act of consuming food become a ritual. The transformation from eating with relish to a disinterested monotonous activity adversely affects the health.

Every day at the dining table a hosteller misses his/her home. Precisely his/her mother. Without a doubt, it is obvious that the tastiest food anyone has ever eaten should be either prepared by their mother or their grandmothers or their loved ones. Even if it’s a glass of plane water, when your loved one gives, it has a taste of its own. Eating is more than a time bound routine. A good dish can bring lots of happiness in the person who consumes it. The notion of food and its nuances have impact on peoples’ lives. A person who likes to try out different varieties of food items across cultures is more open in his/her outlook than someone who is satisfied with a monotonous menu. The names given to food items have the capacity to allure the person and at times the person might be fortunate enough to feel the same happiness when he/she eats it. So the act of deciding on what to eat is totally fortuitous.

Foodostalgia is all about staring at the food that is being served and recollecting nostalgically the tastes that relished your palate in the past. Putting it succinctly, it’s the act of looking homeward despite the food on the table. The taste of homemade food cooked by mother is unparallel. Mother cooks food with love. Love itself participates in the each stage of a food item’s preparation. This single difference makes people in their adulthood to long for home made food. At times the addition of greatest tastemakers fails to impress because without the ingredient of love, food is not food. It’s just a lump to settle your hunger. The love quotient in food makes it the best. Food is more than it seems. It is an emotion and celebration for people who has the privilege to get it and for millions a single meal per week is a luxury.

When does food become the tastiest, is a question to be debated on. The answer to this question varies from person to person. But if we look inwardly, without a tinge of doubt we can establish the fact that food becomes the tastiest when you are hungry. Our own life experiences never force us to deny this fact. When you are going blind out of hunger a piece of anything that is consumable will definitely tastes the best. You chew it and relish it like u haven’t had seen food before. From the pre-historic to this post-truth world one thing that weaken us as human beings is our inability to control the basic drive - hunger.

When you waste food remember that there will be a person waiting to satiate his hunger.