i like ghiya

We ran out of cooking gas last night. So, our cook (Our CrOOK) was not able to INNOVATE this morning. Mind you, he is very good at that. Tea without sugar, and dal without salt are a couple of his specialties.

I thought I would go out for breakfast, but was in no mood to. Lazy bum I am. I thank Anish for getting cornflakes, for they made a nice fill. A glass full of cold milk, a tea spoon of sugar and cornflakes in my mug. It was such a nice feeling. Not because now I had something to tank my belly up, but the fact that I had not eaten cornflakes for over a year.

The crunch of mildly salty corn, with small dispatches of sweet milk, cool breeze gliding around my face, and a constant chirp of sparrows made a mouthful of happy feelings to swallow.

I realize happiness was not because I found a solution for my issue of satisfying my hunger. The little flakes that I found were the real reason.

People pick up volcanic rocks at Mt Kilimanjaro, they bring back postcards, cameras full of images, souvenirs when they go vacationing. All these small items do not give them what the real thing did, or can. But they give them memories, of an experience they had, of the hike they did with the family, the fun they had with friends, the soar buttock they got when they fell off a pony, the pleasure of bathing in a spring.

The flakes made me remember my days in Chandigarh when I was, I think, in eighth or nine standard and used to take Chocos with cold milk. Some of my friends hated them but I liked their chocolaty taste with cold milk. I remember having a bowl while writing my homework in the evening as well. Sometimes, I demanded the same for dinner too, and my mom used to tell me that they are no substitute for food and that I should eat my chapattis/daal/sabzi/salad properly. But I wanted Chocos only...deemed.


Now whenever I go back home, mom asks me if she should prepare chicken, mutton, or black dal, paneer etc., things I liked.

I do not want rajma, kadi, paneer, kali daal..every other restaurant serves these; can still do with non-veg though. But what I want are brown daal, yellow daal, ghiya, with all the spices and onions, tomatoes, garlic and ginger, which I detested earlier, with each morsel I take.

Little things in life that no one cares about when they do get them, sometimes become a craving when deprived of.