Food for thought

When I was twenty, my grandmother lived with us and she was full six decades older than I. In a curious case of history repeating itself, my twenty year old daughter’s eighty year old grandmother is now under the same roof as her.

My Aaji had light meals given her petite frame, sparse appetite and difficulty chewing with her dentures. She would first soak the Roti in Daal, proceed to eat some rice with Daal and vegetables and then go back to the now soft, soggy Roti. Soaking it made the process much easier and she barely needed to chew before swallowing it in spoonfuls. Often during our meals together, I would finish eating quickly with the speed and impatience of youth.  Then I’d sit watching her eat, restless but too polite to get up and more so scared of Mom’s reprimand for not having good manners.

Aaji would slowly finish eating and then start wiping the inside of the bowl of with her right index finger and licking that. I would sit fuming and think how fastidious and how very slow she was. One afternoon after I finished lunch, she said “You can get up if you want. I know you are bothered watching me eat like this.” Obviously, my face was telling it all and I had not done a good job of keeping my thoughts to myself. She had noticed my bored, revulsed gaze.

“We were lucky to always have enough to eat but we were taught from childhood never to waste food”, she continued. “Me and my five younger sisters. That learning stayed with me and even now I will not leave any food in my plate and waste it.”

As a native of British India first and then an immigrant in British Tanganyika in the early half of the 20^th century, I imagined there was no surplus food in her home. I was quiet, and mortified.

“And it would be unfair to your mother who has put in efforts to cook this meal”, Aaji concluded.

Now watching similar generational divides run through my home, I am reminded of this incident from years back. At that time, it had impressed upon me the notion that I should acknowledge and appreciate that our kitchen table was never ever lacking and that someone had spent time and effort to make that possible every single day of my life.

I write this now as a learning and a memory, for my grandmother’s great-grandchildren.

~AK Irvinekar